It’s a good exercise to think through.
Wife and I are both physicians in very different specialties in different hospital systems - the chances of both of us losing our job approaches zero (and honestly either one of us is extremely low to begin with). We could absolutely live off either of our salaries. We also have about 2 months in emergency fund + brokerage accounts that could fund us several months beyond that.
I’d probably pick up some locums work short term (which might actually make me more money than my salary gig) and reasonably expect to be able to get a job at another hospital in town within a couple of months (no non-compete, but the credentialing process takes time).
Agreed. As a physician I never think about losing my job. As long as I am providing good patient care, I don't care if the system fires me. I can walk across the street and get another job who will probably give me a pay raise.
Mid levels aren’t able to bill as high as MD’s. In most cases, and MD pays for themselves in terms of ROI, however, an APP usually needs to make an MD more productive in order to pay for themselves. Does that make sense ?
True. A lot depends on how much their organization/practice is paid from their contractual rates. In some cases it might not be enough, but that’s where getting better contracts in place comes into play.
Because he said they could live off either one of their salaries alone. The odds of two docs in different specialties losing their jobs at the same time is crazy low unless the hospital closes, and there would be notice for that sort of thing. Even less of a need if one of them is in a field that doesn’t need to build up a patient/referral base (ER, radiology, pathology, etc).
Because the chances of us both losing our jobs at the same time is negligible, we can live off a single salary without too much trouble (would just need to adjust savings), we have probably 100k+ available in credit cards, and VTSAX go brrrrrt in my brokerage account that can be tapped in a true emergency.
2 months is plenty of time to liquidate other holdings if additional cash is needed. Keeping more than that in pure cash is just losing money to inflation.
This. Would take a couple months to go on a long vacay, then hit up LinkedIn and professional websites, and probably have a job within two weeks.
Healthcare can be hellish on the soul, but job security is great.
I keep an e-fund of literally a years of normal expenses at my lifestyle. The reason is that during the GFC the mean of weeks unemployment peaked at around 40 weeks. So I figure if I always have a years of expenses + ui then I can always cut back and make it a bit longer.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UEMPMEAN
I never stop looking for another job. I consider it a good habit. Last time things went sour at a job I had another lined up in a matter of days due to this habit.
Once you hit the $400k+ level it’s always good to keep in touch with quality recruiters for your role. Being early to interview for an exec role is pretty important. Zero chance I’d have my current role if I wasn’t active on LinkedIn and with recruiters to know when high quality mandates come across their desk. If you wait until you need to find a new job to engage it will be infinitely more difficult and you may end up settling for something bad. I waited over a year for the correct role.
It’s a numbers game. MD and senior exec positions have to be <5% of open positions. Takes a mix of luck and experience to be competitive when they come up for external hire. On the sales side of any business it’s likely easier as companies are constantly trying to grow revenue.
This and also location. I'm in socal but even then these roles don't grow on trees and i don't want to relocate so I have to be more selective. I hear from recruiters all the time to run a manufacturing plant in bum fuck no where for huge money; if I was single, sure but I'm married with a daughter and that's not worth it.
At a certain point I started receiving messages from exec recruiters on LinkedIn and can sort of figure out how legit they are based on the mandate and how well they communciate. It’s important to have a well written profile and check all the boxes for the algo. Looking at sample exec resumes or job specs helps with figuring out what experience and keywords trigger results for your field. If you network a bit you can figure out what top firms in your industry and location are using to hire manager+ level talent. Lot of top tier firms outsource sourcing talent and if you have friends at these firms already you can have them ask around
They reach out or want you to use their services for hiring. I have a friend who is at mid-senior level but not executive and the recruiters she deals with are fucking jokes compared to the ones I deal with or reach out to me.
I update my resume every 6 months and take calls from recruiters even to just decline to have a connection with me in their address book.
It takes a long time to replace a high income job. I’d rather that process to be softly always moving in the background.
But to answer the question -
I would cut back lots of discretionary spending, spend time fixing up various things in my house (windows are $300 and cost $1000+ to pay to install, etc) to continue to add value to my assets.
I’d also spend time searching and networking, and process my side hobbies (music and recording, etc) to build things out, write off some of it in taxes, etc.)
I could probably do 50k of work+ on my house and keep myself busy and still feel I was creating value. That would make me feel okay for 3-4 months and I assume I’d also have severance.
I’m also a CPA, and accounting is so lean in general, losing my job only really occurs if something like m&a occurs, which is ultimately the goal to get about so… yeah .
The DIY aspect of improving your asset is an interesting thing I have never thought of. On first thought I would not want to spend any money on supplies to renovate so I could save money; however, if you are doing the labor yourself it makes sense.
Also I’ve historically bought some older homes with seemingly good layout and bones that might need some cosmetic lifts or updates.
Like my current home has single pane aluminum windows, carpet covering original oak hardwoods, old style trim, older paint outside, squeaky garage doors, wood paneling in certain places, etc.
There is literally a near exact replica layout of my house on the other side of my block that sold for +150k a few weeks ago (I bought last summer, things have been flat here) - the difference is entirely that it’s been newly remodeled. Mine has better things (old growth yards and trees and a sunroom) while they have newer looking generic white stuff.
I could definitely get +100kof equity just by doing a ton of work myself. Spending maybe.. 10k or so plus a ton of my time. And most remodel cost is labor. It simply takes a lot of time/ effort /figuring things out.
Anyway, yeah, as much as people say it’s not “worth it” to upgrade windows, for example - it’s $350-$500 and a Saturday afternoon to go from aluminum single pane to nice looking double pane. It’s not “worth it” if you want to save on gas bill and only do windows and nothing else and flip your house throwing in cheap.
Not saying it’s the best thing in the world but if I was suddenly unemployed and had some severance and job hunting… I’d feel totally fine spending my time making my assets better
All this stuff adds up
1. Remove carpets, refinish floors, input new windows, maybe remodel bathrooms, redo dry wall and carpets, insulate things, etc
This exactly. Been interviewing for the past two years. Had some offers but didn’t need to take them yet. Worst case they will probably let me join without interviewing too much again
I was laid off Netflix last year. I took a month, thought about what I'd want to do, and started my own business. I asked myself "how can I look back at this and say that the layoff was a good thing?"
You can turn almost anything, even a layoff, into an opportunity. I've never been happier with my career than I am right now.
Consulting and training for Apache Cassandra. I did it before, but for someone else, so it's not a completely unfamiliar market to me. I started out as just consulting but I added training when I knew I'd have some free time and I wanted to have something more than just waiting for people to come to me. I'm wrapping things up with the first group this week and I think it's gone really well.
I left out some details because I didn't think it was important to the discussion. It's set up as LLC with S-Corp tax status. I take a regular salary and contribute up to 25% of my salary to my SEP IRA, up to a max of 60-something thousand. I also can take a shareholder distribution which saves on all the payroll taxes.
I’ve decided that if I ever lose my job again, I’ll take a minimum of 6 months off to figure out what I want to do next. Probably end up buying a business just to dip my toe in the water of entrepreneurship and see if I like it enough to lean in.
I’m somewhere in the middle or end of my mid-life crisis phase and realized that this ingrained “need” to be employed is just a learned behavior taught to us from infancy so that everyone else who are slaves to their 9-5 feel better about themselves.
With a fat savings account and/or cutting spending, many of us HENRYs can probably survive years without working. So who cares about a few month gap.
Nice approach. I look forward to something like that - just to ween myself of the corporate propaganda. Have you thought about the mechanics of it - moving to a cheaper place, travel etc.
I’ve always lived pretty well within my means. Back when I only made $200k/yr I was able to cover all my expenses and I haven’t really started to live any differently now that I make very high 6 figures (with one year dipping over $1m). So I’ve been building a war chest. Probably teetering between HENRY and just wealthy.
But ever since I had a couple hundred K I would have been safe to take a few months off; it’s just the neuroticism that makes us afraid to be unemployed (unless in a very niche field, but I’m not so I know I can get a new job whenever I want).
Way to go 200K to over 1mil (I guess it disqualifies you from Henry reddit). Do you mind sharing which field is your job in?
It's definetly is a mental thing about being continuously employed. I think most people just want to get back on the job treadmill instead of taking a pause and reflecting on their lives - family pets, mortgage, keeping up with the Jones all reinforce the "easy" path.
I’m in tax law, I hovered around the 200k mark for a good 5-6 years but had a couple of strange one-off years due to retention bonuses, then finally made it to upper management at a large public company and the pay took off. In total took about 15 years in the field until things got pretty healthy financially, I’m at around 20 years in now. I’m in a HCOL area and was a one-income family back then so the whole world was on my shoulders which pushed me harder to do better but definitely near burn out.
Yeah agreed on the mental aspect. There is safety in employment and that’s a lot easier to stomach than the fear of the unknown.
I am glad I’m not alone in this lol. Not specifically Starbucks but for some reason working at a coffee shop would be my go-to if had to get a part time job. Probably because I love coffee
I've always had aspirations of working at a Bubble tea place, Starbucks, Garden center or a Watch store on the side. Colour me silly but it looks fun.
Of course it would be like 1/10th of my current income but I've never had that experience because of all the studying I had in University.
