How to cope with being laid off

Megan McArdle of The Atlantic offers a few common sense tips:

1) Prepare a crisis plan. "You are entitled to spend one evening consuming more scotch than you ought to, or scarfing down Ben and Jerrys, or indulging in your vice of choice. But the day after, you should be working out your IMF-imposed austerity plan. Cutbacks should begin immediately, and they should be deep: no restaurant meals, no trips, no expensive entertainments."

2) Don't take time off before you start looking for a job. "Ben Franklin famously said 'Fish and houseguests begin to smell after three days,' and if you change that to 'three months,' you've got a good description of what happens to job seekers in a tough market. Even though employers know, at some level, that you've had the deck stacked against you, they begin to wonder why no one else wanted you. And unfortunately, in a down market, there are always a lot of other, even newer job seekers coming close on your heels."

3) Don't touch your retirement savings before the age of sixty. "The penalties and tax you will pay are devastating."

4) Don't refinance the house, either . "At least, not to get cash (it's fine if all you're looking for is a lower interest rate)."

5) Get a job doing something. "Even a part-time job does two things: it gives you a little bit of cash for current expenses, and it gives you something to focus on besides your unemployment. Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and dwell on it all day."