Finding a job when you’ve lost yours is the hardest job you’ll ever have. That’s because, in addition to all the resumes, cover letters, interviews and fraught nerves, you’ve got your money and your credit to look after. You have to figure out how to keep bills up-to-date and your credit score pristine – and you have to do all that without any income.

You also tend to go from being a ‘cash’ consumer to a ‘credit’ consumer when you lose a job because you have to depend on savings and credit cards more. If this happens, there are three very important points to remember, courtesy of John Ulzheimer:

(1) Credit scores don't know whether or not you're employed because that info is not on your credit reports. This is good and bad news because you don't get a "pass" on any mistakes when paying/spending/applying for credit just because you're not employed. All rules remain the same. It's good news because ‘unemployment’ isn't considered negative by credit scores such as FICO.

(2) Try to avoid taking out cash advances on multiple cards as this action will be interpreted by your credit card issuers as risky. They can see the balance increase across multiple cards and will likely take action against you. If you need to take out a cash advance, do it on one card only. This will minimize the damage to your scores or at worst, push off the serious damage to later down the road and hopefully by then you're employed again.

(3) If you need/want to open a new card, do it before you become unemployed. Even though credit scoring models don't see that you're unemployed there are other scoring models that will. For example, most issuers use "application" models that take into account info from your credit application. This means when you put $0 in the salary space or you leave the "current employer" space empty, it will hurt you and can cause you to be declined. Banks do not like empty spaces on applications.

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