Loss

I felt productive that afternoon. I keep a detailed budget, though expenses are mostly after the fact -- I track what I've spent and have a sense in my mind about how much I've spent every month and how much I can spend. I decided to cut some non-essential budget items and saved a few hundred dollars a month. I'd also filed for unemployment and taken care of a few other administrative tasks.

I slept very fitfully, however. Every few minutes, another worry skittered through my mind. I'd kept a good budget. I had a great financial plan which would have led to my financial independence in the next ten or twelve years, depending on investments.

All of a sudden, my ex-employer had pulled the rug away. That's not like yanking a tablecloth from under a dinner setting and a crystal vase containing a single red rose. There, you have a little wobble as the audience gasps, but even the salad fork and the dessert fork stay in position.

Instead, I had to worry about paying my own insurance again. There'd be no chances apply additional payments to my mortgage. My 401k would stagnate -- worse yet, in December I'd increased my contributions because I believe now is a great time to buy!

Then the worst news hit me. How would I refinance my mortgage? I kept watching rates fall, week over week, thinking "I could refinance to a 20-year mortgage and pay less per month and still pay it off sooner than I would if I kept my current mortgage!" That's no longer an option.

Maybe I'm a fool for predicating plans on the whims of an employer who, in retrospect, very obviously found me expendable, but I had to rethink a lot of my future that night, and I didn't sleep well. I decided to stop pretending I'd get more sleep at 8:30 the next morning and finally concluded that the previous day really hadn't been a dream. Yippee.