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Facing a furlough? Six ways to prepare.

Many Americans are starting to feel the pinch of reduced federal spending.Government and even nongovernment workers face furloughs or even layoffs as the budget purse strings tighten. Here are six ways to get ready for a furlough or unexpected layoff:

6. Keep your cool

Reza A. Marvashti/The Free Lance-Star/AP/File
Sergio Gonzalez loads a rusty bike on to the junk pile being hauled to the dump in August in Spotsylvania, Va. Ebenezer United Methodist Church has been holding furlough Fridays for members of the congregation who've been furloughed because of sequestration. With the day starting at 8 a.m. with a fresh made breakfast, the group has a devotional period then heads out for community service projects to benefit members of the community.

  • By Wayne von Borstel Contributor

Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Keep a level head and don’t buy on impulse. Try moonlighting or picking up a few odd jobs to keep yourself busy. (Do you have a skill you can post on guru.com or elance.com?). Or volunteer at the church or community center – busy hands will keep your mind occupied and giving to others who are perhaps in greater need will keep things in perspective. Visit a retirement center or shut-ins. Volunteer for Meals on Wheels. Create a home repair list and tackle all those pesky things that you haven’t had time for.

Chances are, you’ll be back to your regular schedule before you know it.  But now is the time for self-reflection, personal discipline, and a steady hand.

– Wayne von Borstel is president of von Borstel & Associates, a financial planning services firm with offices in The Dalles and Portland, Ore. He is also author of “The Truth Project: Finding the Courage to Ignore Wall Street.”   

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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