Last August, when I bought my engagement ring, I also bought this beautiful diamond necklace for $900. I patted myself on the back for getting some Christmas shopping out of the way while it was still summer.
I just returned that.
Elsewhere in the overspending department, I just dropped $10,000 on my student loans. Yay! I’m debt-free! Except now I wish I still had a 4% interest loan.
The goverment is sending me out to LA for a week, so I figure, hey, I’ll pop over to Vegas for the weekend before coming home. Flight booked. Hotel booked. It’s all paid for. Then I’m fired.
My flight school gives a nice bonus if you write big checks, so two weeks ago, I figured “Hey, I’m going to spend the money eventually anyway. I’ll give them $2,000 and get the bonus.” That’s a month of staying alive that I just sacrificed.
So I’ll be telling the fiancee that we might have to postpone the honeymoon because we’re broke but at the same time, vacationing in Vegas and flying planes around. It makes it hard to look her in the eye.
You’re being laid off, not fired, though. Fired is when they make you leave because you did something bad, or you didn’t do something you were supposed to. You didn’t do anything to cause this to happen, and there’s nothing you could have done differently to prevent it.
This does make you better off than a lot of people in the same position as you, job-wise. Having no income and a continuously mounting debt is not fun.
See if you can get a refund from the flight school if you explain the situation. I’m sure this is not the first time they’ve heard a story like this. Hey, the worst thing they can say is “no”, and then you’re no worse off than you are now.
Explain to your fiancee that you paid for those things when you thought your contract was going to be renewed. Those aren’t entirely unreasonable things to do, if you have a steady source of income, and she will probably realize that. If she won’t be reasonable about it, well, do you really want to be married to someone who won’t or can’t be reasonable? Bear in mind that she’s not likely to totally change her attitude about finances after the wedding. Finances are definitely in the top five sources of conflict in marriages. You’re getting a preview here of what an important aspect of your marriage will be like. Don’t ignore it. This is way bigger than a question of what your honeymoon will be like or when it will be.
Let her in on your finances. You should not keep financial secrets from your spouse (that’s a recipe for all kinds of trouble, both in finances and in the relationship), so you should be disclosing your finances after the wedding, anyway. If she’s like most American women who are about to get married, she has lived on her own and handled her own finances for a few years. I doubt she’s totally clueless when it comes to financial matters (if she is, or if her way of dealing with finances is totally incompatible with yours, that is not a good sign for your marriage).
This has happened to me, only at the time, we were given until January 30 “and if you want to leave before then, we will understand.”
They waited until the week after Thanksgiving so we could all think we still had something to be thankful for, I guess. There are worse stories in here. Also, the people I worked for at the time were so incompetent that we actually got to keep working there until the end of March, tying up loose ends (result of a merger).
My husband and I got married, bought a house together, then both lost our jobs and paid our new mortgage with credit cards for a while. You’re in it together or you aren’t - before the wedding is a good time to find out.
Thankfully, my wonderful fiancee is extremely supportive. The first thing she said was “There’s an opening for _____. I can apply for that.” And while she doesn’t understand tax returns, IRAs, 401ks, and the stock market, she knows that buying the big package of toilet paper is better than the small one and there’s no such thing as a “had to have it” purse.
Speaking of purses, I came home one day a year ago to find her cooking dinner and crying her eyes out as soon as she saw me. I, of course, comforted her and asked what was wrong. She starts rambling on and on about how her strap broke on her purse and she didn’t have one and there was this one in the store and it was perfect and so…she, she, she, she BOUGHT it! With…the joint money! And she’s so sorry, and she’s evil and she’ll pay for it and she’s a terrible wife.
I said it was all OK and I asked how much it cost. Her whispered, sobbing response: “Thi…thi…thirty dollars.” :p:p:p:p It was one of those times where you don’t want to laugh too fast in case you hurt their feelings. So yeah, we’re financially a good couple.
It’s not that I think she’ll be upset with me. She knows this isn’t anybody’s fault but it’s…my job, y’know? It’s what I contribute to the household. I’m the breadwinner. I provide. I put food on our table. I keep a roof over our heads. That’s my job. And now, I’m not doing that. So what does that say about me, as a man and as a husband? I feel like a deadbeat, and I haven’t even left the job yet! That’s crazy, right?
Chessic, you want to feel like an equitable partner and that’s an honorable thing to want. It beats the hell out of the alternative.
I was filling out a job application a few days before Xmas at the apartment complex I lived in and listened as a maintenance worker w/ over a decade on the job AND a free apartment for him, his wife and 3 kids got fired for ‘lying on’ his application. The complex was under new management, everyone had to reapply for their jobs and when his old high school was called they found he’d dropped out b/c a credit shy of graduating w/ his class. He then got his GED. You can imagine the scene he made, livid as anyone should be in that situation. I froze in place. After he finally left I heard the new manager tell her admin, “That’s one less Christmas bonus to give out.”
