If You Were Unemployed, But Had A Hefty Savings Of 10K, In What Ways Would You Approach Your Job Search Differently?
If You Were Unemployed, But Had A Hefty Savings Of 10K, In What Ways Would You Approach Your Job Search Differently?
The point is not to chill and just burn through the savings and not work. How would having that much money saved, change the way you look for jobs?
-
10k is "a hefty savings"? That money is gone very quickly if you have a family and a mortgage, etc.
I don't think 10k would change anything, I would still need to hurry to get a job.
-
Ok in your case, let's say you have 80K in savings. How would that change the way you go about looking for a job?
-
I would then take time to find a remote company which to some degree would align with my moral values. I would not need to rush to keep working in the automobile industry, but instead would try to get in somewhere where they would need my experience and work with renewable energy or smart grids or something similar. For that I would probably need to spent some time doing some courses on that topic and educate myself so I'm employable. The 80k would give me that possibility.
(My case is rather specific that I also need a work visa sponsor to be able to stay in Korea, so that makes it much more difficult.)
-
I had this. What i did was consider what the best title/type of company i could get with respect to career growth and turned down interviews for everything that wasnt that.
I came VERY close to changing my search parameters after about three months of looking with no firm offer. I landed one of the ones i wanted. Pay isnt on the upper end for the title but its still the title and a large company.
If i had to rush i probably would have taken a much shittier role with far less growth opportunity.
I am a highly trained professional with 10 years experience though so ymmv.
-
Ok in your case, let's say you have 80K in savings.
Half a million would be about the point where it would change my ways.
With only 5 million I would stop working for money.
-
Ok, now we're talking. That will get me through a couple of years if managed well, so I would have the luxury to be choosy about my next job, get multiple offers (hopefully) and not have to sacrifice on having fun while looking. Still, I'd be planning to get a new job in 2-3 months max, ideally.
-
The problem is that unless you had enough investments to be generating an income you can live on, all a neat egg does is focus your mind on the fact that it is diminishing and that could be used as a deposit for a house or just a rainy day fund.
What it might do is encourage you to get something lower paying just to pay the bills while you are waiting for the dream job or you might be able to undertake an unpaid apprenticeship as long as there's a solid job offer at the end of it.
-
-
-
I hate that it's true, but $10K is not a hefty savings anymore.
That's not to say most people have $10k saved.
That's just to say that $10k would get me through like 4 months, maximum.
And Id be hungry.
-
It would get me through less than one month
Less than 10k savings would mean I’d be basically on the streets if I lose my job
-
People downvoting have never lived a different country, or city, than where they were raised ... seriously, cost of living varies wildly. 10k/month in expenses with a family, house (mortgage, insurance, maintenance, etc), cars (gas, maintenance, insurance, etc) travel / vacations, you name it, is not unreasonable.
-
-
-
10k hefty savings lmao
-
I would be broke in about 4 months with $10K in reserve if I dialed back everything to the bare minimum. It would make my job search extremely urgent.
-
Hefty savings? $10k? Is that us dollars? 10k is not much, that would not last more than a few months at most for most people
-
$10k is not very much money to live on where rent alone is $2000~2500. I think if I had $100k I would be very picky. Or better yet, I would try to start my own business.
-
Yeah Im jealous of OP that in their area that's "hefty" in my area that would cover maybe 2 months expenses if you were being frugal, certainly it wouldn't be "restart your career savings"
-
-
Everyone in the comment section is just talking about how much 10K is to them and completely ignoring OPs question lol smh
-
How much 10k is to you is relevant to the question. For some of us that's a month, for some that's six months. It makes a difference to how you respond.
-
Congratulations! You've received the lemdit helpful award!
-
Appreciate you calling that out thank you ❤️
-
Me, me, me haha. If you have the money to live nicely for awhile, spend time finding out what jobs youre really passionate about and go for those. Even if your under qualified it cant hurt to apply. Sometimes they can offer entry jobs to get were you want to be. If you already know what you want to do, spend some time updating/improving your resume and see if you can get a a few companies to fight over you. There's a lot of power being able to walk away from the negotiation table if you're qualified and its just not the right time.
-
-
-
I have more savings than that and I don't think it's enough. Those are rookie numbers, gotta pump those up.
-
hefty savings of 10k
That is not a "hefty savings."
You want to have enough savings for about 3 months expenses, for just such an occasion, so I'd just do my normal job hunt here
-
Oof 10k
-
That's what I was thinking. $10,000 for me is about 2-3 months of expenses. Of course, if I lost my job and knew things were going to be tight, I'd cut back on spending. I could probably get that $10,000 to stretch to 4-5 months, but it still wouldn't make me relax my job search much.
