Severance

Being laid off is traumatic. There is no other word for it. It is even traumatic for the person who gets to keep their job and inform their co-workers that they are losing theirs. Believe me, I know. I have been in that position before. I remember the first time I had to lay off a worker. She was a Word Processor (this was many years ago when not everyone knew how to do their own word processing) and had been an integral part of my department.

Last year, lawyer Ian Wright told me he believed the way employee benefits had been valued by legal counsel across the country through the decades was inadequate. He intuitively knew that the method used when an employee was let go, or left, had not fully represented the true monetary value of the lost group employee benefit coverage provided by the former employer.

If you have the faintest feeling that you may be receiving an early retirement or severance package from your company soon, don’t wait until it actually happens and start planning right away. Usually when the package is offered the deadline for making a decision is quite tight and this can mean you will be under pressure to make one of the most important financial decisions of your life in the span of a few days.

Unfortunately, this is a key life event that will be happening more frequently in the coming months, and how someone handles it could have a big impact on their future financial wellbeing. At TriDelta Financial, as part of our financial planning work, we work with those who are worried about being laid off, and occasionally after it has happened. Here are 6 key tips that we review with clients in this situation.