In my last entry, I posted a simple line chart showing the ups and downs of my net worth over the past 17 years.

Ceejay remarked that it was "astounding" that I'd managed to maintain my net worth through what will be 3 years of underemployment this September.

I thought I'd analyze how I've been able to do that.

First, I'll define "underemployment." 2.5 years is a long time to go without steady full-time job, especially when you have a mortgage and all the bills that go with that.

Here's a rough synopsis of my employment history since 2009.

Mid-September 2009: I'm laid off. I was home sick with a bad cold and my boss, accompanied by an HR person, called to deliver the bad news. It took me completely by surprise that day, although the company had gone through two previous rounds of major, sweeping layoffs.

From there on, I focus on both finding another job as well as developing my freelance income. Truth be told, I have just a few regular clients, and the work is highly sporadic. I only average about $5,ooo to $6,000 a year in freelance writing.

March 2010: i get a f/t contract job with a start-up website. It pays $25/hr. It lasted 6 weeks before they let me go and later they pulled the site down to restructure, regroup and retry. (It's still not up.)

April 2010: I lucked out and after taking an exam to be a US Census Bureau worker, I got the job, which was probably 25 or 30 hours a week on average, paid $19.75 an hour + gas reimbursements, on which I actually MADE money becus i drive a Civic, and lasted through early August. It was an interesting experience.

September 2010: This time, I really lucked out and got a writing job thru a headhunter with a big, well-known financial services company. It was full-time but a contract job. It paid more than I've ever made before, $50 an hour. Or, on an annual basis, $104,000. Oddly, I have worked much harder on jobs that paid much less, and I found the job not that difficult, once again demonstrating that you don't have to work harder to make more money, only smarter.

Throughout all of this, of course, I'm continuously looking for work of all kinds (freelance, contract or salaried) and submitting my resume. I spent about 2 years doing online surveys, averaging as much as $100 a month, before I decided it just wasn't worth the time invested. I've also regularly done market research focus groups, product testing and even medical research studies involving blood draws or other stuff. I've been a poll worker in my town's local elections.

To generate money, I have also sold personal possessions on Craig's List, including firewood from my land and even perennials that I dug up and divided. I sold what little gold jewelery I had. I didn't consider this a hardship and am perfectly happy to wear my Technibond (sterling silver overlaid in 14K gold) which looks like the real thing.

After the well-paying contract job ending December 31, 2010, I went through another long period of nothing coming up, and i relied on my freelance and unemployment to get by.

November 2011: I get some contract work with a small publisher for 2 months paying $15 an hour. It's better than nothing.

January 2012: The same publisher where I did the contract work invited me to work for them on a more permanent basis, still at $15/hr, but it would be 25 hours a week of steady work as a p-t employee, which means they pay a portion of payroll taxes, leaving me with a little more left in my pocket. The company is just barely getting by, not making much of a profit and the building they occupy is up for sale. No one is sure if the company will survive if and when the building sells.

So that's been the employment picture these past 2.5 years and it's pretty much where I stand today.

The fact that I've been able to maintain my net worth during this time is something i attribute to a bunch of things:

1. When i bought the house in 1995, i was lucky that the market was not over-priced the way it was in 2007. Of course, if it had been, I probably wouldn't have been buying.

2. Being risk-averse, I bought "less house" than my realtor said i could and i also put down a huge down payment of 45%. I did this becus as a single person, i didn't want to get in trouble with huge monthly payments if something should happen to my income. And "something," (a layoff), happened fully 5 TIMES since 1995. That's 4 layoffs and 1 company closure. So my monthly payments of currently $1,150, which includes the property taxes, is doable, and a lot less, i think, than what other homeowners pay.

3. Aside from a well-timed home purchase, I was not afraid to cut way back in my lifestyle when i lost my job. My basic cutbacks (a long time ago now) were eliminating cable TV, the cell phone, Netflix, all paid magazine subscriptions, all vacations, all paid forms of entertainment except the very occasional $2 movie theater, all eating out except an occasional fast food fix, always off the $1 menu and very little spent on gifts. (My family understands.)