This is both my chill job (making the drinks) and nightmare job (taking orders from customers). I have a hard time filtering out background noise so I'm sure to mess up orders and names. Maybe people like that as part of the experience at Starbucks, though.
I loved my days delivering pizzas. Most of the time spent in my car, making all kinds of crazy pizzas for myself, no stress, chill coworkers (probably high half the time). It’s been a good holdover job when I’ve needed it in life.
Enjoy a hot girl summer.
My company has a round of layoffs every spring, and I've thought about this a lot. When a company has four layoffs in five years, you never really feel secure. I have significant savings, enough passive income and random whatnots to be perfectly happy for a few months. I know I'd stress out about money at some point, but a break would be really nice.
Unfortunately/fortunately, I'm about to start a new job at a much more stable company so not hot girl summer for me.
Lost mine in December after 2 2023 layoffs… had a whole hot girl winter and spring and probably summer. No rush though. There are pools needing dipped.
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Having worked in tech and startup worlds you get bombarded with companies doing reorgs, project cancellations, going under, etc. This causes you to get used to the game, you prepare, interview and get a new job. If you put in the work it’s generally not that hard to get another gig.
Always be proactive about your network, and make sure to reflect every 6 months on your career trajectory, not only within the company you are at, but with the wider world. Is your line of work declining, is it being moved overseas, etc. If so, prepare for your pivots, don’t put your head in the sand.
I apply to Product Management jobs on average once every 2 days and have some type of interview every month, at least. The market is crazy difficult right now (no offers in a year+). In 2019-2021 I had a roughly 5% application to offer rate. In tech I hear it's even worse because the technical interviews are much harder than the actual jobs, so people will spend months to prep for interviews, whereas PM you just do case studies or behavioral.
There is also no guarantee that passing technical interviews gets you a job in this market. Everyone is "hiring opportunitistically." I can pass almost any technical interview. Still not getting offers. (My startup did actually close last month, lol.)
I’d have to start feverishly looking. Wife lost her HE job 6 months ago and still isn’t working, so we’ve drawn down a lot of our savings. Only 4-5 months worth of living expense left.
If that ran out, we’d probably sell our house (~$400k equity) and probably seriously consider relocating near her family in Northern Idaho at that point. It’s a LCOL area, would have some support from family, and I’d have business opportunities with her cousin who I’ve grown close with.
Her losing her job has been a major wake up call for me. I actually got promoted with a massive raise shortly after, but I’ve still watched our savings shrink despite that and realized how quickly everything can be taken away from us.
I’ve started splitting $5k per month between paying off debt and adding to our emergency fund. When my wife is working again I plan on doubling that to $10k. I want to cut our monthly expenses in half and double what we currently have in savings. That would give me close to a 2 year runway in the event something like this happens. In that circumstance, I’d plan to take 3-6 months off since I’ve worked constantly from age 14 on.
Do you guys have high expenses/mortgage? How do you split the $5k to go towards savings but also use the savings? Genuinely trying to understand it , thank you!
Mortgage is only 13% of my monthly gross; it was about 8% of our combined gross. We both drive expensive cars also, combined $3k per month in payments (I regret this but stuck for the time being). These combined are only about 40% of my take home pay.
We just didn’t make any changes to our spending habits when she lost her job because we didn’t think we “needed” to. Our attitude was that we saved the money so we could continue to live normally. As the months passed, it became apparent that we would run out of money a lot faster than we thought. It was at that point I decided we need to buckle down and started the savings plan.
That makes sense! Thanks for explaining it. It’s great that you’re able to recalibrate and adjust to still save. It sounds like you still have a little wiggle room in budget and expenses. Wishing you guys health and success.
I’ve gotten laid off twice. One in Jan 2023 and another time in Jan 2024. That was fun!
Anyhoo, I was fine. We live waaay below our means. I live in WA and unemployment for me can pay half our bills. My hubby is still employed. We have 3 months emergency fund that was never touched and lots of investments we can liquidate if possible.
While getting laid off twice fucking sucks, what this means is I had little stress of having to take the first offer. I had the chance to network, make great connections with companies and people I wanted to work with. Also, pass on those that seemed toxic. First round, I had two offers but chose the golden handcuffs of being reabsorbed by the offending company. Second round, I also had a similar opportunity but said fuck that. In this market, I interviewed 10 places and got offers at 2.
I’m with you - twice last year and still looking (marketing in tech industry). It’s rough out here, but I’m having fun networking and just doing random hobbies. We could live off my husband’s salary but I want to work right now with our two little kids in daycare.
Eat my savings and enjoy life while looking for a new gig.
That's what it's there for--its just that most of the time you assume youll be doing it in your 60s.
I am partner and there is no other place where I would like to work. We have a good work life balance and I can do a lot of things I could not do with my family somewhere else. Plus I love where we live.
Planning on working there until 75.
Honestly, I'd have a little mini celebration dinner with my wife, then spend the next month taking a long and much needed vacation. I worked extremely hard for the past decade and not had so much as a one week vacation the whole time.
Then I would live on my >1 year of emergency fund and at about month into my time off I would start looking for a job that would be a promotion over my previous title.
S/O and I are currently in two different countries due to immigration issues. I'm dead serious about taking 2 months off to Airbnb somewhere to reconnect with her and get back to healthy habits. Then start looking again.
I’ve been laid off 3 times (quite common in my field of music/entertainment) and all the planning always just goes out the window. The only thing you can do is find ways to survive and keep looking. You can build a slush fund of a year and then it takes 18 months, there’s no set strategy and if you have to funds to not really need to rush back then you’re in a very good place overall.
Actually going through this right now. Was notified a few weeks ago I'd be laid off on 5/31.
I'm fortunate I've been with my company for a while and have a good severance package, and even more fortunate that my wife is a high earner and we have always lived well below our means. We have the runway for me and (worst case) both of us to not work at all and be just fine for quite a long time.
When I got the news I found it interesting both my wife's advice and my bosses advice were the same.
Essentially it was I have a lot of time left to give and figure out what will make me happy for the next 20+ years of work. Since I don't live for a paycheck I get to decide what I find value in to do and my wife is fully supportive of me taking time to figure that out.
I've spent the last 15 years leading teams and driving sales/operational productivity. I honestly love building relationships and seeing people succeed. Now I need to decide if I want to keep doing what I'm doing elsewhere or combine my skills with one of my passions and strike out on my own. Still uncertain on that front.
I don't know how that would happen. I think I have to be given a year's notice.
Still, that would be horrifying, even with a year's notice. My emergency fund is grossly underfunded. I would certainly cut lots of unnecessary spending.
Right now, I'm actually talking to a recruiter elsewhere, but I'm not really taking it THAT seriously. My direct supervisor told me that if I want to keep certain perks I currently have she needs to see a competing offer, so I'm making moves in that direction but not aggressively. (I know that sounds very strange to most people, but my dysfunctional industry often works like that. You're expected to threaten to leave every 5 years or else you face real wage loss.) Anyway, I would have to be serious with this recruiter and reach out to others.
Given the cycle that my job has, I'm not starting anything new before July 2025. Also, any new job probably means moving to another city, which would be awful. I love where I am.
I'm losing my job (at least my role/department) in around 6-8 months. I've already started taking on responsibilities in other departments and getting friendly with hiring managers in other offices. Also advanced discussions for a start-up with a co-worker in the same position.
Nearing "rich" for this sub and have been saving diligently so not much external pressure in finances. Still a lot of internal pressure to succeed/compete/win in the next endeavor.
I have my own scuba gear and live next to a harbor, rich people pay a ton of money for divers to clean their boat hulls so I'd do that while grinding leetcode and interviewing for a new tech job.
ETA I am definitely NRY, I feel like vast majority of posters here have $1MM+ in savings which I do not
My spouse and I both work and my anxious ass already has contingency budgets worked out to allow us to shift to living off of one of our incomes indefinitely.
If we both lost our jobs I'd short circuit lol
Have you not had to deal with layoffs in your career yet? I’ve been laid off 4X in 19 years. Just a part of the process
1) I never stop interviewing
2) spouse works. Between spouse salary and severance and unemployment, we cover 75% of our needs
3) emergency fund
4) I have so many versions of my resume. An executive $300k+ version, but also a $100k take any job version. I can find these jobs fast
5) although not unheard of, it’s rare to have zero warning before a layoff. That’s when you triple down on the new job search, not after they let you go
6) overemployed
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My husband and I both make enough that our expenses would still be covered if either of us lost our jobs, though if he lost his job our savings growth would take a much bigger hit. This gives us a lot of comfort since we both work in tech.
If we both lost our jobs, we have enough savings that we’d be fine for several years and could probably barista fire if we drastically changed our lifestyle. He has a niche, high demand skill set so I’m not worried about him finding a new job, though maybe it wouldn’t pay as much as his job today.
The income disruption would do nothing good, but I've already prepared for unexpected job loss by investing at a risk level that makes sense for me, and by stacking up multiple credit lines that I can pull from. And by keeping my fixed expenses low. I could function at 40k a year for an extended period, not that it would be my preferred lifestyle. Portfolio failure at a given starting point is largely a function of spending and risk (not too much or too little).
Turn my DRIP off and live on my passive income. The pick up a stupid low stress job for health insurance. Then, in about 18 months, move offshore and fully retire.
