move. “I didn’t realize how stressed I had been and how little time I had spent with the kids,” Brown, 52, says. “I became one of those mothers I hadn’t been: going to school, volunteering for programs, and so on.”
Use your contacts: The contacts you’ve cultivated are likely to be the backbone of your job search. Send these people an e-mail immediately after you’ve been laid off, updating them on your contact details. Don’t gripe about your employer and don’t ask for a job then. “Just say, ‘I’ll be in touch in a couple of weeks. I look forward to catching up,'” advises Collamer.
Know your transferable skills: Your job search will go much better if you’re open to a wide range of opportunities. For example, Brown’s industry, telecom, experienced a severe downturn in the early part of the decade. She couldn’t find comparable employment. At one point she even interviewed for telemarketing jobs before landing a steady stream of consulting gigs. Her current assignment is with a bank. The company is meshing two computer systems following a merger with another bank. Brown went through a similar process when GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon in 2000, so she’s able to draw on that expertise. “I thought it was a stretch for me, but I’m using a lot of the same skills,” she says.
HOME
Part of today’s housing problem is that huge annual price gains, coupled with easy credit and low interest rates, allowed owners to treat their homes like ATMs. From 2001 to 2006, homeowners cashed out $1.2 trillion in home equity — much of that going toward credit card debt. But that maneuver will no longer be available as home prices fall. At the end of the first quarter, median home prices were down 8.2% from a year earlier. The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee estimated that there could be some 2 million foreclosures through 2009, destroying $71 bil
lion in wealth.
Antonett and Robert Jones of Washington, D.C., are hoping to avert that fate. The couple refinanced their four-bedroom, three-story Capitol Hill home in January 2007. Through an interest-only mortgage from Countrywide Financial, they paid $1,300 a month. But the Joneses soon found out the rate they were given was a teaser, good for just a few months.
Shortly before their mortgage was reset, Antonett came down with a debilitating illness that her doctors are still unable to diagnose. It swelled her throat, tongue, and extremities, making it difficult to walk. Unable to continue her job as a contract specialist for the federal government, she was placed on leave without pay.
“When I realized that my financial situation was going to be different, I immediately went to work on our mortgage,” says Antonett, 46. She says the mortgage company was unsympathetic to her and Robert, 50, a construction worker, and last August increased their monthly payments to $2,800. Unable to pay the full amount, they eventually fell $8,000 behind. The couple attended a mortgage workshop at a local church last fall