Changing Employment Situation
I got laid off from my full time job in early February. I received a severance package worth several months of my regular pay. So yay! #freemoney. I was starting to get complacent at my old job and could use a fresh start somewhere else. 🙂 The best way to leave a company, financially speaking, is to be terminated without cause. So I’m pretty fortunate.
The added benefit is because I no longer have coworkers who know about my blog I can be more transparent about my total monthly income starting in next month’s fiscal update post. This means I’ll reveal both income and expenses so everyone will see my complete budget. I don’t have to be concerned anymore about office politics and coworkers getting jealous of my salary.
It took me awhile to deposit the severance package, so the payment amount will not be reflected in today’s post. But it will be represented in my balance sheet in next month’s update. 🙂 Luckily I have 5 other incomes (rent, dividends, interest, part-time teaching, and freelancing.) The net sum of these other incomes vary, but works out to roughly $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Thank goodness I took the time to build up these side incomes over the past years. Otherwise I would be very stressed if I lose my only source of income, lol. Much like working at a mattress store, it’s nice to have things to fall back on. 😀
Fortunately I managed to find another job last week so I’m now full time employed again. 🙂 I find that self reflection is very important when job searching. It’s all about having a good innerview. 😎 My new job is very different from my old one. For privacy reasons I will not disclose my new employer’s name. I’m still in Vancouver, Canada. But let’s just say I’m working for a giant internet retailer based in the United States. 😀
Due to the lay off my income was dramatically reduced in February. I had to dig deep into my cash reserves to continue paying down my debts. The stock market also fell slightly. But on a positive note, the growing strength of the U.S. dollar thanks to better than expected economic data increased the value of my U.S. stock portfolio. So overall my net worth eked out a tiny increase. It’s the smallest gain in many months, but any gain is better than a loss.
Liquid’s Financial Update
*Side Incomes:
- Part-Time = $1,100
- Freelance = $700
- Dividends = $700
- Interest = $400
- Fun = $600
- Debt Interest = $1400
*Net Worth: (ΔMoM)
- Assets: = $1,168,800 total (-3,100)
- Cash = $800 (-2100)
- Canadian stocks = $168,000 (-2500)
- U.S. stocks = $115,600 (+2900)
- U.K. stocks = $21,100 (-1100)
- Retirement = $89,200 (-800)
- Mortgage Funds = $32,400 (+200)
- P2P Lending = $30,700 (+300)
- Home = $275,000
- Farms = $436,000
- Debts: = $453,500 total (-4,300)
- Mortgage = $179,800 (-400)
- Farm Loans = $184,800 (-500)
- Margin Loans = $55,200 (-1300)
- TD Line of Credit = $4,000 (-500)
- CIBC Line of Credit = $15,000 (-1500)
- HELOC = $14,700 (-100)
*Total Net Worth = $715,300 (+$1,200 / +0.2%)
All numbers above are in $CDN.
It’s kind of early to say how the recent employment change will affect my freedom 35 goal. But for now I don’t expect too much deviation from my plan. I will also be contacting Great West Life insurance company to transfer out the money in my defined contribution pension plan. It will be rewarding to finally have direct control over those funds. 🙂
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Random Useless Fact
Taking it like a boss . Being the ever optimist liquid we’re u aware this was coming and did u have any psychological setback initially? Or we’re u super relieved to have time off from burnout?
I did not anticipate the layoff. It was part of a company restructuring that terminated a quarter of its employees. I just happened to be part of that group. It was a surprise to me at first. All of us were lead into a meeting where the COO came out and said this would be our last day of work. He thanked us for our services, which was nice of him to say. Then HR retrieved our personal belongings and we were escorted out of the building by security. It was pretty standard practice I think.
I’m kind of relieved to take some time off, and also grateful for the severance package. I didn’t expect it to be so much. I’ll blog about it later, but it’s low 5 figures. I’m also relieved for having planned out beforehand what I would do if such a situation happened. I have a contingency career plan that I update every year. In case of a layoff I just follow the steps in my plan. Like Batman once said, “expect the unexpected.” Batman always wins because he creates insurance policies against everything. He’s also a billionaire and is probably my favourite DC character.
Thanks for replying such sensitive questions. Absolutely – aside from financial matters taken care of, it’s important to have next step action contingency plan – how to fill the 9-5 weekdays without the hollow feeling. WAY too many ppl, optimists especially, think they’ll never get laid off. They never even considered the business or operational perspective. Talking about such a what if is as taboo as bringing up divorce to a married couple and NOBODY dares bring that up except maybe mothers.