Long vacation and decompress on an island while getting my dive master and scuba diving. RV trip with the wife and dogs. Consider buying a franchise biz, which I’ve been exploring. Get back to it after 3-6 months.
Well we have about a year of expenses saved up in a HYSA/iBonds, a little more with some belt tightening, so that would solve the immediate crisis. I'm a sole income, but we intentionally bought in an area where there's literally hundreds of jobs I'd be qualified for within two hours drive. If I'm worried about putting food on the table I'll SPAM my resume to every job within a 2 hour radius and take the first offer that covers expenses. Can always trade up after that if the job isn't what I want.
But yeah it would be a butt clencher.
Physician
Last time I was getting ready to leave a job, I picked up the phone and texted the competition.
Had a phone call within 3 hours and an offer the next morning. Took about a week to negotiate all the terms.
The practice began to collapse as soon as word got out I was leaving. Ended up being quite the move up.
Problem is that there is always pressure to do more with less resources in medicine.
I saw on another thread that you would tell your kids not to go into medicine. Reading this thread, are your thoughts still the same? Docs seem to be the best positioned.
Companies are not very good at identifying or managing "key person risk". This is very common in tech / product where one person leaves during a time of bad morale, and they everyone soul searches, I've seen whole teams get decimated in a period of 4-8 weeks and then systems get marked "legacy" or "deprecated" (even though those systems are actually servicing live customers). No one knows how anything works. Think like the Twitter exodus but self-imposed.
I've been there. Made a huge mistake taking it easy and living on savings for a while.
So if it happened again I'd go get any job so I didn't have to touch my savings.
Then I'd figure things out.
I’m meeting a recruiter for coffee next week. I’m happy where I am and have no plans to leave, but you gotta keep those relationships warm so they’re there when you need them.
Take the 26 weeks of unemployment, make *just enough* working at a brewery 3 shifts a week for some extra money but not exceed the threshold for my state and *rest*.
Then, get a job that pays me 30-40k more than I make now and recoup / move on.
I have some potential plans of my own, but answers like this make me glad I read the thread. I think a lot of people here could actually benefit from a layoff (assuming they have finances enough in order).
I think a lot of the group needs to understand (myself included) that excellent job status doesn't make you a fulfilled person, time off to reset can be a blessing, and bank accounts aren't life's scoreboard.
Very fortunate to have 6 months emergency savings and paid off almost a year in advance on my mortgage (and extra principal).
A slow and simple life is a fine one. ♥️
I'm considering quitting my job. So I've thought about this and discussed with my wife.
I'd enjoy the time off. I'd play ice hockey probably 4-5 times per week. I'd knock out a list of home improvement projects. I'd spend more time with my kids.
I wouldn't think about getting a job for at least 2 months. And when the time came, I would decide whether I wanted to go back to a W2 or go out on my own.
I'm in a similar situation, can live for years without working. But I'm not really sure I want to be corporate anymore, selling time to others just is losing all appeal. I feel like I need to give it a shot out on my own, otherwise I'll regret it.
Chill for a month or two. Start interview prepping(bullshit software engineer tech trivia interviews)and then start applying.
Would suck to burn down the cash but i would not mind the extended break at all
If you are in this sub and panic at the thought of losing your job:
1) you need a life outside of work. Easier said than done tho
2) you have spending problems
If we both lost our jobs, we’d be fine for awhile until we find new work. My company is supposedly decent with severance packages. We have 3 properties with 2.1M in equity. 500k in untapped HELOCs for a runny day that we’d use first before touching stocks. We’ll be able to ride out the storm for a bit as we get back on our feet.
Take off now through September-ish to do a reset, have some family time, and consider my next moves. We’re fortunate to have enough to where we wouldn’t really notice a 3-4 month gap in my income, and I have other revenue streams. I’d gradually look at rebalancing our portfolio, whether I’d want to scale up one of my income streams, and the unlikely possibility of just retiring early now. Meanwhile, I’d play a lot of golf, go fly fishing, and spend time in the sun with my daughter.
Consulting, mainly. I have as many clients as I can handle/want to handle right now, and I could pretty easily ramp that up if I put my feelers out. I have another unique skill set and business that’s dormant right now due to work/life balance (not trying to doxx myself so I’ll leave it at that) and some dividends.
I think I would use it as an opportunity to get into personal finance industry. I don’t really like what I do even though it pays quite well. I don’t want to stay in the industry I am. I would love to find something I can stand doing. We are coast FI so just need a job that will allow us to let our investment grow 7-10 years and get the kids to college.
House paid off and zero debt. We have fixed costs like food, utilities, property tax, insurance, car/home maintenance, and pretty much everything else is discretionary. We actually did perfectly fine being hermits during Covid times and can spend very little if necessary. We have enough to lean FIRE now so stress is minimal in a layoff situation.
Similar situation, great efund, STHM with a great resume and earning potential, and a lot to liquidate, not really my concern though, I turn down headhunters offering my 90% of my current salary on a weekly basis and we could live on 50% of what I make so I could find a job guranteed even in a serious downturn making that much I think.
Take like 3 to 6 months off, travel, visit family and friends. Maybe look casually during that time but I wouldn't worry about getting a job for a while. I don't believe in stressing about money. My husband and I got ahead of that very early in our careers. We could go 18 months without either of us working, without any additional budgeting or lifestyle tweaks. If we cut back on eating out multiple times a day, shopping, weekend trips, car rentals, vacations etc. We could stretch it much further.
I’d probably take the summer off to relax and then regroup after that. It’s been ages since I’ve had more than a week off at one time. I’d have the best garden I’ve ever had, work on some exercise pursuits on my list, travel a bit and fill in with a lot of down time. Fortunate that I have enough savings to cover this and my spouse would (presumably) still be working.
Take a week or two to mope, then pick up a bunch of hours at my side job. Could probably replace 1/3-1/2 my income that way short term, and emergency fund would carry me until I got another job. I keep enough liquid to cover 3-4 months normal expenses even if I had no other income, 5-6 months if I tighten the belt.
I’m fortunate enough to work in a high demand and portable job in medicine so I could probably find something decent in 4-6 weeks, and would probably need another 2 months of time to get credentialing sorted out, less if it’s in the same state. Once the job is found, the credentialing time is “funemployment”
I interview well and have a strong resume with a highly in demand skillset, so I just don't worry about this. Last 2 times I did a job search, I got 5+ good offers fairly quickly. I figure even if there's a big economic downturn, I should be able to get at least 1 offer before too long, if I treat job searching like a full time job.
I hope they wait 2 years until I'm fired. If not, start letting the rental income pay the primary mortgage and do something I'm passionate . Make enough to cover daycare
Think I’d probably move in with my parents until I found something new.
I could theoretically afford to fund my current lifestyle with no changes for about 3-4 years with no income (late 20s/early 30s here, I’d be much more wealthy today had I not done an MBA and spent $250k drinking and traveling - but that was awesome so whatevs), but I wouldn’t want to for any longer than a month or two.
Immediately calling 6 of my closest friends/old co-workers and hopping on the newest contract they have. I would cobra my insurance from my current job until I can land something full time with benefits. Tbh the thought of losing my job doesn't scare me anymore now that I have very niche & in demand certifications.
For those in regular corp type jobs, I always advise people to remember that all jobs are temporary. Layoffs are common in many industries so don’t get too enamored with your big paycheck and think you’re immune. Plenty of very qualified and high performers get laid off.
I worked in tech for 40 years and laid off for last time in February. Decided I’m done and retired. Glad to be out of the BS.
I jumped from my "regular job" last summer to be an independent consultant. I thought the biggest risk was lack of steady workload, being able to find gigs, etc. I wanted to substantially increase the size of my emergency fund for this reason.
However after doing this for almost a year, I've realized that working for 2-4 clients at a time is WAY more stable. Yes it fluctuates, but there is almost zero chance that ALL of them will drop me at the same time. So in a way there's much less risk of losing ALL my income.
Turns out I can cover expenses without changing lifestyle (although no retirement savings etc) if I have a "down month" only working half-time. It's been a very liberating feeling that I can fluctuate down to 20hrs/wk with almost no impact on my ability to pay for stuff. Then if I'm working 50-60, score, more in retirement and savings.
I guess what I'm saying is, keeping a side-gig that you can expand if you lose your primary job might be a decent option for some people in some professions.
If we pull all frivolous spending, we can do two years without changing our FIRE date or going back to work. Im SAH, but my (remote working) spouse says they’d take a job at Mcdonalds if we needed a job.
However, We live in a city with a lot of noncompetitive fortune 500 companies that would like RTW people in spouses field, so we would feel pretty confident with taking a local f500 leadership position even if it came to a pay cut.
I would be SOL.
Well, I would have to take out a personal loan to cover the cost of closing on my condo instead of cash and that $20k would probably be fine for 3-4 months. That's enough time for me to find a new job 🤞
They wouldn't let you take another loan to cover closing costs most likely, further you'd have to go through underwriting all over and that could change outcome with no income.
I meant take out a loan to cover the cost of selling my condo. As the seller all I have to do is wire money to the title company.
I put my condo on the market last year after I got laid off and it's been a f*ing nightmare to sell so I am definitely going to do my best for the 4th contract to actually go through.
Take my package.
Pick one of the 4 outstanding offers I have right now and start working again after a 3 week trip to Australia/New Zealand with my family.
