by Laurie Childree

Created on: May 02, 2009   Last Updated: July 29, 2009

A recession is a difficult time for everyone. Wages decrease while the cost of living seems to increase rapidly. While savings may seem to be difficult to achieve it is vital especially during a recession. The benefits associated with saving money aren't often seen but they can be when it is done wisely. A recession is the time when the benefits that come with savings are most often seen.

Saving money can help you to both prepare and survive during a recession. A look back at history tells us that one fact is inevitable. This fact is that the economy is going to go through times of thriving and times when it takes a nose dive for the worse. We must remember this fact and use it as a motivation to save if we are going to endure those times when our economies fall into a recession.

When you find ways to save money it means that you are living at or below your means and you have a cushion in the event of a reduction or loss of income. Saving money is a habit that can cause us not to miss the money we no longer have coming in. A set amount of our pay sent automatically to savings ensures are bills are below are income. When we are in the habit of looking for ways to save we adjust more easily when we don't have a choice but to save in order to survive such as during a recession.

When a recession hits job loss is a real danger. Living the same way with the same spending habits as when the economy was stable is something that can put us in danger of losing everything. As we notice the first signs of a recession we should begin to cut our expenses and increase our savings. By cutting expenses we make those six worth of expenses they tell us we should have last a year in the event that we end up without any income.

At its worse the recession will cause extensive job loss and the possiblity of finding another job will be nearly non-existant. Yes, the outlook of a recession is bad and can be scary but panicking makes it worse. Finding ways to cut the monthly expenses such as the utilities and the grocery bill so that the left over funds can be placed into savings will help us stretch the emergency back up fund that much further. If our total bills are around $1,000 a month then we should make every attempt to lower them to around $500. This way when we manage to tuck away $1,000 during the recession for the crisis yet to come instead of paying our bills and providing for our families for one month we are providing for them for two months.

When we find ways to save during the recession we should also be looking into ways to earn additional money to save and search for places where we trade for items we need. When we begin to utilize our skills at saving money we might just find we can figure out a way to reduce our expenses and stretch one month worth of the money to pay bills into three. While we can't live off of our savings forever we can learn to save enough that we manage to live off of it for months at a time if we have too while we continue to find alternative ways other than the traditional job to earn money to set aside for the day that the savings is getting close to empty.

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