Episode 12 Hard learned lessons after getting laid off

Today’s episode covers some of the core hard learned lessons I got after losing my job. I also share some tips and tricks to be prepared if it was to happen to you. All of this is info I learned after being out of work for 12 months and nearly going bankrupt. I hope this helps if it was to happen to you. I also share some preemptive things everyone should do to be prepared for a possible layoff. In the end job loss, getting laid off, or facing the possibility of a layoff can be hard, but with some preparation it can be easier than it needs to be.

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Hi I'm Thomas welcome to the parachute advice. My life has taken a lot of twists and turns and on this podcast I will dive into those. The goal is to help everyone listening learn from my experiences and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes I've made welcome to today's episode of the parachute advice podcast. We host Thomas today I want to cover very different topic but one that I have had experience in and seems very timing with the current state of the job market and the economy. What is this well it's getting laid off from work or planning for the inevitable layoffs that could happen to start let me tell you the story of my this event changed everything in my life from how I manage my career to how I manage my finances and just generally how I live my life it all began a few years after college I had gotten a job as an analyst for and health insurance company it wasn't my dream job, I enjoyed it the pay was good and the work was interesting I spent most of my time doing research for projects that our executive team was working on, it allowed me to develop a lot of skills I still use to this day, I was at the company for three years when the fateful day hit I knew it was coming my manager was frankly a terrible people person with little understanding of how to treat employees with respect, she had little to no understanding how her actions impacted people around her I will say this is a prime example of taking something negative in your life and making the best of it, I learned a great deal about being a manager by looking at all the things she did wrong what do I mean by this well let's take how I knew about my impending. We sat in cubes next to each other and one day I overheard her on the phone walking through the details of the layoffs for one of her analysts that would be occurring in the next. Well here's the problem I was her only analysts so I was fairly confident was going to be me, I asked her if anything was going on if I should say polish up my resume and she flat-out lied and said no I was not necessarily asking for a straight answer while that would have been great I was expecting some sort of heads up like a well, you know it's never a bad idea to have your resume updated this very situation came up when I was a manager years later in my career I had an employee give me his two weeks notice to go on a once-in-a-lifetime three-month trip, I flatly rejected it and told him to give me some time, I had heard layoffs were coming and if I could convince management and make him one of them he would have been laid off the week before his trip started with 26 weeks of full pay and benefits, ultimately I couldn't get it to work out primarily because I work for another terrible manager who said flat out no this is good we get to do our to layoffs and with him quitting it'll make it look like we went while above and beyond to reduce salaries and expenses by a third person because we just won't back film that but I digress back to my story at this point the health insurance company have been doing regular layoffs monthly and at times weekly and everyone had heard the rumors of the big one, it had gotten so bad that most people would check every Thursday if your friends were still there in the afternoon since Thursday's had become known as the layoffs day so there we sat. The impending doom was coming I was early in my career and frankly naive I figured I'd get some time off and then I jump right into a new job within a few weeks or months at worst. Man was I wrong there I sat in my cubicle on my 31st birthday when I heard the conversation.

Yes I can bring them down to HR 10: 3:20

30 a.m. tomorrow nope no problem I'll tell them it's a last-minute meeting for a project, great see you then so there it was the day and time was finalized how was I going to handle this well first things first I didn't want to be that guy you know the one the person carrying the box out or my company's case. Coming back in on a Saturday escorted to your desk by security to get your stuff. So I stayed late the night before impact my desk and took it out to my car the next day I would just have my messenger bag with me and nothing else. It's the day arrived and the shock of what was happening hit fast. They were doing Mass layoffs 20 to 30 people at a time in large conference room by 10 a.m. 50 people I heard it already been let go so I said fuck it. I'm not making this easy so I left and went to lunch at the mall across the street I didn't have a set lunch hour so it wasn't unheard of to go eat early if you had an afternoon filled with meetings. God was I manager pissed when I came back around noon she stormed in my Cube and said we need to go to this last-minute meeting downstairs I said okay, I put on my coat and grab my bag she yelled and said what are you doing just grab a notebook and a pen I laughed and said I know what this is and I don't plan to have to come back for my stuff, so there we went to the pack room with a bunch of people who thought this was just a last minute HR meeting. Because I was the last one there and late the only seat left was in the front of the room so I had to climb through a crowded room to my seat, I waved a friend's I knew in the room and make comments like soy to see you here to at that moment it's set in for everyone in the room what was happening. Some people started crying other started yelling we spent 30 minutes listening to how this severance package would work and what would happen with our benefits. I even joked about how I