Now, if I had $100,000 in the bank, I'd be quite a bit more relaxed in my job search. Give me $1,000,000 in the bank and I'd question if I even needed to find a job. $10,000,000 in the bank and I'd retire and live off of the interest.
-
-
What everyone in this comment section calling out "10k isn't much" are failing to understand is that over 60% of the USA live paycheck to paycheck and don't have any savings to speak of. Extend that to the world and you would go pale.
Check your privilege and get educated.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-to-paycheck-6-in-10-americans-lendingclub/
https://www.lendingtree.com/debt-consolidation/paycheck-to-paycheck-survey/
-
...everyone's point isn't "wow you suck for having only 10k in savings". Everyone calling out the OP is saying "in my country/area cost of living is very high and with 10K in savings I would be in a bit of a panic".
Also telling people to "get educated" while they react to the US cost of living being out of control just makes you sound like a dick.
-
There are people earning 10k/month who are living paycheck to paycheck, so for them 10k saving is just one month
-
Ideally you want 3 months of living your life with 0 cuts to be "safe" so 10k is not enough to fundamentally change how most job searches would go.
-
You can link all the articles you want, but I challenge you to check apartments near you and try to find the cheapest one.
-
Bruh, I live in Seattle. The cheapest ones are still in the $1000s for minimal sq/footage. My place is $1700/m w/parking at 640 ft.
Average people who work in service or labor can't afford to live here if they have a family. Commuting on 90 or I-5 or 99 is always a slog, so living outside of the city incurs massive time and effort, which aren't sunk costs. Gas is $5-6/gal here. Public transit is better than most places, but still bad. And we haven't even brought up the homeless dilemma, rampant drug use, and property crime.
Most cities are like this now. Dallas/Ft Worth are cess pools. Miami is a mess. Tampa, SFO, LA, NYC, and so on... If people don't see it, it's because they're ignoring it or are in a bubble.
-
-
Your point is valid, but LendingClub’s numbers are bullshit. People keep quoting that press release like it’s science.
LendingClub’s business is in person to person loans (they act as a middle man between the investors and borrowers). Person to person loans are risky because the kind of people taking them out tend to be desperate and have no money, so unless everything goes right, they end up defaulting on the loan.
LendingClub puts out this bullshit article inflating the number of people “living check to check” to try and make it seem like their person to person loans are less risky. They want you to think you’re lending money to people with a 6 figure income could just sell one of their Teslas to pay you back, not people who took out the loan because their 1991 Chevy Corsica needed repairs and without it they can’t get to their job at Burger King.
-
Yea seriously thank you. I'm like mind blown that ppl don't think that's a lot of money. 10K would last me almost 2 years not working. I'm single, no dependents, my rent is cheap and I own my car. What's the deal here man? Why's everyone pissing on 10k as chump change? That's a lot of money man
-
That would last you two years of not working???? That wouldn't last me a year of rent (maybe 6 months or less), never mind other expenses like food. I don't even live in an overly expensive place like California or NY. I also don't have any extravagant expenses. What in the world place do you live in with rent that cheap?
The insane levels of post-COVID inflation has been a real removed, though. Prior to COVID, that would have been around a year's worth of rent (but still not enough for other things like rent and utilities). But everything has skyrocketed since. But even pre-COVID, I can't imagine $10k being two years of total living expenses.
-
Cost of living isn't the same everywhere and perspective is relative.
Rent in my area averages around 3k USD/mo for fairly plain arrangements. Between that and "unavoidable" costs like utilities, you'd get 3-4 months max on that amount, even living frugally. It really isn't that much for a lot of people, even if that amount might be to you.
-
Don't blame the responders, look at your question. If what you really want to know is "if you had 2 years worth of savings to live on", ask that. The low end average cost of living in the US anyway is $2,500 a month, so 10k is 4 months of living expenses. That's also about the average length of a job search.
-
I used to say 10k is enough to solve one major problem in my life and that was it. Enough to bailout a relative, enough to move across the country for a new job, enough to rebuild after a fire/flood, enough to buy a reasonable car in cash. 10k is not just money, 10k is a force in its own right. It represents one thing that should destroy my life or someone around me life nd make it go away.
Many years ago my wife wanted to finish her degree and she made 2k a month. I gave her my ten thousand and told her to focus on studies for five months. Worked out.
With inflation it is probably 15k now.
-
I don't buy it. Not in the US, at least. Even if that was exclusively spent on rent alone, that would put it at $417/month. The only way you're doing that is if you own (at least bought before the real estate spikes since ~2017) or you have a personal relationship with the landlord and are getting well below market rates. Or if you live in a van down by the river.
And that's even before things like food, insurance, etc.
-
My apartment, which is about 22 square meters, costs me the equivalent of 1300 dollars a month. Add in a electricity, food, Public transit card, mobile data, and other small necessary things, and it's at least 1800 dollars a month. And that's without any extra expenses like fun things.
