Reduce The Fear Of Layoff By Making A Layoff Plan
May 6, 2009 – 11:12 am
I admit I make a lot of mistakes as a husband, and one of the mistakes I made recently was a failure to plan. My wife has been extremely upbeat and supportive of me as my firm prepared to do another round of layoffs. Last thursday morning, which was the day of the layoffs, she asked “if things don’t go as we have hoped what are we going to do?” Although I gave a reasonable answer about “that’s what our emergency fund is for”, “I know some recruiters”, etc, I now realize these were not good answers.
If I were to do it all over I would have sat down with her as soon as layoffs were a possibility and we would have come up with a plan of attack together. Here are some of the questions we should have tried to answer well before the day of the layoff (which was told to me and my fellow employees in advance):
- how much does unemployement pay for me?
- How strong of a desire to we have to stay in our current city and home?
- How long do we want to look for a job in our current location before we start looking throughout the rest of the country?
- Do either of us know of any companies that I would like to potentially work for?
- What friends and contacts do I have that might be able to help me out with a job search?
- How many months can we live at our current standard of living if we use up our entire emergency fund?
- How many months can we live if we sharply scale back our spending and still use up our entire emergency fund?
- Is it likely that we would be able to afford a similar size/quality/location of a home in a new city? Are we prepared to rent for a while if we have to relocate?
- Do we need to live near family, and what constitutes ‘near’?
- What level of salary and benefits are we willing to accept in order to stay where we currently live?
- How many months are we willing to look for a new job before we lower our salary expectations from $X to $Y/year?
- Is there anything we absolutely have to have with a new job?
- Should our approach focus on finding “any ol’ job” as soon as possible and then take our time in the evening looking for a better or ‘perfect’ job?
- What things should we do to grow our emergency fund as fast as possible? Can we stop our retirement plan contributions, postpone purchases, or do other things to build up some cash fast?
Image Credit: Tony the Misfit
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2 Responses to “Reduce The Fear Of Layoff By Making A Layoff Plan”
This is a good post. You are absolutely right!
Thanks for sharing the information
It is very useful!
By Learn Forex on May 6, 2009