I’m female, but not domestic. And can I ever relate to this. This is probably the worst thing about my current spell of unemployment. We’re not in desperate straits financially, not even close, but I feel like a total deadbeat for not contributing to the household by having a job. I’m no good at housecleaning, to the point where I don’t see dirt until the situation is pretty desperate. I’m a decent cook, but Mr. Neville is a better one. If I can’t clean house, I feel like I need a job to contribute to the household.
So far, I tell myself that I don’t have a job because I can’t find one, and that that’s different from not having a job because I don’t want one.
Chessic, Anne, each of you is married (or will be) to someone else because that other person sees something wonderful in you. For all your flaws (and everyone has them), you’re important to them, and they value you. Financial bumps in the road can be hell to go through, but hang on to what’s important, and that’s the other person in your life. And of course you should hope for better times, and do what you can to make them happen. Good luck!
Well, it’s time to get on the plane to LA. I’ll be incommunico til Monday but feel free to keep this on the front page for me
I have a nice offer from one company, but the government is dragging their feet on approving it. It’s been months and it’s supposed to take 2-3 weeks. My recruiter called and “cajoled” them. Now I’m at the top of the list. Looks like I’ll be interviewing some time next week
When I worked for DirecTV’s DSL division, they cut off the phones and network, and some scary lookin suits gathered the herd into a large area of the call center. They said we were closing business within the hour, we had that hour to pack up our things and get the fuck out. It was a December 15th, I believe. That was a depressing Christmas. I wish I’d stolen more office supplies and that sweet Dell workstation, but noooooo. I got a job within 2 months, I know you will too.
I am in a sort of similiar situation. I am a contractor working on a program that is dying…slowly. They put off making a final decision until April of next year, but the writing is clearly on the wall. But my contracting company is not letting me look for other internal openings, because hey, there are still billable hours on the contract! Meanwhile the work has pretty much dried up. I come in everyday with the anticipation that the government sponser is going to tell us we are not longer needed, but it hasn’t happened yet. Meanwhile I try to look busy and can feel myself getting stupider.
The sad thing is, I am getting paid a really good salary right now to do almost nothing. Your tax dollars at work!
A couple of jobs ago, an employer did this to me. The parent company - a very large consulting organization - had acquired a small, specialized regional consulting shop with the intention of opening up additional satellite locations of this regional business. They established a location in my town in September, hired staff (including me), and started trolling for customers. Thanks to poor marketing, lackluster leadership, and a solid kick in the balls from a bursting tech bubble, we failed to land a single client by December. Mid-December, the boss at my location took us out for a fantastic holiday lunch and mentioned that there would be a staff meeting in a couple of days. Meeting rolled around, and the boss announced that the parent company was eliminating most of the satellite locations. Corporate made a half-hearted effort to find people new jobs in the parent company and let us use corporate resources to job-hunt for the next couple weeks.
Take some comfort, no matter now small, in knowing that you were laid off, not fired. You, personally, didn’t do anything to be out of a job. It’s possible that your employer was essentially laid off as well (been there, too - contract was up for renewal, a competitor submitted a more attractive bid, which the state was obligated to choose).
Turns out, the government decided to restructure itself. Our program got transferred to a division that has no money. I guess it’s new, or something. So once they tell us that everyone’s laid off as of Christmas, a bunch of people bought plane tickets home, cancelled their leases, etc. Today, they say that there “may be an extension” into January so we’re not fired during the holidays.
If that happens, I anticipate maybe 10% of the workforce actually showing up, and they’ll/we’ll probably just watch movies all day or something.
First time I got laid off it was a RIF and they told us the Thurs. after Thanksgiving. Had to clean out my desk and leave that day. Gave us each a blank voucher for car service to take us home. That was from NYC and I live in NJ. Boy! Was I ever tempted to tell the driver California or someplace when I got in the car. Anyway, the timing was that it put a damper on Christmas but at least I hadn’t spent any $$$ yet. More people got laid off about a month later. It was better to be in the first batch; the others got really squeezed with work and got dumped anyway.
Next time I was freelancing at a place where things were getting slow. I’d been there 18 months. They told me first thing in the a.m. as I got back from a week’s vacation (I was taking an art class for fun, not spending a lot on an extravagant vaca). They wanted me to leave right then. I whined and whined so much about how they made me come in that day for nothing and how they could just told me over the phone, etc. that they paid me for that day AND gave me 2 weeks severance as if I were a regular employee, let me stay until the afternoon (people wanted to take me to lunch) and didn’t bother me when I was printing copies of all my recent projects for my portfolio.
THIS time, the parent company was closing all the locations of my division and the parent company had/has a hiring freeze. We got 3 month’s notice. It still wasn’t enough to find a new job due to the way the economy is. I’m just hitting 18 months out. Yeah, it’s not easy but I’ll get through it…
I got told of my impending redundancy up a mountain in Andora, over the phone, with my new born son and 18mth old daughter by my side.
Rather sharpens the senses somewhat.
I actually felt sorry for my boss who is and was a decent man and felt terrible about having to call. But as others have said, you do need to know as soon as possible.
Chin up Chessic, smart and willing people do find jobs.