Which would, of course, last under 6 months. That's not a lot of time. I'd need to start a job search immediately to be safe.
-
You said in another comment that your rent was $800 a month, two years of that is $19,200. Rent is (supposed to be) about 1/3 of your living costs, so that would be $2400 per month. You're good for a little over 4 months, more if you live very lean.
Average cost of groceries per person per month in Texas is $289. Let's say you're thrifty and only spend $200. https://www.sofi.com/cost-of-living-in-texas/
Gas has averaged about $3.10 over the last year. https://ycharts.com/indicators/texas_retail_price_of_gasoline_monthly I don't know how much gas your car uses or how much you drive, but lets say you drive a prius and get 50mpg. Most people drive about 1200 miles per month ( https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-miles-driven-per-year/ ) let's say you only drive 1/4 of that, so 300 (75 miles per week). Not bad, only $18.60 for gas. Minimum legally required car insurance in Texas (gets you nothing if your car is damaged) is $47 per month (https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-insurance-in-texas/).
Average utilities in Texas (including internet) is $402 per month, again you're thrifty so we'll halve that at $200 per month.
So, if you buy absolutely nothing besides bare minimum groceries, gas, car insurance and utilities (I'm assuming you're on no-cost Medicaid here), that's $465 per month + $800 rent is $1265. You're good for almost 8 months. Not a dire as some here are claiming, but also not two years. If you lived like the "average Texan" it would be about 2.5 months.
-
My condolences for your situation but the reality is that it simply isn't a lot of savings.
10K lasting you 2 years is a fantasy. If rent is $500 a month, (which is an overwhelmingly generous estimate in this economy), you're still talking about $500x24 months = $12K. That's ignoring literally all other costs of living like food, transportation, electricity, etc.
I'm single, no dependants, don't need a car to get around, and 10K would still not even last me a year simply because my rent is $1100 a month (and that is considered really good for a 1br in my city)
-
-
Between my mortgage, child support, and kids college tuition, that would be gone in a month.
However if it were a hefty amount, nothing would change. I’ve never taken intentional time off between jobs and I still wouldn’t. Unless it were a life changing, lottery winning, early retirement amount of money, I’d be too anxious about where I’m getting paid next. I would not enjoy time off
-
I always go on a little vacation when I get laid off. Road trips to see buddies, etc. Helps clear my head for the job search grind.
I try to keep it cheap, but with severance, it usually doesn't even ding my savings.
-
If I were truly unemployed and worried we'd cut back a lot, but currently our expenses are $6k/month. I think I could realistically cut a grand off, maaaaybe grand and a half tops. but only could save more by restructuring debt, and changing my 401k investments.
so the likelihood of 10k lasting 3 months is low.
-
-
10k will last you about 3 months comfortably, 6 if you're single and willing to scrimp or live in your car. That's your time limit to get a new job.
I had about 3x that saved and took a year off after working a decade at my previous position (I was pretty burnt out and hadn't been able to take more than a week off since I started). Having that padding gave me the time and peace of mind to look for something I really wanted, and gave me the freedom to turn down offers that would have put me back into the burnout cycle.
I ended up with a full WFH position with a 50% bump in salary. Within a year, I made back what I had spent simply by maintaining my budget from my previous salary.
If I hadn't had the cushion, it would have been pedal to the metal and accepting the first position offered, and I would have likely hit burnout before a year was out.
-
I have been unemployed for almost a year now and was looking the entire time. Burned through severance and savings. Sooooo you better not slouch because shits tough for anyone but entry/associate level.
-
If you have the cash to spare for it, FindMyProfession is a subscription service that I've twice used to get out of a shitty job. First time I wanted the new job to take me to a specific state, they found it in the heights of the pandemic and with a 30% bump in pay within the first month. Second time I wanted a new job but I didn't want to move, in the barely-begun third month they found me a 20% bump in pay for a fantastic company.
The service they offer is some expensive shit, but I trust it so goddamn much.
-
You're not wrong
-
-
Having savings gives you some time before you have to get something part time to help out with bills. When you're between jobs, it's not vacation time. Your job is too find another job. You should spend the 8 hours or so you would have spent working instead preparing your resume, brushing up on interview skills, searching for and applying to jobs, and responding to emails. Depending on your field there may be some short term contract work available that will help you pay the bills while you look for something permanent. The point is: don't just sit on your butt, get it in gear.
-
I quit my job 90 days ago. The day I quit I had a ticket to the galapagos islands booked for 3 weeks of travel there. I took my time when I got back to get everything in order and relax. I ticked off 2 more national parks in the PNW and got a lot of mountain biking done.
