Canadian Personal Finance Blog

The Finality of Severance

As of Tuesday the 30th I am officially no longer an employee of Nortel, but this past Friday the entire “severance machine” started grinding and the portion of my severance that I have elected to take this year, appeared in my bank account, and my first reaction was that of shock seeing that value in my bank account. 

After panicking that my instructions had not been followed for my severance (they had), I then calmed down and became my normal philosophical self and started hearing that old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?“. Twenty years of my life summed up in a bank entry (a 5 digit bank entry so I am not really complaining about the sum itself), it just seems so final.

Over my twenty years at Nortel, I have met and worked with some of the most amazing people and seen technological changes that staggered me, when I think about how life was before these technological “miracles”. I have had four children, and many wonderful things have happened, and many sacrifices were made for work, and at the end of it, I have one line in a Bank Statement to sum it up?

It could be worse, I know people that don’t even have the one line in their bank account. 

To The Folks I leave Behind

My other regret is I never got to send a “So Long and thanks for all the fish” e-mail or posting inside of Nortel, so for those who are still on the inside at Nortel, please treat this posting as my “You’ve been a great group of folks to work with” posting. I learned a lot in Nortel, let’s see if it is true that Nortel/BNR was a “great place to have worked at”.

Now the Hard Part

Need to get that new job (some prospects), soon and then be able to apply this package to some serious financial planning and debt reduction schemes. The job of finding a job these days is not a simple one, and I have learned a lot, but still have more to learn.

I leave you with this one factoid I have learned, 80% of jobs are found through networking, so simply applying to a plethora of jobs is not enough, you must go out and market yourself and “press the flesh” like a politician to find your next job.

Yup, time for another election folks, whoopee!! Who will come out on top? I don’t care, whoever it is, get the heck out of my bedroom and my wallet (to paraphrase Pierre Elliot Trudeau). 

Stephen Harper dropped by the Governor Generals place at 9:00 AM on a Sunday (wonder if she was dressed by then) and the government was dissolved. All this and the poor woman couldn’t go to the Paralympics Games opening ceremonies.

My wife and I will be playing the fun game: “How many political party signs can we get on our front lawn”, you should try as well, if someone sends me a picture of their lawn with GENUINE political signs on their front lawn, I will post them (I promise).

The questions I will be asking anybody who shows up on my doorstep from any party:

1. What is your party’s status on income sharing between spouses who are  younger than 55 years old and don’t have pension income?
2. How will your party help students attempting to not carry a crushing debt load when they graduate from University?
3. Will your party bring in stronger controls of Pay Day Loan companies?
4. If I vote for your party, will you help me find a job in the government? Really, come on, give an unemployed guy a break!
5. What is your party’s stance on the Federal Government standardizing their databases so that Canadians are not “tracked” in more than 10 different Federal government databases?

Any other questions folks might want to ask, add them in, I’ll post the best of on Friday.

Google Turns 10!

Yup 10 years ago on Sunday Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and now it is worth over $150 Billion dollars. How? They went where the money is, advertising, and they also innovated when others were attempting to only survive, way to go guys, now can you please increase my Adsense payments?

Another company that might have been good to buy, even after the RIDICULOUS IPO price (who knew?).

Severance and Redundancy

Those of you who are regular readers know that I work in the High Tech industry at a large telecommunications company, that was until Wednesday July 30th, when my position there was declared redundant and I was given a severance package.

This is not a parable or a story on my part, this has actually transpired, I am now gainfully looking for employment after 20 years of work at the same company. As I mentioned yesterday, this is most likely going to temper and change the tone of this blog, to be less “savings” oriented and more “survival” oriented. As most can tell, I write about things in the financial area that matter to me and to my family, and this kind of upheaval and change is bound to cause a thematic change in my writings (at least for now).

I have spoken to many people about this already (including most of my loved ones, hopefully no more are learning from odd places, as my Brother learned from a comment I left on an industry web site), and I have already “activated” my network of contacts for job searching.

I am open to requests for articles or requests from my readers about this event in my life, however I must say that legally I am not allowed to say how much my severance package is, and there are some other points I am not supposed to discuss, that I can’t remember. I will say that it is very generous (but it should be given I have been there for 20 years, and am now 47 years old), and I have been given access to a firm that will help me get ready to find a new job.

I am also eager to hear of stories of redemption and success in this area, as well as helpful tips on how to survive and better still overcome this tumultuous event in any worker’s career.

Excellent Layoff and Severance Articles So Far

• Gail Vaz-Oxlade has written this excellent article: 9 Things to Do If You Lose Your Job . Good reading.
• Canadian Capitalist made a post a while ago (and he and I have spoken in E-mail about this situation already): Surviving a Layoff .
• Uncommon Sense also lays out some important points in: 14 Tips For Living Through a Layoff

Those were the happy thoughts told to me one day at Church. The minister giving the sermon, worked with homeless people and such, so his view might be a little stunted, but that was the point of his statement, “We are all three pay cheques away from living on the streets”.

Is this really the case? Well that all depends on the debt burden that you carry.  If you suddenly had no means of income, but you didn’t have any debt to pay off, you’d simply need money to pay your day to day expenses that may be manageable or controllable. If you are carrying a large credit card debt load, and have minimum payments to make, then your issues are far more complicated and you must find ways to pay spiraling debt as well.

Am I three pay cheques from living on the streets? I don’t think so, I have a fair amount in RRSPs and such, and I also have some savings, but I also have a debt load that does worry me, and given the renewed vigour I have been given from reading good books like: Smoke and Mirrors , I think that is my goal is to kill my debt load while I can.

BCE & Nortel Both Cutting

The news is full of job cuts at BCE as they head towards privatization, and there was the renewed cutting announced by Nortel at the start of the year as well, which may mean some dark times ahead in the High Tech World as well. Hope those folks aren’t three pay cheques away from the streets.

Telus and BCE can both enjoy a new class action suit against them as well for their new texting surcharges. That won’t help BCE, that’s for sure.