“I don’t have to be concerned anymore about office politics and coworkers getting jealous of my salary.”
Most people sre shitty most of the time.Nothing you can do about it. Wouldn’t worry about it either. That’s their baggage.
I’m working for a giant internet retailer based in the United States
— working for facebook?
“Retailer” indeed would not be Facebook.
Amazon just expanded offices and presumably hired more staff, if I were a betting man..
Think again if you think FB is not a retailer. $40 billion in revenue means they’re selling you a LOT of sh!t. Even better than amazon cuz they don’t have to ship anything; all digital.
@Guy
Not Facebook, although that would be a very cool job too. 🙂 If you would like another hint, the company I currently work at also offers cloud computing services.
FB is not in Vancouver 🙂 Thought u were just being funny. AMZN has an AWS office in Van and are expanding EC2 ops :))) I thought Liquid was kidding since his hint was a slam dunk.
When you lose a job, that is when you are most thankful for passive income. It helps reduce the stress levels by a lot.
To get a job within a very short period of time, is a win win. You get back to routine again and plus it looks good on resume.
That’s a good point about continuing employment. If there’s a noticeable time gap missing in your resume, future potential employers may question it. Luckily in the graphic design industry most people can use “freelancing” to fill in any periods of unemployment lol.
Sorry for your loss of job but congrats on the severance bonus! Its sweet when you bring in that much passive income, you dont need to stress about the income lost.
Curious do you keep any uk stocks in your tfsa? I see you have some but dont see them in your portfolio. I Think i read somewhere someone does but cant find too much else about it.
Anyways best of luck on the job search
Cheers
I keep my UK equities outside of my TFSA in a non-registered account. The only UK investment I have is the SPDR FTSE UK All Share ETF (FTAL) on the London stock exchange. I wrote a post about it here, https://www.freedomthirtyfiveblog.com/2016/12/how-invest-united-kingdom.html
I also track it in my margin portfolio here, https://www.freedomthirtyfiveblog.com/portfolio/non-registered-margin-portfolios
It basically follows the performance of the FTSE stock market index. 🙂
Congrats on the new job. Good folks land on their feet pretty quickly as your experience shows. Looks like you turned a negative into a positive. Tom
Yes, sometimes a perceived bad situation is actually a blessing in disguise. In my example, I got paid out about 3 months worth of salary. It’s basically being paid to not work. 🙂 So if I’m able to find gainful employment (assuming similar compensation) within 3 months then I would actually come out further ahead financially than not being laid off at all. In an ironic way, getting let go from a company can increase one’s net worth.
Congrats on the severance and the new job! My bro in law got laid off a year ago and got a huge severance. Like equal to his annual salary. Good job on the plus this month- I was down by $60 lol! Next month you are going to surpass me I know it!
It’s so great that you have different sources of income to fall back on- great “FU” fuel!
Your BIL got a sweet deal. Good for him. 🙂 I have a friend who works at Shaw. They are offered a huge package if they quit volunteeringly, lol.
No big deal on the net worth. The markets were all down in Feb. But next month will probably be better.
Congrats on your new job and for finding one 2-3 weeks after a layoff. Sometimes that pink slip works better for some people. I’d call that bouncing back. Based on your statement, looks like you secured a job at Amazon.
I’ve somehow managed to survive 2 prior rounds of layoffs before. It’s always a surprise and saddening to see my coworkers being let go. But this time things happened differently and I got to see the other side.
The funny thing was I had a great boss. He would always be looking out for us and treated us like friends. My peers and I all thought our jobs were relatively safe because our boss would vouch for us if the company had to downsize. That was a good theory. And we were probably right. But what we didn’t anticipate is that our boss got laid off with us. o_O Lol
At least it wasn’t a performance issue and no singling out so it doesn’t damage your confidence in your career/field/applying to other jobs. Reduction in force is pretty common for small/mid size co’s as cashflow is much tighter than large mature co’s. @least you have highly marketable, versatile skill sets that can be applied to different industries compared to niche skills – that’s most important in today’s tech era. Not to mention you’re always improving skills in your field
Good work with the quick re-entry into employment.
Was it easy for you to access the money being generated by your passive income / side hustles? Do you feel like you had sufficient liquid emergency funds available (e.g. if you’d needed to be without a job for say 2 / 3 months?