only had 12 hours left to come up with a way to use my company provided life insurance before it was at that point they asked us to quietly exit through a back door to an alley at that point I just shook my head no and push past the security guard and walked out the front door had held high knowing that no matter what happened after this day. It would be the last time I let a company control my fate. That day the company laid off 10% of its Workforce or around 200 people as I mentioned earlier I figured as I drove home I would be off of work for a few weeks then be right back at it, little did I realize it was about to take me 11 and a half months to get a new job I made looking for a job a full-time job. But I quickly realized I was gonna have to cut my expenses the bare minimum to make it at that time I was living with my sister and how sweet inherited after my mom and dad. The mortgage wasn't terrible split between two people but I had a lot of other expenses due to some very terrible Financial choices I had made after college. Ultimately I was out of work for almost twelve months nearly went bankrupt and it upended that period of my life with a net worth somewhere around negative two hundred thousand dollars, Yes you heard me right other than a small 401K I had no savings owed a hundred fifty thousand dollars on a house, and had 20 to 30 thousand dollars in credit card debt luckily I did sell my boat which I had still owed about 30,000 dollars on walking away with 2500 dollars from the sale after paying off the loan, believe it or not that 2,500 dollars would be the difference between making it or not the day I started my new job, eleven and a half months after getting laid off I had around 1,000 dollars left to my name it was a horrible experience overall, but as a line goes the hardest situations make us stronger and better in the long run I now keep a 12-month emergency fund. A separate house emergency fund an additional Investments and savings for that exact reason I also live well below my means at all times just to be safe how far below my means well I put 32% of my gross income into savings every year, basically after taxes and other deductions I live on less than fifty percent of my take home pay. So let's get into some tips tricks and plans everyone should have in place just in case first off most of these are in the best interest to have no matter whether you're going through a layoff or not, or a rough economy or not they're just good to have in your back pocket for emergencies I am a firm believer in the idea that if you have a solid plan in place for the worst-case then you don't have to stress about the worst case. Some of these things may take years of hard work to get in place for example I have been working in my emergency funds for 10 years while at the same time paying down as much debt as possible. First things first just live below your means and save I know it's hard to understand if you're not there but the level of freedom and calmness that you attain with Financial Freedom cannot be explained until you get there. My sister and I were just talking the other day and she has gotten there just like I have. And she was shocked to see how calming it was to know that she was in the best financial situation she's ever been at. And didn't have to worry about small little expenses or emergencies coming up. To give you an idea what I mean when I was at my worst I signed up for online bill pay not because I wanted to make it easier but because there were days I had to wait till the last minute to pay a bill to avoid bouncing a check. I often played the what can I pay late without a fee game just to survive I was so short on money, that a few dollars here there was a difference between being able to pay my electric bill or put gas in my car to get to a job interview. That is why I live so far below my means to this day and save as much as possible to that point I keep two budgets, what is my current one based on being employed and another one is based on job loss it shows me exactly every expense I would immediately cut the moment I got laid off lost my job or thought that I was going to lose my job. For example things like all the streaming services app subscriptions as well as how tight can I cut my grocery bills or other controlled expenses. This is also a great way to regularly review what you're spending on in general and really decide whether it's worth it or not. Help I have friends of give me a hard time from time to time but being a quote prepper well for example, I keep about two or three months of dried and can shelf-stable food in an emergency kit guess what that means between that and the other food that I normally have around the house I could easily go three to four months without grocery shopping if needed if I lost my job. Any place you can save will help if the worst happens like I gave you the earlier example look at how tight it got to the end before I got another job. So that little extra bit would have helped a ton some of this financial info is going to be very household specific for example. Is it a two-income household with bounce incomes or single household like me or is one of you the primary income producer for example is one person in a high six-figure earner career and the other one not how at risk is the high income earner of losing their job. How easy could they replace that income if it's lost as I mentioned earlier I thought when it happened to me I would only be out of work for a few weeks maybe a month or two at worst. I want as far as turning down a contractor rule early in my job search because I was so confident that I would get a full-time job and I didn't want to take the first thing that just came along, honestly I still regret that call to some degree to this day as you can tell it all worked out in the long run, but I certainly took the harder path out of arrogance don't underestimate the importance of benefits in the cost yes there's things like Cobra for health insurance but it's extremely expensive that said when unemployed that's not the time to roll the dice on not having health insurance. But again are you in a dual income dual benefits household then you