There are times I feel a bit deprived, but largely i don't. I have created different release valve mechanisms to ensure those kinds of self-defeating feelings don't build up.

for instance, I got into credit card rewards in a big way. While I started off systematically applying for cards with the biggest ($200) cash rewards last year, this year I branched out into cards that say, gave you $250 in gift cards after you spent $2,000 in 3 months. I've used those gift cards in a variety of ways, probably an equal mix of stuff I actually need, like food or gas, as well as discretionary spending like some clothes and other items for the house.

The online surveys functioned in the same way; they ensured I wouldn't go on a spending binge due to pent-up frustrations. While I don't do the online surveys anymore except for Pinecone, I do still particpate in 4 online forums. In two of them, you're just asked to participate in brief surveys once a week and you're rewarded with $15 in gift cards. So that's $30 a month in amazon gift cards right there. In the BP forum, i recently got a $25 BP gas card, which thrilled me.

It's been easy for me to adjust to no spending on entertainment because i've always liked to do things like hiking/walking, kayaking, and bike riding. If I get together with a friend these days, it's usually limited to a cup of tea (or iced tea,these days). Many of my friends are either naturally frugal like I am or required to be that way due to their own circumstances. So I am not often pressured by other people in my life who want to go out and eat at a fancy restaurant.

I sometimes watch a few favorite TV shows free on Hulu. And I rent A LOT OF free DVDs from the library. It's getting hard now to find something I haven't seen!

I also spend a lot of time working and maintaining my yard and a large vegetable garden and giving my 2 cats a lot of TLC. I hope to picking wineberries soon and freezing them for winter use, along with tomatoes and homemade pesto using my basil plants.

So there you have it. What's been killing me all along is the crrently $562 I'm paying each month for COBRA. Having benign MS, I don't have many other choices, because the pre-existing condition would not likely be covered if I switched plans. My best hope would be to find another salaried position that included medical as a benefit, but salaried positions, folks, seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird. I suspect they won't return en masse until the jobs market fixes itself and the pool of job-seekers shrinks.

I had toyed with the idea of dropping the COBRA (or waiting for it to run out, in June 2013), taking a great risk by going uninsured for 6 months so that the state plan would pick me up. Except that while it used to be "somewhat" more affordable, it now is, well, not so much. the monthly premiums are $442, or about $100 less than what I'm paying now each month.

I do have one medication,the Copaxone, which I take for the MS. It's extremely expensive (an injectable) and not something I could purchase without health insurance, although my neurologist said the pharma company would probably give me the meds for free becus i've been on it for so long (since 2000) and they want to keep me as a customer i presume so that when i do return to work, i stay on the copaxone.

Big picture bright spots: 1. I'm about 8 months away from paying off the mortgage.

2. At some point in my future, when the housing market recovers, I will likely sell my high maintenance house and buy a small condo. I would pay 100$ cash for the condo so no mortgage and I would probably be able to pocket an additional $50K profit.

3. I'm fortunate to have a skill (copywriting) that lends itself to working at home and is something i can do all my life, even, presumably, if my MS ever worsens.

Big picture challenges:
1. I have a chronic illness that requires a very expensive drug and future prognosis is always uncertain.

2. I am in my early 50s and become more unemployable with each passing year as employers naturally favor young 'uns. I often wonder if I'll EVER find another salaried position.

3. I do worry about taking care of aging parents, particuarly my mother. I have a sister, but she's so uninterested in playing an active role in the family I pretty much feel like an only child when it comes to stepping up to tthe plate and doing what needs to be done.

4. I think most of my dating days are behind me. I wish I weren't looking at my future as a single person, but it's just the way it worked out. Let's face it. I don't look at all like I did when I was 30, although people say I look young for my age and I'm not hugely fat.

5. Getting back to money talk, one of the worst things about being unemployed, as far as I'm concerned, is that I've been unable to contribute a dime to a 401(k) or my SEP/IRA for my freelance work and while I have taxable savings that could be transferred to my roth IRA account, I'm reluctant to do so when I have only so much money left. so I'm behind in my retirement savings goals by 2.5 years. It's really unclear if I'll ever achieve my original goal of $1 million, or the comfy lifestyle with travel that I had envisioned.

Now, the goal has morphed more into a question of, can i get by and pay my bills until I'm of retirement age and can get onto Social Security at age 67? That's a big shift in thinking.