Manage your debts and payments.

Consider cancelling subscription services: newspapers, magazines, cable TV, memberships, donations, and charitable giving.

If you've got both long distance and a cell phone, consider ditching one. To me, the combination of DSL service and a cell phone might be preferable to a landline, if you're lucky enough to have neighbors with unprotected (or openly invited) wireless service, you could make further savings. Most cell phones allow prepaid plans with a certain amount of calls per month. My $30/mo gets 100 minutes of airtime, which I generally stay under -- if you like to gab, this isn't a good choice though. Modest increases give substantially more airtime. Some services include "family intercom" which may cover most of your calls. Internet access is more critical than phone, and the cell is with me at all times. My experience is that Internet access pays in connectivity rewards which are helpful when I'm job hunting, and a cell phone's mobility advantages are far superior to a landline -- though I use my phone for dialup Internet access.

Pay off your credit card debt immediately, if possible.

It's hard to manage, and if you miss or skip payments, generally gets really expensive, really fast. Consider cancelling your accounts alltogether.

Keep your student loans, particularly if they're deferrable or you can get a forebearance. This is some of the friendliest debt you can own. You'll continue to accrue interest, but rates are generally low, and the forebearance can be continued for extended periods of time.

Cut any other payments you make. For most people, that's rent/mortgage, food, gas, various insurance (car, home, health, life). Review your budget and trim corners. You can offset much food and entertainment expense with the extra time you've got, and the work itself can have its rewards. Review house payments or rent arrangements -- your bank or landlord may be flexible. If they're not, start making contingency plans sooner rather than later. If you've got more than one car, consider selling the more expensive one (could be the newer one with higher insurance, or the older one with worse mileage and higher repair costs) to cut your profile.

Look at energy efficiency. Your home's power consumption generally goes to heating, cooling, hot water, refrigeration, and lighting, with all else being noise. Reducing your heat/cool setting, lowering bulb wattage, low-flow showers, closing off unused rooms, are relatively low-cost ways to achieve substantial savings with fairly quick payoffs. Other measures are more expensive, but do have their long-term rewards. Curtains or other window blocking, weatherstripping, and blocking other external airflows can help substantially.

If you've got equity investments, start shifting from stocks to more liquid assets -- eg: money market. Do this over a period of several months and you'll minimize market risk (you'll average out up and down fluctuations). Balance this against brokerage fees, typically $20 - $50 per transaction. Some brokers offer reduced (or no) fees for their own equities -- another advantage of Schwab's own funds (like the Schwab 1000 Index) is that there are no brokerage fees for positions held for a minimum time period (120 or 180 days, IIRC). The advantage of a money market position is that you've got less investment risk, while maintianing some return (I think I currently see about 4%, though this could be falling as interest rates and market returns fall).

Look at short-term work and other income options, including unemployment and community grants.

I'm not seeing much, if any, uptick yet. This could last a while.