have less of a risk there, as the guys on the money guy show always like to say bad things are extroverts they love to travel together so layoffs are usually time with a stock market downturn tightening job markets and other issues, hence why my emergency fund is in cash and why also have a second home emergency. So yes you heard that right I keep enough on hand to cover 12 months of living expenses and a second one at cover nearly every possible home repair I can think of that can come up from a water heater failing to an appliance dying. Help right before I lost my job all those years ago, I had my refrigerator died I also had a ton of cars use at the same time at times the car issues made it hard to get to job interviews which only makes the problem worse, once having my car going to quote limp mode on the way to a job interview thankfully I left with enough time to still make it on time even if I could only go 25 miles an hour on the side streets to an interview that was over 20 miles away, but worse yet I had my car died. In front of the window of the hiring manager I had just interviewed with there is nothing worse than having him watch me while I try to start a dead car to ultimately have to call for a tow and get hit with a huge repair bill. Don't say this to scary one but to educate you keep in mind even if you only save a few months of funds or have just enough to cover deductibles on insurance every little bit will help if something bad happens. I know your situation and what the risks are next is your resume I will follow up in future career planning episodes or if you want go back some of my older episodes on this topic to go more in depth but at a high level make sure your resume is always ready to go. I make sure to have an up-to-date copy ready to share at a moment's notice if you just started a new job pick the top 5 to 10 items from the job description. You did save the job description for the job you applied to write if not make sure you're doing that. But again make sure to get those five top five to ten bullet points on your resume and Linkedin as quickly as possible then as you go through the new job update your resume LinkedIn accordingly but those few points are already a good starting point to make sure that your resume and your LinkedIn are already updated and ready to go, also make sure you have a plan on where you would and could apply at a moment's notice how do I do this well first off I never turn off any of my job alerts. I'm a pair them down but I keep them going in some form I also like to do this just to see what the state of the local job market is in. Also have a Target list of potential employers and roles you could and should apply to for example I am a supply chain managers so I know this is an option as well as if needed roles that I've held previously earlier in my career for example, I could take a pay cut and go back to being a buyer or planner just to get some income and benefits or maybe I'd leave the manufacturing industry and try other ones. It was this type of mindset that landed me in manufacturing to begin with and a career I love to this day because I was open to being flexible and looking for any opportunity. All of these are great things to have in your plan in general for career planning and growth but even more so when your job situation is unstable or appears to be unstable here is a big one network while you don't need a network so is there when you do need it, also be professional and respectful about it I'll give you this example, that just recently happened to me an old friend reached out to catch up and do some networking we made lunch plans and then they came and I went and I sat for over an hour at the lunch spot waiting for him to arrive, when I finally reached out and asked if everything was okay I simply got a oh I forgot to add it to my calendar we should reschedule. See what I did there first off I wasn't confrontational. I made it clear that my assumption was that perhaps something that happened maybe something more important came up it came from a place of compassion and not anger over having to sit and wait for him to arrive but no big shock here, I've yet to reschedule and honestly it's going to take a lot for me to reschedule because I value my time and the respect, of being left sitting in a restaurant waiting how hard is it to Simply put something on a calendar. Why do I tell you this because there's an a great example of somebody who failed at networking and it may ultimately hurt them in the long run maybe not. But the point is being professional and respectful is key to networking. Same goes for not Burning Bridges when you leave a roll no matter what you never know if you need to go back finally stay on top of industry news information and skills it is one reason I change roles as often as I do. I don't want to ever get quote institutionalized what do I mean by this well only being good at what you do because you do it at that place that company or that role for a long enough period of time I've seen this too often, people who look very good at their job and the moment they leave a company they struggle because it turns out they were only good at it. When they were at a company they had Bennett for 10 20 30 years and they ultimately end up having to come back in the end planning for layoffs can be scary but if you stick to my few key tips. It would be a lot easier if it ever does happen in summary. Live below your means save and build an emergency fund know when where and how to cut expenses keep your network updated as well as your resume and Linkedin. And finally always be focused on growth in your career. Most important is to learn from my mistakes and try to avoid doing the same things I did and top on that list is don't ever buy a boat let me repeat that number one on my list is by about thank you for listening please join me again for future episodes. You can contact me at parachute advice podcast at gmail.com again that's all one word parachute advice podcast at gmail.com. You can also follow me on Instagram at parachute advice again thank you for listening and please like And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Music.