Archives for unemployment category
19
Nov
Posted in unemployment by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
(As I was thinking of what to write for today, I went through my archives and found a post I wrote but never published. It provides some advice to those who, like me, lost a job in the not too distant past, and aren’t quite sure of where to go next. Hopefully, it’ll help provide some guidance to anyone who finds him- or herself in that unfortunate situation. Good luck, and happy job finding!)
It can happen to the best of us. One day, you’re going along like normal, working steadily at a job you tolerate, if not love; the next, you’re out of a job. You are not alone; even as most economists are calling this latest recession over and are starting to talk about the recovery, unemployment is still near ten percent in the United States. (Even that figure doesn’t account for people who have given up looking for a job or who are working part-time when they want a full-time position.)
If you find yourself unemployed, whether you were downsized, fired, or had your employer go bankrupt, there are several steps you should take to get your financial life back in order:
1) Don’t Panic – Take a page from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and put this phrase prominently in your mind as soon as you get the news about losing your job. At best, panicking will distract you from more productive uses of your time; at worst, it can lead you to make mistakes that will have a negative impact on your employment and finances for years to come. To paraphrase the Nike commercials, just don’t do it!
2) Learn Why You Were Let Go – The fact that you lost a job should be a learning experience. If you were fired with cause, be sure to find out why so you can avoid making the same mistake in the future. If your company was downsizing and eliminated you but not some of your coworkers, you should figure out what they did to make themselves more valuable to the company and attempt to emulate those behaviors at your next place of work. Finally, if your company went under, you can use that experience as a guide to what sort of companies to avoid in the future, or perhaps even reconsider the industry in which you’re working altogether.
3) File for Unemployment – Unless you’ve already got another job waiting, one of the first actions you should take after losing your job is to file for unemployment benefits. Each state has their own rules about how much you can receive in benefits and how long those benefits will last, making it hard to generalize about what you can expect to receive; but every dollar you receive is one less dollar you need to provide from your own pocket. Links to the individual unemployment offices can be found here for each US state and territory.
4) Take Care of Your Health Insurance – One problem with a health care system so heavily dependent on employer provided health care is that when you lose your job, you lose your health insurance coverage, as well. You should look into COBRA coverage to continue with your employer provided plan (although you’ll be picking up the entire bill now, making it significantly more expensive). You could also opt for getting health insurance on your own, which might be the less expensive option if you are young and reasonably healthy. Either way, making sure you are covered and don’t have to worry about a potential health crisis on top of your job loss should be a top priority.
5) Review Your Finances – If you don’t already have a good handle on your finances, now doing so is not a good idea, it’s a great one. Look over your assets, from your retirement investments to any property you own, so you know what resources you have available. Review all the sources of income you have, including your spouse’s job (assuming he or she isn’t in the same boat as you), your unemployment, income from rental property, and investment dividends, so you know how much you have available each month. Also go through your expenses, from mortgage/rent, utilities, and food to insurance (don’t forget your new health care costs). Then, try to cut your expenses as much as possible; at the very least, you need to be sure that your new, likely lower income will be enough to cover your basic needs for the foreseeable future.
6) Decide What to Do Next – These first five steps have been pretty universal; everyone who loses their job (or retires, for that matter) will have to handle these issues at one point or another. Where to go from here depends on what your life situation looks like; here are a few suggestions regarding how to start the next chapter of your life:
- Early Retirement: Before you get too excited, this is generally only possible for those who are near retirement age anyway or who have been very aggressive savers. Still, it’s worthwhile to take a look at your financial situation and see if you have enough in assets to sustain your lifestyle. Be very, very, VERY conservative in your estimates if you follow this route; it will be much harder to get back into the work force years from now if your money runs out than to jump back in while you are still relatively young and your skills are up to date.
-Find Another Job: The option most of us will have to take, finding another position to keep bringing in money. There’s enough advice on finding jobs to fill several blogs, let alone a single blog entry, so here’s the best thing to keep in mind: networking works. Stay in touch with friends from your last job (especially those who are still working in your industry), reach out to any organizations in your field, and ask friends, family, neighbors, and people at your local house of worship for any help or suggestions they can offer; you never know who could have a lead on a job you would love.
-Reinvent Yourself: For many people, a job loss is the opportunity to attempt something new and very different from their previous occupation. If you weren’t happy in your last job, why not try something different? There are many options, from going back to school for a new degree (either an advanced degree in your field or something from a different field entirely) to attempting to start your own business. If you’re willing to take a bit of risk, there are plenty of options available.
