That's not entirely correct, at least for Germany. ALG1 comes out of the mandatory unemployment insurance (that you and your employer have paid for every month

That's not entirely correct, at least for Germany. ALG1 comes out of the mandatory unemployment insurance (that you and your employer have paid for every month) and they will pay you 60% of your previous take-home salary + health insurance for half of the timespan that you'd been employed. That comes out to 1500-2000€/m in your pocket and insurance taken care of, which is really not so bad (a lot of people working full time make less than that). Can be more if you made north of 50K a year. Unless you have a crazy mortgage, you can make things work for a while. Also, if you hadn't had a pretty solid job for years, you wouldn't have gotten a mortgage anyway. After 24 months max and still no job you would fall back to ALGII though. That's is taxpayers' money and essentially rent for a cheap place, health insurance and 400 € in your pocket, which sucks. Plus you have to liquidate any assets you may have left (including life insurance) first and they will make you take a shitty job.