Being Furloughed with FinGym Client, Alyson

Being Furloughed with Alyson

On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Emily Egan, PR Manager. She is joined by Financial Gym client Alyson to talk about being furloughed.

Podcast Notes

• Alyson was furloughed from the theme park industry, due to COVID-19. Working in this industry, you don’t think this will happen to you, because theme parks are open year-round and it is a pretty stable industry. 

• Alyson had an office job and she was able to shift to a work-from-home scenario for the first six weeks of quarantine. Eventually, the company had to furlough employees to keep the company in a financially stable position.

• Alyson has friends in the film industry and they go on and off unemployment between gigs and this is like second nature to some of them. 

• This is the first time Alyson has been furloughed. Since furlough is technically a temporary layoff, she kept benefits like health insurance and access to employee assistance programs. She is able to use some of her company’s resources, she is just not being paid right now. 

• Alyson became a client at The Gym in 2019 and, at that point, she had no emergency fund, she had some consumer loan debt, and student loan debt. 

• Since then, she built up a safety net and, going into furlough, she knew she could sustain herself for at least three months minimum. 

• Alyson and her friends applied for unemployment right away, and they are seeing their first payment more than a month later. 

• After being furloughed, the first thing Alyson did was send Joy an email asking her to talk through her financial situation, what she should cut back on, and put together a plan of what it was going to look like during this time. 

• As soon as the government enacted forbearance for student loans, Alyson stopped paying those so she could put that money in her savings account. She moved the money she would have paid for gas into her savings each week. She tried to pay ahead on her cat’s food and litter and other bills and she cut down on extra spending and move it immediately to her emergency fund. 

• Alyson does Beach Body fitness and all of her workouts are paid for a year, but she had to prioritize the protein drinks and supplements over other things she normally would buy, since they would be good for her health. Non-negotiables were fitness/health, books, and coffee. 

• In 2019, Alyson worked with her trainer and in Fall 2019, she was able to pay for a vacation in full, upfront for the first time and it felt really good.

• Another thing she did was sign up for a virtual happy hour with where a trainer would come and chat with her and her friends. This is something The Gym is offering for free to all clients. Alyson was paired with Victoria and she invited about 15 friends. It was a great conversation and a lot of them took notes and some even signed up for a warm up call.