There; some tips to help you get through a job loss with as few problems and difficulties as possible. Hopefully, you’ll never have the need to put them into practice.
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2
Mar
Posted in unemployment by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
So, if you’ve been watching the US Senate, lately, you’re probably well aware of the latest drama, with Jim Bunning attempting a one-man filibuster to stop the payment of unemployment benefits. Although he recently backed down, the reaction to his stand brought out some interesting discussions about politics, budgets, and spending.
Another issue that was brought to surface by this debate is whether unemployment benefits are even good for society as a whole. The benefits are that it provides a safety net for those who find themselves out of work, enabling them to take time to find another job of their choice, usually in the same field for about the same rate of pay.
Unemployment benefits seek to keep us out of here...
The downside, though, is that such benefits may actually aggravate the level of unemployment. If you don’t have to work to get money, after all, aren’t you going to be less motivated to do so? Nina Easton, among others, notes that studies have found that the unemployed people tend to stay unemployed as long as the benefits keep coming, using the benefits as an excuse to put off taking lower paying jobs to survive.
So, who’s right? It’s hard to say exactly how unemployed people are affected by having unemployment benefits available; there are currently millions of people out of work, and as with any group, different people will react in different ways. Luckily (or unluckily, I suppose) I happen to have a perfect subject to gauge just how unemployment benefits can distort incentives right here: me.
A Case Study in Myself
Yes, in the past year or so, I’ve found myself out of work on two separate occasions. (Technically, three, although the third was for a brief period after I ended a temp position but before I started another one, so I didn’t take unemployment benefits, and thus, I’m not counting that.) As a result, I’ve been collecting unemployment benefits for much of the last year, so much so that I’ve actually exhausted the normal amount of benefits available to me and am only still receiving unemployment due to the many extensions that have been passed over the past few years. (Just like the one Jim Bunning was filibustering against, to tie everything back in.)
So, how did unemployment benefits affect me and my desire to gain a job? Well, the critics of unemployment do have a point; I HAVE been pickier about possible jobs than I might be otherwise. Since my most recent job loss in November, I’ve been focused more on trying to regain a job at my previous level of employment, rather than ‘settling’ for a lower income job as I might have been forced to without unemployment. From an economic stand point, the existence of unemployment has demotivated me in my job search, exactly what critics fear would happen.
HOWEVER, that’s not the whole story. While it’s true that I haven’t been working in a paid position during that time, I haven’t exactly been idle during this period, either. In addition to continuing to search for a job in my field of study, I’ve also taken the GRE in preparation for going to grad school, continued the work on this very blog, and looked into other possibilities for making money outside a typical nine-to-five position. What is often left out of the debate over unemployment benefits is exactly this kind of transformation; having a period of time after losing your job to re-evaluate your life and make changes for the better (without needing to take any job that will have you just to put a check in your account and food on the table) is one of the greatest advantages of unemployment as it currently exists.
(While we’re on the subject, I’m a little leery of the argument that society as a whole is better off if I take a low-paying job, at least in the short run. Yes, in the long run, my work will help the company to expand, provide money for me to spend or invest, and generally help the economy to keep growing; far be it from me to argue with any of that. However, in the short run, I’m shorting myself of time to building my skills or work on an entrepreneurial endeavor, taking a job that could be filled by someone else, and causing the company I’m working for to spend money training someone who’ll leave at the first opportunity that presents itself.)
Even with the possible demotivational effects, I tend to think that the pros of unemployment benefits far outweigh the cons. Yes, they might have the adverse effect of keeping unemployment higher that it might be otherwise, but the advantages offered to the unemployed more than make up for that fact. At least, they do in the case of this one guy I know…
What do you think about unemployment benefits? Are the cons enough to outweigh the pros? Is it better to encourage people to take a job, any job? Do you think that employment status makes it hard to think about this issue objectively? (I.E., I’m currently unemployed and like the unemployment system.)
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3
Feb
Posted in unemployment by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
If you’ve been unemployed for an extended period of time, had frequent periods of unemployment, or simply held jobs that didn’t meet your needs or desires, you’ve probably spent a lot of your time job hunting. I know that in the time since I graduated from college, that’s been a major part of my daily schedule.