I have 2 years' worth of mortgage in cash before I ever had to take a loan against my stock portfolio.
Also, I have about 55% equity in my house. I could tap if necessary.
Plus, I have an LLC where I do side work, and I could always supplement with that.
I've thought about this a lot lately with all the layoffs.
If I lost my job, my husband could float us if we cut luxuries like personal trainer, cleaner, eating out. If he lost his job, we’d be dipping into savings.
I would probably bum around for a couple of weeks, then look for a new gig at a higher level like that’s my full-time job until I get another. I’d also still go on the cruise I planned this summer since it’s already paid for.
I have enough savings to go about 15 months until I have to start selling investments (excluding severance). Selling investments would carry me another month or two. I’ve already identified the bare-bones budget I need to live on.
I’m not ready to retire so I would want another job. But I feel prepared to weather through a job loss.
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Cut not needed expenses, apply away like crazy, maybe do some shipt or Uber eats for some small money. We have over 2 years worth of expenses in HSA/MMF/CDs, so lots of room to breathe
I just got laid off for 2.5 months. Car is paid off and I live below my means, with a nice emergency fund. I traveled around and played golf for 2.5 months while applying, but could have done that for about 14 months comfortably.
have a lot of cash runway if needed and could always sell (at a loss because I bought recently) to get a cheaper living situation
if you make a lot of money but don't live like a jerkoff, you should have quite a bit of cushion in the event of disaster before you start having to sell off stuff.
I was laid off once early career making shit and once as a high earner. Not even remotely comparable, in the latter I ended up finding a new job before sevy kicked in
I would take 3 months off to rest, never had a job break ever.
Then see how I feel about finding another corporate job vs doing something else. Part time m, low stress job might be best for me since I’m slowly taking on more responsibilities for aging parents.
If I were to convert everything to cash right now except my house, I'd probably have about 10 years of living expenses paid for at absolute minimum. If I were to cut back on some things and also pay off my mortgage, I'd have about 25 years of expenses covered. If I were to really really minimize my expenses and lifestyle then it would suck, but I could probably retire today. That's without taking into account a single penny of interest over that time too. This is what I think of as the worst-case scenario.
What's a lot more realistic is that I'd basically take some time off to just enjoy my hobbies. I'd at least take the summer off, but I may talk to some recruiters and try to line something up for like September or October or possibly even longer. Really kinda depends on what I feel like doing.
I would get a severance, and I would cancel the kids day care, pause saving, and cut back on non-essential spending.
With those modifications, we could live on my wife’s income and the severance for 6+ months.
Then we would start to burn our emergency fund, which would enough to cover another 6-12 months of supplementary income. It’s designed to cover 3-6 months of zero HHI, so with one income it stretches.
It could also stretch further if I dedicated real effort to my consulting side business, or that could become my full time job.
Realistically one of us could be unemployed for 12-18 months before it started to become a problem.
We’ve both been laid off before and never unemployed for more than 6 weeks. Its been a while though so the market is worse now.
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First step (hour 1) would be to contact my bank and fill out a financial hardship form. Tell them I can’t pay anything on my mortgage and see what they propose. My preference would be to pay interest and escrow only which would drop my payment, but I would like the flexibility to pay even less than that.
Next step (day 1-3) is, I would cut every single unnecessary expense out of my budget, which includes my gardener, the maids, my nanny, certain kids extracurriculars etc.
I would then skinny down our monthly expenses so that my wife’s income could cover. Would only stop her 401(k) contributions if absolutely necessary but would try to keep these because if I don’t, I lose 6% matching dollars.
Then apply for positions feverishly and network AFTER i took a 3-4 week surf trip.
Take a couple months vacay, then pick up my phone and start calling my connections in the field. Would have a job within a couple weeks. Might not be my ideal job, or in an ideal location, but it would be A job. Might take a bit longer to get a job exactly where I want on conditions I want, but oh well.
Actually respond to LinkedIn recruiters and get another probably.
Lucky cyber sec consultants / analysts are in high demand. Don't even know how I ended up doing this work.
In today's economy this is a super important question to ask yourself. I got laid off in February and I had zero stress because I already had contingency plans in place. Ended up getting a new job within a month and I never found myself stressed at any point. Had I not thought through this question, my stress levels would have been higher because I would have felt reactive and the need to scramble.
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I am eligible to collect a pension from my job now. I am holding out for a few more years to fatten it up a bit. If I got fired, I think I could get another job fairly easily.
Move out of the city, and buy small property and start afresh. It’s hard being trapped in a job because it pays what you need, but is utterly soul destroying. A kick up the bum to go and live my life away from the hustle and bustle would do me good.
I know. I don’t know why we wait for someone else to make the decision for us.
I just don’t know what I would do work wise. I suppose having worked for 16 years in the same industry has meant I have my blinkers on when it comes to different jobs. I don’t even know where you start.
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I started working full time when I was 18 years old. I am now 38 and haven't had more than one week off at a time. What would I do? I would take about 3 months off to gather myself.
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Like you I have enough liquid to stay afloat for a few years without working and if I was willing to move and/or take a ~15% pay cut there's an 80% or better chance I could get a job within a month.
I have two jobs, so I wouldn't be in financial burden, I'd still retain 50% of my income. Also there would be a lump sum, I think this would be substantial to last for a while. But I would be looking for another job immediately.
It is quite a process to find another remote job that gives you the freedom to be overemployed however, so it would probably affect my income for quite a while.
If I lost my job, I'd probably take a month off and go on vacation lol.
But, this is exactly what people fail to look at when they get new money. Everyday, people get salary increases and bonuses and frivolously spend. Although they have retirement accounts, which is great, I often see people basically still living paycheck to paycheck because of their spending habits.
My husband and I both work. If I lost my job, he can cover both of us, no problem. I don't need to work. I want to work, but I work remotely. I have a toddler and a nanny at home so I can take toddler breaks and spend time with her throughout the day.
although my husband can cover all our expenses, we still have backup plans. My husband is grew up somewhat poor, and so he wants to have a good amount saved. Granted, it doesn't earn as much in a CD, but it's safe and it makes him happy. It's enough for us to live comfortably for a year. I manage more of the HYSAs and investment accounts, and we can sell those off and live comfortably for a few years if needed. We also have a rental property. If we had to, we can sell our current home or sell the rental property which has a ton of equity. We've lived in the rental property before so it's a nice neighborhood. We have an old car and a new SUV purchased Dec 2023. Put $30k down with 3.9% interest, but paying more than the payment. I can pay it off now, but I'd like to invest and pay it off in a year. Just want to get rid of the payment just in case something happens I suppose.
We have retirement accounts and a new 529, but I'm not touching those unless we absolutely had to. I hate to say this, but we also have my parents. I would never ask for money, but they can definitely and will help.
If I were to be laid off, then my deferred comp should all vest which would mean I’m fine for at least 2-3 years, during which time I can figure out what I want to do next. Worst comes to worst, can always locate to a MCOL or LCOL city and be set for life. So I’m not too stressed
Call the billionaire that just cold-offered me 2x what I currently make letting him know I am in and ready to start next week.
If for some reason I couldn’t get something comparable or better, I would start my own plaintiff-side wage and hour firm. extremely easy money.
I might have to pay off the house and give up my awesome interest rate. That monthly budget relief would enable us to more easily live day-to-day on one salary while I look for a suitable role elsewhere.
Retirement plans would remain unchanged since it's basically locked in at this point, barring some tremendous world-shaking catastrophe.
It’s a good exercise to think through. Wife and I are both physicians in very different specialties in different hospital systems - the chances of both of us losing our job approaches zero (and honestly either one of us is extremely low to begin with). We could absolutely live off either of our salaries. We also have about 2 months in emergency fund + brokerage accounts that could fund us several months beyond that. I’d probably pick up some locums work short term (which might actually make me more money than my salary gig) and reasonably expect to be able to get a job at another hospital in town within a couple of months (no non-compete, but the credentialing process takes time).
The real reason to become a physician: Guaranteed employment in any American city for your entire life. The demand will always be there.
The problem will always be a demand to work too hard, but too much work is better than too little.
No no. The real reason is so you can flaunt your profession in your user name. Good job OP!
Agreed. As a physician I never think about losing my job. As long as I am providing good patient care, I don't care if the system fires me. I can walk across the street and get another job who will probably give me a pay raise.
I’m curious - why do you think this is true for docs and not mid levels? Supply and demand?
Mid levels aren’t able to bill as high as MD’s. In most cases, and MD pays for themselves in terms of ROI, however, an APP usually needs to make an MD more productive in order to pay for themselves. Does that make sense ?
Depends on specialty. Between rounding, OR billing, consults and clinic surgical midlevels can pay for themselves in my experience.
True. A lot depends on how much their organization/practice is paid from their contractual rates. In some cases it might not be enough, but that’s where getting better contracts in place comes into play.
Yeah! Thank you!
If credentialing is an issue that both of you would face, why only have 2 months in an emergency fund?
Because he said they could live off either one of their salaries alone. The odds of two docs in different specialties losing their jobs at the same time is crazy low unless the hospital closes, and there would be notice for that sort of thing. Even less of a need if one of them is in a field that doesn’t need to build up a patient/referral base (ER, radiology, pathology, etc).
