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Home > Archive: October, 2016

Archive for October, 2016

Transitioning out of my Job Transition

October 28th, 2016 at 07:00 pm

The one week between my new job offer and starting work this coming Monday is going very fast. It's almost gone and there is so much that I want to do before then. Most of the house stuff is not, alas, going to get done. Now that there is just a weekend left, my main goal with household stuff is to get the filing done and do all the laundry, a full grocery shop, and to do meal prep before Monday. Also call my service for a furnace cleaning so I can ask them about the radiators. One of the three upstairs radiators is heating but not bleeding, and another is bleeding but not really heating. The latter is in my bedroom so I need to make sure I am warm enough before it gets really cold. Or else I'll end up on a mattress on the floor in some other part of the house.

I'm reading a book called "Work Clean" about applying the culinary philosophy of mise-en-place to one's worklife. It's a good read and I am hoping to find or put in place better workflow systems in place from the get-go at mynew position than I had at my last job. The simple organizational things like filing are not difficult to do but they always seem like they can be procrastinated on--and then they get the better of you. Or at least of me. Got to try to prevent that!

This morning I went for what I hope is the very last time ever to LVP, my local networking group for unemployed professionals. I have been involved with this group off and on for at least five years, through 3 or 4 job searches. The group meets every Friday from 10 to noon at the local CareerLink. This time around, I was laid off on a Wednesday and back at LVP on Friday. I made sure to get involved with one of the committees early on, since those who are more involved in the organization tend to have more job hunting success. One also develops closer friendships in the smaller subgroups than in the large group meeting. So it was a bittersweet visit back to the group to give my "landing" speech and say goodbye. I got some nice feedback on the change in me since I first arrived in "mourning mode" until now and thanks for the two training presentations I gave as well as informal tax advice on our listserv. I made three decent friends and several new acquaintances during this transition, and I've put it on my calendar to follow up with the new friends again in a month to see how they are doing. That summarizes the lessons of this group: 1. new jobs are much more likely to come about as a result of networking than through any other method (online resume sites like Monster and Indeed are a black hole; only about 7% of hires occur off of those sites); 2. Following up is crucial--it was following up on a new connection I made at a networking meeting that directly led to my new job; and 3. Giving back by getting involved and contributing to the group is critical, for the success of the group, for your personal success, and for expanding your local network. Being involved with the small subgroups within the group also helped me maintain a positive attitude, and in the end, success in a career transition is largely dependent upon attitude and mindset.

Also this week as part of transitioning, I joined a new gym. I had been going to one which I liked a lot but which was expensive; that contract expired so I joined another gym that is one-third the price, has more equipment and classes, and best yet, is walking distance from my house. I got a special deal that lowered the normal price by joining a weight loss program that includes four sessions with a personal trainer, a meal plan, and a requirement that you go to the gym at least three times a week. As long as you meet with the trainer four times and attend the gym 3x/week, you can then quit at the four month mark OR you can lock in the discounted price for the balance of a year. And if you paid for the first four months up front, there was an additional discount. I took this and ended up paying as much for four months at the new gym as one month at the old one cost me. I've been to three classes so far and have my first personal training session tonight.

One of my successes during this job transition phase was changing my diet and getting going more with exercise again--I'm now nearly 20 pounds lighter than when I was let go just over three months ago. This time I want to do my best to keep the weight off as I get back to full-time work and I am hoping the new gym helps me do that. Since it's very close to both home and work, excuses not to work out are minimized. I will start out by attending the 5:30 pm classes most evenings, but I'd like to move to attending at 5:30 in the morning. I've been trying to wake up earlier to start doing that, but no dice currently. I wake up at 5, turn on the snooze, and then get up 60-120 minutes later. Maybe once we turn back the clocks it will get a little easier.

New Job!

October 22nd, 2016 at 01:44 am

I was offered--and accepted--a new job today. I'm very happy with the offer. It's a fairly similar type of position to what I was doing (tax and financial planning at a wealth management firm), but in a larger company, one with two levels of staff and other people in the same role. I'll be a junior planner to start but there is the possibility of someday rising to a senior role. It's still a fairly small company--I'll be the 23rd employee in total, and the 9th in this office, which is now a satellite office (but which is where the firm started, before the main office was moved to Richmond, VA). The company has an annual company-wide retreat each November, so I'll be in Richmond for the election. I'll be applying for my absentee ballot tomorrow!

My compensation will be 20% less, but the benefits are better, and there's the opportunity for growth, so I'm happy. I'll be very happy to have my medical and dental fully covered!

The office is actually in the building next door to where I WAS working, so it's still just a mile from my house. Now that I've gotten back to walking so much, I'm going to see if I can manage walking into work more often. I never did manage to do it very often at the last job.

I start on Halloween, so I have one week to get organized around the house and do some de-stressing before getting back to a new routine.