HH
So far I am living off the severance package that is just sitting in my bank account. That alone provides more than sufficient liquidity. 🙂 My active incomes from my continuous part time job and freelancing bring in about $1,500 a month, which covers more than half of my monthly expenses. If I hadn’t found another job, I would be okay living for 6 months before having to dip into my passive income streams like dividends and interest.
Hey Liquid,
Congrats for the severance bonus with a new job. I assume you work for Amazon (giant U.S online retailer), if so you have option to get some Amazon stocks too 🙂 .
In my view, you don’t need to work for someone anymore. You have diversified assets with few thousands month passive income and well established website. You may consider start focus on what you love to do in your life (full time blogger – love to read your posts, start accumulating rental properties, etc, etc).
Best of luck!
That’s true. I’ve been building up a pile of passive income and financial assets for the past 10 years. I should have enough experience and resources to just work for myself by growing my various income generating side projects. That’s the best thing about having early retirement goals. Even if you don’t hit your target at least you’ll have options later down the line.
Do you feel lonely working for yourself compared to the camaraderie, team building, co benefits in a company since you experience both sides with all your hustles, income streams, and full time employment?
I’m very introverted and generally keep to myself, even in a working environment. As a result I don’t get lonely when I’m not with others. I can spend a week without any social interaction if I’m obsessed over a book series or video game lol. Sometimes I miss certain individuals if I don’t see them for awhile, but I don’t get lonely when I’m by myself because there’s always some kind of engaging activity to keep me occupied. 🙂
Were u @ the gaming company that starts with C and ends with m?
Excited for the more transparent posts! it will be cool to see as a blog follower for several years.
Also a big inspiration, your style of writing I must say is my favourite of the 30+ authors I follow AND it helps that we live in the same city.
If you ever do a meet up thing it would be great to make a new contact in the city 🙂
We live in a great city, but it can be expensive. Thanks for the kind words. 🙂
Took me by surprise to read that you got laid off out of nowhere. Just goes to show you us employees are expendable to any company. It’s great that you have other incomes to fall back on and receiving a severance for your time at your company. But I’m happy that you bounced back really quickly. I’m thinking you’re working for Amazon! I’ll confirm with ya later. 🙂
There were a lot of people in the unexpected layoff. But that actually helped us in a way. As a government rule, if more than 50 people are laid off by a company, each affected individual has to receive an additional 8 weeks worth of pay on top of the regular severance. So that’s nice. 🙂
Probably because of your note above that a lot of shrinking ops would just keep restructuring, take work/staff away from teams until people leave on their own accord to save on severance, tarnished industry reputation, and all the additional HR procedures.
So I turn 36 today &was hoping to hit 1M net worth but I topped out at 990K and change when I did my month end on March 1st. Nevertheless I’m going to count it is as #win since both my wife and I have gotten paid in the past 10 days that would inch us closer to the goal. Also I’ve got an outstanding real estate investment I haven’t valued as it’s not sold yet so I’m including it in the calculation at cost value.
Happy birthday! Congrats on the net worth milestone. $1 million is just a number, but psychologically it’s big milestone to reach. When I started on the financial independence journey I thought $1 million net worth was enough to retire on. But by the time I’m FI I don’t think that’s enough anymore. But maybe it’s still enough for some. I could be just a matter of different levels of lifestyle expectations.
Congrats! Any thoughts on monetizing your blog to further increase the side hustle?
Nope. I currently make about $30 per month on my blog. I’m set up on a virtual private server which costs $25 a month. I don’t have the expertise, motivation, or time to further monetize online. As long as my blog income covers its hosting cost then I’m happy. 🙂
That’s understandable. Keeping a blog is like having a full-time job especially when you are doing it all by yourself. Glad to know that you keep on blogging for the sake of sharing your knowledge and experiences to us. Kudos!
Congrats on the big severance package! And double congrats on gaining employment at Amazon! Now you can buy Amazon stock at 15% discount from the market price, then able to sell it within three months, basically double your money every three year or so. Hihi
[…] It’s natural to be upset about losing one’s job. But sometimes being laid off is not so bad. When my company unexpectedly downsized in February I became unemployed for the first time in 10 years. Actually I was still working part time, so technically I was just under-employed. I didn’t have any other jobs lined up at the time. But instead of feeling worried or sad I was happy. That’s partly because I have the resources to last me years before having to work full time again. But I also had a pretty good feeling that this change in my career was for the better. That’s why I was optimistic in my earlier post about losing my job. […]
[…] was given a large severance. My employment abruptly ended a couple of years ago. But I already had a contingency plan prepared. My resume was up to date. And […]