Losing your job or being unemployed for a prolonged period is one of the most stressful things that can happen to anyone. Aside from finding ways of filling your days and the challenges of getting back into work, making ends meet can be a major concern.

The first thing that you should do is to get in touch with your local council. There is a wide range of financial support for people who are unemployed and looking for work, particularly if you have dependents. If the money is there in the benefits system you should make the most of it.

Likewise, one of the first things that you should do is sign on at the job centre. To get unemployment benefit you need to have signed on at the job centre in the first place and they’ll obviously help you get back into employment sooner or later.

Another thing that you should consider doing is planning ahead, obviously you want to get back into work as soon as possible, but you should plan as though you’re not going to. The major costs for most people are housing, food and fuel. If you haven’t already thoroughly gone through all of your outgoings and minimised them as far as possible, it’s vital that you do so as soon as you become unemployed, sometimes switching mortgages or energy supplier can cost a little bit, but if it’s going to save you more in the long run it may well be worth it.

Likewise with food, if you buy in bulk things will be cheaper. So where possible get larger bags of things like pasta and shift down to the cheapest brands from most supermarkets, you’d be surprised how much you’ll save.

One of the major things that you should do is make the most of the money that you do have. Savings accounts are not offering particularly good rates at the moment but if you look around (Santander’s savings accounts are still pretty competitive) are you can get some good deals that will make the money that you do have go a little bit further and could be vital if you happen to be unemployed for a prolonged period.

The final thing to do is make sure you look everywhere for jobs, the internet is an amazing resource for finding work, as is the job centre and even national and local newspapers. Whilst applying a lot can be disheartening, if you don’t apply you can’t get back into work.