I also have to get back to the other jobs I was applying for soon. I had already accepted a holiday retail sales job at a local department store, but I hadn't even gone for training or filled in the employment paper work, so I already notified the manager there. I had three other jobs in process, one a definite offer that was part-time to start, building to full time after I passed some licensing exams, and the others full-time, one in tax and the other another tiny wealth management firm. The job I accepted has more people and better benefits plus was the closest distance, so the decision was pretty clear. This time on the market definitely felt easier than the last time--I didn't start job hunting at all until September 1, so it was less than 8 weeks in all.

L’Shanah Tovah

October 2nd, 2016 at 09:57 pm

A sweet New Year to those who celebrate (and those who celebrate alongside us).

A quick update here on my life:

My debt load is down to about 96K, 10K down from last December and close to where it was when it took a spike up with the HELOC last October. I keep on running projections for myself and am still optimistic that I can wipe out the non-mortgage debt by the time I am 60 (4 more years) and the mortgage by age 65. I don’t think I’ll ever again earn as much as I earned in my last position, but as long as I earn enough to repay my debts and cover my current living expenses, I’ll be ok.

A baseline rule of thumb for retirement income is to have at least 8 to 10 times your annual income in retirement accounts; this provides for a withdrawal rate of 3 to 5%. Now I don’t have 8 times my recent high level salary in my retirement accounts, but I do have 8 times my expected future salary in there, so as long as I don’t have to draw too much down before retirement, I’ll be fine. (Why would I draw money before retirement? Because part of this money is in inherited IRAs, which come with Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). Ideally, pre-retirement, one takes the RMD, pays the taxes at one’s ordinary income rate, then rolls the money into a Roth IRA (so that you don’t have to pay taxes on it again). But these difficult years, I have been using the money to pay down debt at the beginning of the year. When I can also save for retirement through pre-tax deductions at work, these two amounts pretty much even out, but there have been years where it all ends up just being a paydown of debt without sufficient corresponding contributions.)

Bottom line: as long as I earn enough to cover my current expenses, I am fine. Being able to earn enough to save more for retirement would be ideal--I'd love to be able to retire with 12-15 times income in my retirement accounts (and will probably have to work until age 70 to do this)--but as long as I don't have a net withdrawal from the retirement accounts until actual retirement (as long as I am able to save at least the amount I take in mandatory RMDs) I have enough to survive retirement barring any black swan events (and I do have a long-term care insurance policy to cover the most likely black swan).

The biggest question mark in here is health insurance coverage. The COBRA plan offered to me was $762 a month so I instead went on the Health Care Marketplace and got myself a Bronze plan for the rest of the year at $524 a month. I may well go for a Silver plan next year if I don't have a job that provides any insurance, but hopefully I will. The idea of 8 to 10K out of pocket a year for premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance is daunting. Having once owed additional tax for getting a subsidy and then in the end not being eligible for it, I will from now on avoid opting for the subsidy paid in advance (the Premium Tax Credit) and instead take it when I file my tax return after all is said and done.

In terms of my projected debt reduction, I have so far reduced my debt load about 8K this year. It had reached a recent peak last November at 108K and is down to about 96k (roughly 66K mortgage and 30K non-mortgage debt; by January, it should be down to 94K. Then I am hoping to reduce it by 12K a year thereafter. Once the non-mortgage debt is gone, I’ll be able to increase retirement contributions, and I’ll be able to up them even more once the house is paid off.

Presuming of course that I am back at work.

I am feeling hopeful about that at the moment. Things have really picked up the past couple of weeks, and I’m onto second conversations for planning jobs—these would be with insurance rather than investing oriented firms, but I’m actually eager to learn that side of the business. Then there’s a position that would involve being a rotating consultant working out of a staffing firm—I’d be an employee of the staffing firm with benefits, and they would try to keep me working on short-term assignments typically of a few months. They would keep me on the payroll for up to a month after each short-term assignment ended and try to find me another assignment (hopefully going seamlessly from one assignment to the next); if they weren’t able to find me another position within that time frame, it would be back to unemployment. But at least I would be eligible for unemployment and even if the pay would be less working for a staffing firm than it would be working directly as an employee of the client company, someone else is doing the heavy lifting in terms of getting me interviews. And often enough, the client company decides they want to keep you and makes you a more lucrative offer. In addition, I’m interviewing for a part-time holiday season job at a local department store two miles from my house.

Also, I had lunch with one of my former colleagues and learned that they are NOT seeking to replace me, but instead have streamlined and eliminated part of what I was doing and are outsourcing the rest of it, so I can honestly say that my job was restructured out of existence, rather than that I was let go for making mistakes (which is what my boss said to me when he let me go). As I am prone to shame and self-blame, learning this has been very helpful to my state of mind.

On that note, currently reading Brene Brown’s “Rising Strong” about dealing with failures in a resilient fashion and finding it helpful.

Well, I need to get some documents prepared for tomorrow and try to make an Eruv Rosh Hashanah dinner (I’m skipping the service, alas), so—Happy New Year to you !