Collecting unemployment

As noted here I applied for unemployment insurance soon after being laid off. You don't get anything for the first week you are out of work but you are then entitled to a weekly benefit for each subsequent week of unemployment (up to a maximum number of weeks). You must certify weekly that you were not employed during the previous week. This can all be done online and is reasonably painless. Yesterday the first benefit payment showed up in my bank account three weeks after my final day at work.

Being laid off made me even more disinclined than usual to spend but this seems like found money so perhaps I will do my bit to stimulate the economy by spending some of it.