Canadian Personal Finance Blog

That was a comment I got from a former co-worker that I had a chance meeting with last night. Having worked in the world of High Tech for too long you learn how to deal with folks who make those kinds of comments to you, but it still unnerves you knowing how tenuous your career is sometimes.

For most of us (I won’t say all because there seems to be some folks who are unfazed by this kind of comment) after a moment like that we would then go home and wonder, “What would happen if I got laid off?”. Luckily for me I have my growing Financial Blogging business (I really must learn what the correct font is for sarcasm), but aside from that what would I do?

Are you prepared?

This is an area which you can ignore and hope you will be OK but it might be better to at least outline somewhere what exactly you would do. Here are some of the points that I have on my list (not all of them financial):

• Call a lawyer to look at any severance package I was given. This makes a big assumption that my company has not simply folded up the tents and disappeared leaving no forwarding address (and I have not been fired for just cause and thus given no severance either). You don’t have to do this, but it’s never a bad thing to get legal advice of what your options might be
• Go home and go straight to the Denial phase of coping. I find denial is a lot of fun because you delude yourself into believing you’ll be fine.
• Take a complete inventory of my spending habits. No money will be coming in for a while, better figure out how to make it go out of the house at a much slower velocity.
• Make a budget from the assets I currently have and whatever incomes I might receive while I am out of work. If you are going to get a severance package, how long can you stretch it? If you are receiving Unemployment Benefits, how long will they last?
  • Having a budget already would make this one a lot easier to do.
•  Find my resume that I have kept up to date, and activate my contacts network and get the darn resume out there, and start looking for a job.
  • The corollary here is that your resume must be up to date all of the time (within a month or so). If your resume is over a year old, re-write it right now.

  Remember the sooner you get back to work, the sooner your life gets back to normal, etc., your goal is to get back to work ASAP.

• Figure out if my skill set might need to be polished up and see if there are training programs (low cost ones) that I might avail myself of.
  • Ideally you should be doing that at work right now. If your company offers training that will help expand your skill set, why aren’t you using it?
• Drink a great deal for a day or so. Self pity should be embraced for a short period of time, but after that, time to look for a job.

Yes me wallowing in a little bit of self-doubt here, but sometimes paranoia is your friend in these situations as well.

Did I miss anything?