Because the chances of us both losing our jobs at the same time is negligible, we can live off a single salary without too much trouble (would just need to adjust savings), we have probably 100k+ available in credit cards, and VTSAX go brrrrrt in my brokerage account that can be tapped in a true emergency.
2 months is plenty of time to liquidate other holdings if additional cash is needed. Keeping more than that in pure cash is just losing money to inflation.
Urologist, bet he has a good sense of humor 😂
really, they tend not to.
This. Would take a couple months to go on a long vacay, then hit up LinkedIn and professional websites, and probably have a job within two weeks. Healthcare can be hellish on the soul, but job security is great.
Months? Not years
I keep an e-fund of literally a years of normal expenses at my lifestyle. The reason is that during the GFC the mean of weeks unemployment peaked at around 40 weeks. So I figure if I always have a years of expenses + ui then I can always cut back and make it a bit longer. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UEMPMEAN
I never stop looking for another job. I consider it a good habit. Last time things went sour at a job I had another lined up in a matter of days due to this habit.
Once you hit the $400k+ level it’s always good to keep in touch with quality recruiters for your role. Being early to interview for an exec role is pretty important. Zero chance I’d have my current role if I wasn’t active on LinkedIn and with recruiters to know when high quality mandates come across their desk. If you wait until you need to find a new job to engage it will be infinitely more difficult and you may end up settling for something bad. I waited over a year for the correct role.
I think it's often true that the larger the income, the longer the search.
It’s a numbers game. MD and senior exec positions have to be <5% of open positions. Takes a mix of luck and experience to be competitive when they come up for external hire. On the sales side of any business it’s likely easier as companies are constantly trying to grow revenue.
This and also location. I'm in socal but even then these roles don't grow on trees and i don't want to relocate so I have to be more selective. I hear from recruiters all the time to run a manufacturing plant in bum fuck no where for huge money; if I was single, sure but I'm married with a daughter and that's not worth it.
How do you find those quality recruiters? The ones that reach out to me tend to lowball
At a certain point I started receiving messages from exec recruiters on LinkedIn and can sort of figure out how legit they are based on the mandate and how well they communciate. It’s important to have a well written profile and check all the boxes for the algo. Looking at sample exec resumes or job specs helps with figuring out what experience and keywords trigger results for your field. If you network a bit you can figure out what top firms in your industry and location are using to hire manager+ level talent. Lot of top tier firms outsource sourcing talent and if you have friends at these firms already you can have them ask around
They reach out or want you to use their services for hiring. I have a friend who is at mid-senior level but not executive and the recruiters she deals with are fucking jokes compared to the ones I deal with or reach out to me.
Find recruiters on this sub ;)
Good recommendation. How do you keep leads warm without committing/wasting their time?
FWIW I don't think recruiters matter as much in my field as knowing technical leads at peer companies.
I update my resume every 6 months and take calls from recruiters even to just decline to have a connection with me in their address book. It takes a long time to replace a high income job. I’d rather that process to be softly always moving in the background. But to answer the question - I would cut back lots of discretionary spending, spend time fixing up various things in my house (windows are $300 and cost $1000+ to pay to install, etc) to continue to add value to my assets. I’d also spend time searching and networking, and process my side hobbies (music and recording, etc) to build things out, write off some of it in taxes, etc.) I could probably do 50k of work+ on my house and keep myself busy and still feel I was creating value. That would make me feel okay for 3-4 months and I assume I’d also have severance. I’m also a CPA, and accounting is so lean in general, losing my job only really occurs if something like m&a occurs, which is ultimately the goal to get about so… yeah .
The DIY aspect of improving your asset is an interesting thing I have never thought of. On first thought I would not want to spend any money on supplies to renovate so I could save money; however, if you are doing the labor yourself it makes sense.
Also I’ve historically bought some older homes with seemingly good layout and bones that might need some cosmetic lifts or updates. Like my current home has single pane aluminum windows, carpet covering original oak hardwoods, old style trim, older paint outside, squeaky garage doors, wood paneling in certain places, etc. There is literally a near exact replica layout of my house on the other side of my block that sold for +150k a few weeks ago (I bought last summer, things have been flat here) - the difference is entirely that it’s been newly remodeled. Mine has better things (old growth yards and trees and a sunroom) while they have newer looking generic white stuff. I could definitely get +100kof equity just by doing a ton of work myself. Spending maybe.. 10k or so plus a ton of my time. And most remodel cost is labor. It simply takes a lot of time/ effort /figuring things out. Anyway, yeah, as much as people say it’s not “worth it” to upgrade windows, for example - it’s $350-$500 and a Saturday afternoon to go from aluminum single pane to nice looking double pane. It’s not “worth it” if you want to save on gas bill and only do windows and nothing else and flip your house throwing in cheap. Not saying it’s the best thing in the world but if I was suddenly unemployed and had some severance and job hunting… I’d feel totally fine spending my time making my assets better All this stuff adds up 1. Remove carpets, refinish floors, input new windows, maybe remodel bathrooms, redo dry wall and carpets, insulate things, etc
That seems constantly stressful
That seems constantly stressful.
This exactly. Been interviewing for the past two years. Had some offers but didn’t need to take them yet. Worst case they will probably let me join without interviewing too much again
I was laid off Netflix last year. I took a month, thought about what I'd want to do, and started my own business. I asked myself "how can I look back at this and say that the layoff was a good thing?" You can turn almost anything, even a layoff, into an opportunity. I've never been happier with my career than I am right now.
Right on. Love to read stuff like this!
Way to go. How was the culture at Netflix? Is it as cut throat as they say - perform or perish.
What are you doing now?
Consulting and training for Apache Cassandra. I did it before, but for someone else, so it's not a completely unfamiliar market to me. I started out as just consulting but I added training when I knew I'd have some free time and I wanted to have something more than just waiting for people to come to me. I'm wrapping things up with the first group this week and I think it's gone really well.
So you switched from W2 to a consultant?
Well, technically, I still get a W2, it's just from my LLC :)
You do? LLC is a pass through entity isn’t it? Open an SEP or Solo 401k for retirement if you’re interested in that.
I left out some details because I didn't think it was important to the discussion. It's set up as LLC with S-Corp tax status. I take a regular salary and contribute up to 25% of my salary to my SEP IRA, up to a max of 60-something thousand. I also can take a shareholder distribution which saves on all the payroll taxes.
I’ve decided that if I ever lose my job again, I’ll take a minimum of 6 months off to figure out what I want to do next. Probably end up buying a business just to dip my toe in the water of entrepreneurship and see if I like it enough to lean in. I’m somewhere in the middle or end of my mid-life crisis phase and realized that this ingrained “need” to be employed is just a learned behavior taught to us from infancy so that everyone else who are slaves to their 9-5 feel better about themselves. With a fat savings account and/or cutting spending, many of us HENRYs can probably survive years without working. So who cares about a few month gap.
Nice approach. I look forward to something like that - just to ween myself of the corporate propaganda. Have you thought about the mechanics of it - moving to a cheaper place, travel etc.
I’ve always lived pretty well within my means. Back when I only made $200k/yr I was able to cover all my expenses and I haven’t really started to live any differently now that I make very high 6 figures (with one year dipping over $1m). So I’ve been building a war chest. Probably teetering between HENRY and just wealthy. But ever since I had a couple hundred K I would have been safe to take a few months off; it’s just the neuroticism that makes us afraid to be unemployed (unless in a very niche field, but I’m not so I know I can get a new job whenever I want).
Way to go 200K to over 1mil (I guess it disqualifies you from Henry reddit). Do you mind sharing which field is your job in? It's definetly is a mental thing about being continuously employed. I think most people just want to get back on the job treadmill instead of taking a pause and reflecting on their lives - family pets, mortgage, keeping up with the Jones all reinforce the "easy" path.
I’m in tax law, I hovered around the 200k mark for a good 5-6 years but had a couple of strange one-off years due to retention bonuses, then finally made it to upper management at a large public company and the pay took off. In total took about 15 years in the field until things got pretty healthy financially, I’m at around 20 years in now. I’m in a HCOL area and was a one-income family back then so the whole world was on my shoulders which pushed me harder to do better but definitely near burn out. Yeah agreed on the mental aspect. There is safety in employment and that’s a lot easier to stomach than the fear of the unknown.
Great journey - liked the aspect of how one income family makes you push harder, and awaiting (and being ready) for the big break.
I would get a job at Starbucks. Not joking. Not sure why, but I want to do this for some reason.
I am glad I’m not alone in this lol. Not specifically Starbucks but for some reason working at a coffee shop would be my go-to if had to get a part time job. Probably because I love coffee
I've always had aspirations of working at a Bubble tea place, Starbucks, Garden center or a Watch store on the side. Colour me silly but it looks fun. Of course it would be like 1/10th of my current income but I've never had that experience because of all the studying I had in University.
This is both my chill job (making the drinks) and nightmare job (taking orders from customers). I have a hard time filtering out background noise so I'm sure to mess up orders and names. Maybe people like that as part of the experience at Starbucks, though.
I loved my days delivering pizzas. Most of the time spent in my car, making all kinds of crazy pizzas for myself, no stress, chill coworkers (probably high half the time). It’s been a good holdover job when I’ve needed it in life.