If you’re like me, though, you’ve probably had periods where you just got tired of the constant searching for a job. After all, job hunting can be just as hard as many jobs, without the perks of health care or being paid. So, how do you move past these periods of no motivation and keep up the task of job hunting until you find new employment? Here are a few suggestions to help you keep or regain that job hunting fire:
Just like job hunting, only with more shooting
1) Be sure to take breaks: You might be tempted to spend every waking hour looking for a new job, using as much time as you can to find somewhere new to work. Unfortunately, this sort of approach is counterproductive; while you might be able to keep up this pace for a short time, you’re likely to burn out if you don’t get a job in a few weeks, leaving you frazzled and unmotivated. Rather than risk this sort of fatigue, limit how much time you spend job hunting each week. Only do your job hunting during certain hours of the day (between nine and five perhaps, just as if you were working), take regular breaks from your computer to rest your eyes, and try taking a few days off each week. As long as you are still putting in plenty of job hunting time, a short reprieve every now and then won’t have much impact on your prospects.
2) Try a different search method: A common source of job hunting fatigue is the repetition of doing the same job hunting technique over and over again. If your job hunting methods are few, it’s going to be much harder to keep motivated over the weeks (or even months) that it can finally find a decent source of employment. Rather than becoming a one-trick pony, try a variety of job hunting methods; break up emailing resumes with making follow up phone calls, or spend some time talking with other unemployed individuals to learn the latest job hunting techniques. While we’re on the subject of other people…
3) Join professional groups: Joining professional groups can give you several advantages on the job hunting front. You’ll have something more to add to your resume, you might have access to additional job hunting resources like group specific job hunting websites, and of course, the ability to connect with other people in your field to share ideas and job hunting advice. If nothing else, it can give your people with whom you can vent when the job hunting gets tough.
4) Keep your job qualifications up to date: It’s hard enough to find a job in a slow job market when your skills are up-to-date and you are at the peak of your employ-ability, but try to do so when your skills are out of date, and it could be impossible. Your best hope is to keep training regularly, going back to school for more education or attempting to boost your skills during your spare time. Besides giving you new things to add to your resume, it’ll help you to expand your mind (a good goal in itself) and provide you with something to do while hunting for another job.
5) Look into other job possibilities: If you’ve ever wanted to do something different with your life,a period of unemployment provides you with the opportunity to retrain and turn your career path around. You’ll have the time to take classes, study up on new technology, and get any other training you will need for your desired profession. It’s an opportunity to remake your life if you don’t like the current direction in which it is going. If you don’t want to completely change your life, unemployment is still a good time to try some new things:
6) Take up a new hobby or part-time job: Having free time during unemployment gives you the opportunity to explore your other interests. You could take up a new hobby (I like blogging, as you can probably tell, but to each their own), spend more time working on your current hobbies, or try to find a way to turn your hobby into a source of money. Goodness knows, there are enough freelancing and craft selling sites that it can prove pretty easy to monetize a variety of hobbies.
If you can’t monetize your hobby, there are alternate sources of money in the short term; you can get a part time job. (Note: if you are currently receiving unemployment benefits, you need to be careful with part time work; be sure you know whether working will disrupt your ability to receive unemployment, and if so, be sure you take only jobs that pay more than you are currently getting in benefits.) Admittedly, it might be hard to get a job in your preferred field; but you aren’t (necessarily) trying for a whole new career, just getting a part time job to help make ends meet. You can get some money, and perhaps even remind you of why you like your previous job.
There you go, several ways to break up the boredom of job hunting. Good luck in your job hunt, and hopefully, you find something soon.
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9
Nov
Posted in unemployment by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
Unfortunately, today I learned that I am being terminated from my current (well, previously current) position. I’m not going to get into all the details, both because it’s still a bit early for me to talk about it and because I’m not sure what rules are in play regarding disclosure of my job and related activities in a public forum. Personally, I’m a bit surprised and taken back by the whole situation. It happened so quickly; less than twenty-four hours ago, I was working, attempting to do my best, and now, it’s back to the unemployment line.
Sorry if this post comes off as melodramatic and ‘oh, poor me’, but that’s how I’m feeling right at this moment. Come tomorrow, I promise to be back in full swing with more interesting (and if I can manage it, funny) articles about personal finance and money management. For now, though, I just some time to collect my thoughts and try to figure out what to do next. Have a wonderful day, everyone, and if you can spare a few thoughts, prayers, or well wishes, right now I really could use them. Stay well.
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