Coping with sudden redundancy from work - a Limerick perspective

A client of mine contacted me recently because he was worried about a friend of his.
There were a couple of functions his friend had missed in recent weeks and ordinarily he would be the first at them but he was a no show which was strange. And he gave no excuses and told no one and it just wasn’t like him. He was an outgoing and friendly individual so this was out of character.
And some of his friends thought they knew what the problem was and to them it was a pretty obvious one.

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You see about seven weeks ago their friend was made redundant.
And he was only with that particular employer a short time.
Before them, he had another brief stint with someone else. So, he had two employers in the last six months. But before them he was with the same employer for about 15 years.
What his friends know is that there were different reasons why his tenure with his last two employers were so short. The first let him go because of economic reasons. They had to close down, they had no other choice.
The most recent exit was a bit of a blame game from their friend and the company. He said the job wasn’t what he thought or was told it was going to be and they said they expected more of him.
Regardless of who was right or wrong, he was now unemployed again.
And he shut down when anyone asked anything more about the job.
When he was asked why he wasn’t at those recent functions, he said he just wasn’t feeling great and was still grieving the loss of his father who died four years ago. And I have no doubt he was because I think when bad things happen we compound them further by remembering other events in our life that had a devastating impact on us.
But I think it was more the recent loss of his job or more like jobs, that was the cause of his recent radio silence.
His friend asked me how he should approach him with some advice, so I was happy to help and I was going to tell him what advice he could pass on to his friend if he was willing to accept it.
And financial advice is my core competency and area of expertise so what I was going to tell him was from a financial perspective only. However, there was some non-financial advice I was going to give him as well. Things that I know worked for other people who were in similar situations.
And in times like this it’s really a case of taking on board advice that you like and feel has meaning to you and leaving alone the stuff that doesn’t.
Okay, for the rest of this article I’m going to talk as if I was in front of his friend giving one to one advice, but what I’m going to say applies to anyone who has lost their job for whatever reason.

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So, here goes.
My first piece of advice is to know your numbers
If you don’t know how much you’re spending each month, then I’d say find out and find out quick because the basis of a financial plan starts with estimating how much you’ll spend during the time you’re unemployed.
And you want to know the exact amount, don’t guess. Spend some time on this because it’s important. Start by looking at your fixed costs i.e. mortgage, rent, food, loan repayments, insurances etc. and then look at what your discretionary spending is and they’re the ones you need to focus on and either eliminate or reduce, because they’re not a priority spend.
Hopefully you being out of work will be a temporary one and before you know it, you’ll be able to go back to what was your normal spending before you lost your job, but until that happens you need to track your spending and keep your outgoings down to a minimum.
The next thing you need to know is, what your runway number is.
And your runway number is the length of time you’re existing savings will last for, until you run out of money. And knowing how much you spend each month is critical in finding out what your runway number is.
So, if your savings were say €30,000 and the amount you spend each month over whatever other income you have i.e. job seekers benefit/partners income is say €3,000, then you have 10 months before you need to find that new job.
Okay, next thing you may need to do is speak with your creditors.
If you’re worried that you may not be able to meet future mortgage or personal loan repayments, you may want to make contact with your creditors and tell them what has happened.
But I wouldn’t be in a rush to make contact with them either. You might be bringing undue stress upon yourself. Once you know what your new adjusted outgoings are and what your runway number is, you’ll be able to see that you’re fine for say 10 months.
I’d say the trigger to reach out to them is when you have four or five months left on your runway. That’s when I’d contact them to tell them about your situation and they’ll then be able to come up with options for you i.e. go on interest only for a period or even pause your repayments.
Okay I’m now going to give you some non-financial advice and listen to what I’m going to tell you.
It’s easy to beat yourself up and blame yourself for everything that has happened in the last six months but all you’re doing is knocking your own self confidence and you don’t want that to happen while you’re looking for a new job.
So, think of this job loss as a setback, and it’s only going to be a temporary one and you’re going to learn from what’s happened in the last six months.
And you’re not alone.
There are people losing their jobs every day. They are not very well publicised and only news of mass redundancies tend to make the headlines but there are people losing their jobs every day from small, medium sized and very big companies.
So, you and about 143,000 other people are currently unemployed so you’re not unique.
And that shouldn’t give you much comfort but it’s good to know that you are not alone.
You’ve got to accept your current reality so rather than dwelling on your loss too much and for too long and no matter how unfair you think what has happened to you or how you could have prevented it from happening, you need to accept the situation and move on.
So, starting from tomorrow your new job is to find a new job and networking is going to help you, and believe me when I say it could be the key to finding your new job.
You see ,I’ve heard that as much as 80% of jobs are filled through networking. There’s a hidden job market that you may not be aware of and a lot of employers depend on networking themselves and word of mouth to get their hiring news out.
Which means you could be focusing your time and energy looking at only 20% of what jobs are actually available and you’re missing out on the 80% that are available through networking.
So, get the word out, you’re available for work. Tell your friends, family, ex-work colleagues and don’t be embarrassed or shy about doing this and you know what, they’ll only be delighted to help.
And update your LinkedIn profile and if you haven’t got one get one and get help putting it together if you’re unsure about what you should include or exclude.
And focus on what you can control.
And what I mean by this is you can’t control how fast someone will reply to an email or telephone call you made, you just can’t. But what you can control is updating your CV, updating or creating a LinkedIn profile, speaking with recruitment agencies to see what’s available that’s a good fit to what you’re really good at and look at maybe starting some courses that could improve your job hunt. Now is your chance to upskill or reskill and prospective new employers will really be impressed that you are being so proactive.
And this might seem like a weird thing to say but don’t let a job search consume you either. It’s hugely important, of course it is, but you increase your chances of getting another job if you are mentally and physically in a good place.
Which means getting into a daily routine just like when you were working. Get up at the same time in the morning and end your day at a particular time as well.
I’ll leave you with this.
Please don’t shy away from your friends or your family.
It’s an easy thing to do because of the embarrassment you might be feeling but no one is going to judge you. They are your biggest support group and they only want good things for you so let them in and let them help you.

Liam Croke is MD of Harmonics Financial Ltd, based in Plassey. He can be contacted at liam@harmonics.ie or www.harmonics.ie