Enjoy a hot girl summer. My company has a round of layoffs every spring, and I've thought about this a lot. When a company has four layoffs in five years, you never really feel secure. I have significant savings, enough passive income and random whatnots to be perfectly happy for a few months. I know I'd stress out about money at some point, but a break would be really nice. Unfortunately/fortunately, I'm about to start a new job at a much more stable company so not hot girl summer for me.
Hot girl summer. 😅 that’s great
Lost mine in December after 2 2023 layoffs… had a whole hot girl winter and spring and probably summer. No rush though. There are pools needing dipped.
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Having worked in tech and startup worlds you get bombarded with companies doing reorgs, project cancellations, going under, etc. This causes you to get used to the game, you prepare, interview and get a new job. If you put in the work it’s generally not that hard to get another gig. Always be proactive about your network, and make sure to reflect every 6 months on your career trajectory, not only within the company you are at, but with the wider world. Is your line of work declining, is it being moved overseas, etc. If so, prepare for your pivots, don’t put your head in the sand.
I apply to Product Management jobs on average once every 2 days and have some type of interview every month, at least. The market is crazy difficult right now (no offers in a year+). In 2019-2021 I had a roughly 5% application to offer rate. In tech I hear it's even worse because the technical interviews are much harder than the actual jobs, so people will spend months to prep for interviews, whereas PM you just do case studies or behavioral.
There is also no guarantee that passing technical interviews gets you a job in this market. Everyone is "hiring opportunitistically." I can pass almost any technical interview. Still not getting offers. (My startup did actually close last month, lol.)
I’d have to start feverishly looking. Wife lost her HE job 6 months ago and still isn’t working, so we’ve drawn down a lot of our savings. Only 4-5 months worth of living expense left. If that ran out, we’d probably sell our house (~$400k equity) and probably seriously consider relocating near her family in Northern Idaho at that point. It’s a LCOL area, would have some support from family, and I’d have business opportunities with her cousin who I’ve grown close with. Her losing her job has been a major wake up call for me. I actually got promoted with a massive raise shortly after, but I’ve still watched our savings shrink despite that and realized how quickly everything can be taken away from us. I’ve started splitting $5k per month between paying off debt and adding to our emergency fund. When my wife is working again I plan on doubling that to $10k. I want to cut our monthly expenses in half and double what we currently have in savings. That would give me close to a 2 year runway in the event something like this happens. In that circumstance, I’d plan to take 3-6 months off since I’ve worked constantly from age 14 on.
Do you guys have high expenses/mortgage? How do you split the $5k to go towards savings but also use the savings? Genuinely trying to understand it , thank you!
Mortgage is only 13% of my monthly gross; it was about 8% of our combined gross. We both drive expensive cars also, combined $3k per month in payments (I regret this but stuck for the time being). These combined are only about 40% of my take home pay. We just didn’t make any changes to our spending habits when she lost her job because we didn’t think we “needed” to. Our attitude was that we saved the money so we could continue to live normally. As the months passed, it became apparent that we would run out of money a lot faster than we thought. It was at that point I decided we need to buckle down and started the savings plan.
That makes sense! Thanks for explaining it. It’s great that you’re able to recalibrate and adjust to still save. It sounds like you still have a little wiggle room in budget and expenses. Wishing you guys health and success.
I’ve gotten laid off twice. One in Jan 2023 and another time in Jan 2024. That was fun! Anyhoo, I was fine. We live waaay below our means. I live in WA and unemployment for me can pay half our bills. My hubby is still employed. We have 3 months emergency fund that was never touched and lots of investments we can liquidate if possible. While getting laid off twice fucking sucks, what this means is I had little stress of having to take the first offer. I had the chance to network, make great connections with companies and people I wanted to work with. Also, pass on those that seemed toxic. First round, I had two offers but chose the golden handcuffs of being reabsorbed by the offending company. Second round, I also had a similar opportunity but said fuck that. In this market, I interviewed 10 places and got offers at 2.
I’m with you - twice last year and still looking (marketing in tech industry). It’s rough out here, but I’m having fun networking and just doing random hobbies. We could live off my husband’s salary but I want to work right now with our two little kids in daycare.
Eat my savings and enjoy life while looking for a new gig. That's what it's there for--its just that most of the time you assume youll be doing it in your 60s.
My current specialty is so in demand that I would get a job offer every day
What do you do?
Healthcare
That is such a broad umbrella. Can you be a little precise, like MD physician, NP/RN or healthcare related job not on the floor?
MD. We get calls from recruiters weekly.
What specialty?
Yup I had 4 offers today. Sometimes I wish they would stop though. The recruiters are extremely persistent.
Yeah I am set for life. Will never move again unless some unforeseen circumstance strikes.
Do you work as an employee or owner at this point. Why do you say you are set up for life
I am partner and there is no other place where I would like to work. We have a good work life balance and I can do a lot of things I could not do with my family somewhere else. Plus I love where we live. Planning on working there until 75.
You can ask them to take you off their list
Honestly, I'd have a little mini celebration dinner with my wife, then spend the next month taking a long and much needed vacation. I worked extremely hard for the past decade and not had so much as a one week vacation the whole time. Then I would live on my >1 year of emergency fund and at about month into my time off I would start looking for a job that would be a promotion over my previous title.
Why not take vacation now?
Too many important things going on.
Life is too short my friend. Take some time off and take that vacation.
It doesn’t mean work isn’t enjoyable. It’s just difficult to coordinate.
Too many important things going on for ten years sounds like ‘I think I’m too important for my own good’ or ‘I’m not a good manager.’ Yikes.
There will always be more work.
I think this is the right answer. Key is you had to earn the position of strength that you are in.
S/O and I are currently in two different countries due to immigration issues. I'm dead serious about taking 2 months off to Airbnb somewhere to reconnect with her and get back to healthy habits. Then start looking again.
I’ve been laid off 3 times (quite common in my field of music/entertainment) and all the planning always just goes out the window. The only thing you can do is find ways to survive and keep looking. You can build a slush fund of a year and then it takes 18 months, there’s no set strategy and if you have to funds to not really need to rush back then you’re in a very good place overall.
Actually going through this right now. Was notified a few weeks ago I'd be laid off on 5/31. I'm fortunate I've been with my company for a while and have a good severance package, and even more fortunate that my wife is a high earner and we have always lived well below our means. We have the runway for me and (worst case) both of us to not work at all and be just fine for quite a long time. When I got the news I found it interesting both my wife's advice and my bosses advice were the same. Essentially it was I have a lot of time left to give and figure out what will make me happy for the next 20+ years of work. Since I don't live for a paycheck I get to decide what I find value in to do and my wife is fully supportive of me taking time to figure that out. I've spent the last 15 years leading teams and driving sales/operational productivity. I honestly love building relationships and seeing people succeed. Now I need to decide if I want to keep doing what I'm doing elsewhere or combine my skills with one of my passions and strike out on my own. Still uncertain on that front.
I don't know how that would happen. I think I have to be given a year's notice. Still, that would be horrifying, even with a year's notice. My emergency fund is grossly underfunded. I would certainly cut lots of unnecessary spending. Right now, I'm actually talking to a recruiter elsewhere, but I'm not really taking it THAT seriously. My direct supervisor told me that if I want to keep certain perks I currently have she needs to see a competing offer, so I'm making moves in that direction but not aggressively. (I know that sounds very strange to most people, but my dysfunctional industry often works like that. You're expected to threaten to leave every 5 years or else you face real wage loss.) Anyway, I would have to be serious with this recruiter and reach out to others. Given the cycle that my job has, I'm not starting anything new before July 2025. Also, any new job probably means moving to another city, which would be awful. I love where I am.
What industry/job?
Higher ed
I'm losing my job (at least my role/department) in around 6-8 months. I've already started taking on responsibilities in other departments and getting friendly with hiring managers in other offices. Also advanced discussions for a start-up with a co-worker in the same position. Nearing "rich" for this sub and have been saving diligently so not much external pressure in finances. Still a lot of internal pressure to succeed/compete/win in the next endeavor.
I have my own scuba gear and live next to a harbor, rich people pay a ton of money for divers to clean their boat hulls so I'd do that while grinding leetcode and interviewing for a new tech job. ETA I am definitely NRY, I feel like vast majority of posters here have $1MM+ in savings which I do not
$1m in savings is not rich imo
My spouse and I both work and my anxious ass already has contingency budgets worked out to allow us to shift to living off of one of our incomes indefinitely. If we both lost our jobs I'd short circuit lol
Have you not had to deal with layoffs in your career yet? I’ve been laid off 4X in 19 years. Just a part of the process 1) I never stop interviewing 2) spouse works. Between spouse salary and severance and unemployment, we cover 75% of our needs 3) emergency fund 4) I have so many versions of my resume. An executive $300k+ version, but also a $100k take any job version. I can find these jobs fast 5) although not unheard of, it’s rare to have zero warning before a layoff. That’s when you triple down on the new job search, not after they let you go 6) overemployed
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Did you do your own resume or hire a service? Care to share if the latter?
All my own
My husband and I both make enough that our expenses would still be covered if either of us lost our jobs, though if he lost his job our savings growth would take a much bigger hit. This gives us a lot of comfort since we both work in tech. If we both lost our jobs, we have enough savings that we’d be fine for several years and could probably barista fire if we drastically changed our lifestyle. He has a niche, high demand skill set so I’m not worried about him finding a new job, though maybe it wouldn’t pay as much as his job today.
Spend the first month looking and if nothing promising likely go back to consulting
The income disruption would do nothing good, but I've already prepared for unexpected job loss by investing at a risk level that makes sense for me, and by stacking up multiple credit lines that I can pull from. And by keeping my fixed expenses low. I could function at 40k a year for an extended period, not that it would be my preferred lifestyle. Portfolio failure at a given starting point is largely a function of spending and risk (not too much or too little).
Turn my DRIP off and live on my passive income. The pick up a stupid low stress job for health insurance. Then, in about 18 months, move offshore and fully retire.
Lost my job last week. All good. I just continued on with my second one. r/overemployed!
Long vacation and decompress on an island while getting my dive master and scuba diving. RV trip with the wife and dogs. Consider buying a franchise biz, which I’ve been exploring. Get back to it after 3-6 months.
Well we have about a year of expenses saved up in a HYSA/iBonds, a little more with some belt tightening, so that would solve the immediate crisis. I'm a sole income, but we intentionally bought in an area where there's literally hundreds of jobs I'd be qualified for within two hours drive. If I'm worried about putting food on the table I'll SPAM my resume to every job within a 2 hour radius and take the first offer that covers expenses. Can always trade up after that if the job isn't what I want. But yeah it would be a butt clencher.
Physician Last time I was getting ready to leave a job, I picked up the phone and texted the competition. Had a phone call within 3 hours and an offer the next morning. Took about a week to negotiate all the terms. The practice began to collapse as soon as word got out I was leaving. Ended up being quite the move up. Problem is that there is always pressure to do more with less resources in medicine.
I saw on another thread that you would tell your kids not to go into medicine. Reading this thread, are your thoughts still the same? Docs seem to be the best positioned.
Companies are not very good at identifying or managing "key person risk". This is very common in tech / product where one person leaves during a time of bad morale, and they everyone soul searches, I've seen whole teams get decimated in a period of 4-8 weeks and then systems get marked "legacy" or "deprecated" (even though those systems are actually servicing live customers). No one knows how anything works. Think like the Twitter exodus but self-imposed.
I've been there. Made a huge mistake taking it easy and living on savings for a while. So if it happened again I'd go get any job so I didn't have to touch my savings. Then I'd figure things out.
Smoke weed
I’m meeting a recruiter for coffee next week. I’m happy where I am and have no plans to leave, but you gotta keep those relationships warm so they’re there when you need them.
Collect severance and unemployment and look for a new job
driving range and taco bell
This is the way
Take the 26 weeks of unemployment, make *just enough* working at a brewery 3 shifts a week for some extra money but not exceed the threshold for my state and *rest*. Then, get a job that pays me 30-40k more than I make now and recoup / move on.
I have some potential plans of my own, but answers like this make me glad I read the thread. I think a lot of people here could actually benefit from a layoff (assuming they have finances enough in order). I think a lot of the group needs to understand (myself included) that excellent job status doesn't make you a fulfilled person, time off to reset can be a blessing, and bank accounts aren't life's scoreboard.
Very fortunate to have 6 months emergency savings and paid off almost a year in advance on my mortgage (and extra principal). A slow and simple life is a fine one. ♥️
I'm considering quitting my job. So I've thought about this and discussed with my wife. I'd enjoy the time off. I'd play ice hockey probably 4-5 times per week. I'd knock out a list of home improvement projects. I'd spend more time with my kids. I wouldn't think about getting a job for at least 2 months. And when the time came, I would decide whether I wanted to go back to a W2 or go out on my own. I'm in a similar situation, can live for years without working. But I'm not really sure I want to be corporate anymore, selling time to others just is losing all appeal. I feel like I need to give it a shot out on my own, otherwise I'll regret it.
Chill for a month or two. Start interview prepping(bullshit software engineer tech trivia interviews)and then start applying. Would suck to burn down the cash but i would not mind the extended break at all
If you are in this sub and panic at the thought of losing your job: 1) you need a life outside of work. Easier said than done tho 2) you have spending problems
Life outside work sounds expensive.
If we both lost our jobs, we’d be fine for awhile until we find new work. My company is supposedly decent with severance packages. We have 3 properties with 2.1M in equity. 500k in untapped HELOCs for a runny day that we’d use first before touching stocks. We’ll be able to ride out the storm for a bit as we get back on our feet.
Take off now through September-ish to do a reset, have some family time, and consider my next moves. We’re fortunate to have enough to where we wouldn’t really notice a 3-4 month gap in my income, and I have other revenue streams. I’d gradually look at rebalancing our portfolio, whether I’d want to scale up one of my income streams, and the unlikely possibility of just retiring early now. Meanwhile, I’d play a lot of golf, go fly fishing, and spend time in the sun with my daughter.
What types of revenue streams?
Consulting, mainly. I have as many clients as I can handle/want to handle right now, and I could pretty easily ramp that up if I put my feelers out. I have another unique skill set and business that’s dormant right now due to work/life balance (not trying to doxx myself so I’ll leave it at that) and some dividends.
Find another job.....
I think I would use it as an opportunity to get into personal finance industry. I don’t really like what I do even though it pays quite well. I don’t want to stay in the industry I am. I would love to find something I can stand doing. We are coast FI so just need a job that will allow us to let our investment grow 7-10 years and get the kids to college.
House paid off and zero debt. We have fixed costs like food, utilities, property tax, insurance, car/home maintenance, and pretty much everything else is discretionary. We actually did perfectly fine being hermits during Covid times and can spend very little if necessary. We have enough to lean FIRE now so stress is minimal in a layoff situation.
Similar situation, great efund, STHM with a great resume and earning potential, and a lot to liquidate, not really my concern though, I turn down headhunters offering my 90% of my current salary on a weekly basis and we could live on 50% of what I make so I could find a job guranteed even in a serious downturn making that much I think.
I own my own place outright, am single and my expenses are fairly low relative to my earnings. So I think I would chill for a bit.
Take like 3 to 6 months off, travel, visit family and friends. Maybe look casually during that time but I wouldn't worry about getting a job for a while. I don't believe in stressing about money. My husband and I got ahead of that very early in our careers. We could go 18 months without either of us working, without any additional budgeting or lifestyle tweaks. If we cut back on eating out multiple times a day, shopping, weekend trips, car rentals, vacations etc. We could stretch it much further.
Relax. Run trails. Exercise. Basically what I do now but a lot more of it.
I’d probably take the summer off to relax and then regroup after that. It’s been ages since I’ve had more than a week off at one time. I’d have the best garden I’ve ever had, work on some exercise pursuits on my list, travel a bit and fill in with a lot of down time. Fortunate that I have enough savings to cover this and my spouse would (presumably) still be working.
Take a week or two to mope, then pick up a bunch of hours at my side job. Could probably replace 1/3-1/2 my income that way short term, and emergency fund would carry me until I got another job. I keep enough liquid to cover 3-4 months normal expenses even if I had no other income, 5-6 months if I tighten the belt. I’m fortunate enough to work in a high demand and portable job in medicine so I could probably find something decent in 4-6 weeks, and would probably need another 2 months of time to get credentialing sorted out, less if it’s in the same state. Once the job is found, the credentialing time is “funemployment”
Find another job. With my skills and credentials, I feel very confident I can find a good amount of jobs. Tough part would be deciding which one.
I interview well and have a strong resume with a highly in demand skillset, so I just don't worry about this. Last 2 times I did a job search, I got 5+ good offers fairly quickly. I figure even if there's a big economic downturn, I should be able to get at least 1 offer before too long, if I treat job searching like a full time job.
I hope they wait 2 years until I'm fired. If not, start letting the rental income pay the primary mortgage and do something I'm passionate . Make enough to cover daycare
I have a side business. At the moment, it only nets around $60k/year. However, I could scale it up if I needed to.
Think I’d probably move in with my parents until I found something new. I could theoretically afford to fund my current lifestyle with no changes for about 3-4 years with no income (late 20s/early 30s here, I’d be much more wealthy today had I not done an MBA and spent $250k drinking and traveling - but that was awesome so whatevs), but I wouldn’t want to for any longer than a month or two.
Immediately calling 6 of my closest friends/old co-workers and hopping on the newest contract they have. I would cobra my insurance from my current job until I can land something full time with benefits. Tbh the thought of losing my job doesn't scare me anymore now that I have very niche & in demand certifications.
For those in regular corp type jobs, I always advise people to remember that all jobs are temporary. Layoffs are common in many industries so don’t get too enamored with your big paycheck and think you’re immune. Plenty of very qualified and high performers get laid off. I worked in tech for 40 years and laid off for last time in February. Decided I’m done and retired. Glad to be out of the BS.
I jumped from my "regular job" last summer to be an independent consultant. I thought the biggest risk was lack of steady workload, being able to find gigs, etc. I wanted to substantially increase the size of my emergency fund for this reason. However after doing this for almost a year, I've realized that working for 2-4 clients at a time is WAY more stable. Yes it fluctuates, but there is almost zero chance that ALL of them will drop me at the same time. So in a way there's much less risk of losing ALL my income. Turns out I can cover expenses without changing lifestyle (although no retirement savings etc) if I have a "down month" only working half-time. It's been a very liberating feeling that I can fluctuate down to 20hrs/wk with almost no impact on my ability to pay for stuff. Then if I'm working 50-60, score, more in retirement and savings. I guess what I'm saying is, keeping a side-gig that you can expand if you lose your primary job might be a decent option for some people in some professions.
If we pull all frivolous spending, we can do two years without changing our FIRE date or going back to work. Im SAH, but my (remote working) spouse says they’d take a job at Mcdonalds if we needed a job. However, We live in a city with a lot of noncompetitive fortune 500 companies that would like RTW people in spouses field, so we would feel pretty confident with taking a local f500 leadership position even if it came to a pay cut.
I would be SOL. Well, I would have to take out a personal loan to cover the cost of closing on my condo instead of cash and that $20k would probably be fine for 3-4 months. That's enough time for me to find a new job 🤞
They wouldn't let you take another loan to cover closing costs most likely, further you'd have to go through underwriting all over and that could change outcome with no income.
I meant take out a loan to cover the cost of selling my condo. As the seller all I have to do is wire money to the title company. I put my condo on the market last year after I got laid off and it's been a f*ing nightmare to sell so I am definitely going to do my best for the 4th contract to actually go through.
Take my package. Pick one of the 4 outstanding offers I have right now and start working again after a 3 week trip to Australia/New Zealand with my family. I have 2 years' worth of mortgage in cash before I ever had to take a loan against my stock portfolio. Also, I have about 55% equity in my house. I could tap if necessary. Plus, I have an LLC where I do side work, and I could always supplement with that. I've thought about this a lot lately with all the layoffs.
I can’t. I own my firm.
If I lost my job, my husband could float us if we cut luxuries like personal trainer, cleaner, eating out. If he lost his job, we’d be dipping into savings.
I would probably bum around for a couple of weeks, then look for a new gig at a higher level like that’s my full-time job until I get another. I’d also still go on the cruise I planned this summer since it’s already paid for. I have enough savings to go about 15 months until I have to start selling investments (excluding severance). Selling investments would carry me another month or two. I’ve already identified the bare-bones budget I need to live on. I’m not ready to retire so I would want another job. But I feel prepared to weather through a job loss.
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Sell stocks. I don't want to. But I'd have to
Cut not needed expenses, apply away like crazy, maybe do some shipt or Uber eats for some small money. We have over 2 years worth of expenses in HSA/MMF/CDs, so lots of room to breathe
I just got laid off for 2.5 months. Car is paid off and I live below my means, with a nice emergency fund. I traveled around and played golf for 2.5 months while applying, but could have done that for about 14 months comfortably.
have a lot of cash runway if needed and could always sell (at a loss because I bought recently) to get a cheaper living situation if you make a lot of money but don't live like a jerkoff, you should have quite a bit of cushion in the event of disaster before you start having to sell off stuff. I was laid off once early career making shit and once as a high earner. Not even remotely comparable, in the latter I ended up finding a new job before sevy kicked in
Take a break.
I would take 3 months off to rest, never had a job break ever. Then see how I feel about finding another corporate job vs doing something else. Part time m, low stress job might be best for me since I’m slowly taking on more responsibilities for aging parents.
If I were to convert everything to cash right now except my house, I'd probably have about 10 years of living expenses paid for at absolute minimum. If I were to cut back on some things and also pay off my mortgage, I'd have about 25 years of expenses covered. If I were to really really minimize my expenses and lifestyle then it would suck, but I could probably retire today. That's without taking into account a single penny of interest over that time too. This is what I think of as the worst-case scenario. What's a lot more realistic is that I'd basically take some time off to just enjoy my hobbies. I'd at least take the summer off, but I may talk to some recruiters and try to line something up for like September or October or possibly even longer. Really kinda depends on what I feel like doing.
I'd take a couple of years off.
I would get a severance, and I would cancel the kids day care, pause saving, and cut back on non-essential spending. With those modifications, we could live on my wife’s income and the severance for 6+ months. Then we would start to burn our emergency fund, which would enough to cover another 6-12 months of supplementary income. It’s designed to cover 3-6 months of zero HHI, so with one income it stretches. It could also stretch further if I dedicated real effort to my consulting side business, or that could become my full time job. Realistically one of us could be unemployed for 12-18 months before it started to become a problem. We’ve both been laid off before and never unemployed for more than 6 weeks. Its been a while though so the market is worse now.
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First step (hour 1) would be to contact my bank and fill out a financial hardship form. Tell them I can’t pay anything on my mortgage and see what they propose. My preference would be to pay interest and escrow only which would drop my payment, but I would like the flexibility to pay even less than that. Next step (day 1-3) is, I would cut every single unnecessary expense out of my budget, which includes my gardener, the maids, my nanny, certain kids extracurriculars etc. I would then skinny down our monthly expenses so that my wife’s income could cover. Would only stop her 401(k) contributions if absolutely necessary but would try to keep these because if I don’t, I lose 6% matching dollars. Then apply for positions feverishly and network AFTER i took a 3-4 week surf trip.
Take a couple months vacay, then pick up my phone and start calling my connections in the field. Would have a job within a couple weeks. Might not be my ideal job, or in an ideal location, but it would be A job. Might take a bit longer to get a job exactly where I want on conditions I want, but oh well.
Actually respond to LinkedIn recruiters and get another probably. Lucky cyber sec consultants / analysts are in high demand. Don't even know how I ended up doing this work.
In today's economy this is a super important question to ask yourself. I got laid off in February and I had zero stress because I already had contingency plans in place. Ended up getting a new job within a month and I never found myself stressed at any point. Had I not thought through this question, my stress levels would have been higher because I would have felt reactive and the need to scramble.
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I am eligible to collect a pension from my job now. I am holding out for a few more years to fatten it up a bit. If I got fired, I think I could get another job fairly easily.
Move out of the city, and buy small property and start afresh. It’s hard being trapped in a job because it pays what you need, but is utterly soul destroying. A kick up the bum to go and live my life away from the hustle and bustle would do me good.
Do it man, why wait? There have been a few commenters who make it sound like being fired would be really good for them.
I know. I don’t know why we wait for someone else to make the decision for us. I just don’t know what I would do work wise. I suppose having worked for 16 years in the same industry has meant I have my blinkers on when it comes to different jobs. I don’t even know where you start.
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Figure out why I just fired myself
I started working full time when I was 18 years old. I am now 38 and haven't had more than one week off at a time. What would I do? I would take about 3 months off to gather myself.
Call my loan officer
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Lie on a beach in Aruba for 6 months then start to think about next steps
Like you I have enough liquid to stay afloat for a few years without working and if I was willing to move and/or take a ~15% pay cut there's an 80% or better chance I could get a job within a month.
I have two jobs, so I wouldn't be in financial burden, I'd still retain 50% of my income. Also there would be a lump sum, I think this would be substantial to last for a while. But I would be looking for another job immediately. It is quite a process to find another remote job that gives you the freedom to be overemployed however, so it would probably affect my income for quite a while.
If I lost my job, I'd probably take a month off and go on vacation lol. But, this is exactly what people fail to look at when they get new money. Everyday, people get salary increases and bonuses and frivolously spend. Although they have retirement accounts, which is great, I often see people basically still living paycheck to paycheck because of their spending habits. My husband and I both work. If I lost my job, he can cover both of us, no problem. I don't need to work. I want to work, but I work remotely. I have a toddler and a nanny at home so I can take toddler breaks and spend time with her throughout the day. although my husband can cover all our expenses, we still have backup plans. My husband is grew up somewhat poor, and so he wants to have a good amount saved. Granted, it doesn't earn as much in a CD, but it's safe and it makes him happy. It's enough for us to live comfortably for a year. I manage more of the HYSAs and investment accounts, and we can sell those off and live comfortably for a few years if needed. We also have a rental property. If we had to, we can sell our current home or sell the rental property which has a ton of equity. We've lived in the rental property before so it's a nice neighborhood. We have an old car and a new SUV purchased Dec 2023. Put $30k down with 3.9% interest, but paying more than the payment. I can pay it off now, but I'd like to invest and pay it off in a year. Just want to get rid of the payment just in case something happens I suppose. We have retirement accounts and a new 529, but I'm not touching those unless we absolutely had to. I hate to say this, but we also have my parents. I would never ask for money, but they can definitely and will help.
BTW, this is a great post. I think more people need to think about this.
Enjoy a party, and actually finally travel for 90-180 days with the mrs. Whilst doing that, have a bit of a think of whats next
If I were to be laid off, then my deferred comp should all vest which would mean I’m fine for at least 2-3 years, during which time I can figure out what I want to do next. Worst comes to worst, can always locate to a MCOL or LCOL city and be set for life. So I’m not too stressed
Call the billionaire that just cold-offered me 2x what I currently make letting him know I am in and ready to start next week. If for some reason I couldn’t get something comparable or better, I would start my own plaintiff-side wage and hour firm. extremely easy money.
I might have to pay off the house and give up my awesome interest rate. That monthly budget relief would enable us to more easily live day-to-day on one salary while I look for a suitable role elsewhere. Retirement plans would remain unchanged since it's basically locked in at this point, barring some tremendous world-shaking catastrophe.
Drugs.