Once I got back my job search was looking for companies and projects that I think are likely to turn into something. I went through a lot of interview rounds before I accepted a job offer a few days ago for a non-profit in biomedical data.
-
Sounds ideal. Last time I did this in a similar way. I did apply to 2-5 roles a week which were amazing and appealing roles to me though, with the result I got to keep unemployment insurance requirements met, which paid for my very cheap travel expenses overseas. Eventually one of the long shot roles worked out, and I booked flight home to start work.
-
-
I did this poorly, i had almost 20g saved, and i went on trips, explored, and adventured, then the final week of money, went and handed out 3 resumes and got hired on the spot with the 3rd.
-
Sounds like you did it perfectly, if you can save 20grand you can do it again but you’ll never have those trips at that age again.
-
Its alot tougher to save it up now, i changed my mind about wgere i wanted to work. Im a journeyman electrician, and travel work i made stacks, no fixed address, living in work camps and just slaving. But after the break i thought thats just killing me, i have no friends outside of work and my whole life was being an electrician. Now i work 8h in a shop in a city of my choosing and have 16h a day for me.
-
-
-
Literally just had this situation.
I still looked for jobs, but since I had a good 3 months of buffer I wasn't hard pressed to take any shotty offers, and was able to accurately apply the algorithm for the Suitors Problem.
Google the Suitors Problem solution for the efficient way to search for jobs and minax your odds of getting a good offer.
-
The suitors problem (aka the 37% rule, an optimal stopping algorithm) doesn't apply to job offers unless you have to either accept or decline the offers on the spot. A better solution would just be set a deadline of date x, tell each job offer you'll have an offer to them by date x, look at all of your options together, and pick the best.
The time to implement the suitors problem or 37% rule is when you have to accept or decline each option as you see it. You know what you've declined, but not what is left. A very micro example is you have 3 playing cards, and you want as high of a value as possible. (I'm also adding in the threshold rule, it significantly improves the 37% rule).
Card 1: if it's not an ace (98th + percentile), don't keep it
Card 2: if it's higher than card 1, or is a king (90th percentile), keep it. Otherwise, leave it.
Card 3: you have to take it if you didn't take card 1 or card 2.The purpose of the 37% rule isn't necessarily to pick the best option, just to pick a good option, and it's the best algorithm for the specific scenarios that you apply it in, and is significantly (and statistically) more likely to give you a better option than other methods. It can be applied where choices > 2, has a set max number of choices, and all of the choices are randomly ordered.
I would go into it more, but my last long explanation and examples didn't post correctly. For some great reading (even if you don't have a math background!) I highly recommend Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christen and Tom Griffiths.
Fun fact: the 37% comes from the value of 1/e
-
The suitors problem (aka the 37% rule, an optimal stopping algorithm) doesn’t apply to job offers unless you have to either accept or decline the offers on the spot.
Yeah the thing is typically you only have fairly short windows to accept/pass on job offers. At least here in North America, I usually wasn't given a very long opportunity to make my choice for a given offer. Usually tops 1-2 days to say yes or no once an offer is tabled. If I lingered on it too long, they would usually go with someone else who can decide faster.
Which meant usually tops I only had 2-3 offers tops on my table at the exact same time.
By comparison usually the interview process took about a week on average, total.
And, yes, once you decline a tabled offer you are much less likely to be able to go back and get it again, from my experience.
The suitors problem, in a high flow environment where job offers come and go every day on the fly... does indeed apply quite well.
And thats what I did, I estimated I could go for about 4 months if I tightened the pursestrings, so I spent the first month and a bit gathering job offers and simply just writing everything down in a spreadsheet, and created a scoring algorithm to rank them all based on wage, benefits, bonuses, remote vs in office vs hybrid, and a bunch of other variables.
Once I felt satisfied that I had a ranking formula that "felt" right, I took the highest scoring job on that list from the first month of data, and then started actually seriously considering offers and took the first job that gave me an offer that scored higher than that highest score from prior data.
I also recommend Algorithms to Live By, haha, it's an awesome book and I'm gonna +1 that recommendation to anyone else who reads this thread XD
I want to note that by following this process, I over doubled my wage compared to my last job, and if I had just jumped on the first half decent offer I got early on, I would have been making about 2/3rds the wage of the job I actually ended up holding out for.
-
-
-
I got burnt out between my last job and my current one. I quit and took 3 months off before starting my current job.
Admittedly I had ~30k saved and went through about 15k of that in the 3 months as I went travelling etc. but I wasn't stressed. I emailed some friends and shot some old colleagues on linkedin saying I was looking. An old friend got me an interview in the first month, went through the whole process in about 2 weeks after that and had a new job lined up 1 month before I was due back home. But I didn't have that "Oh shit, I need to start my new job ASAP! I'm fucked!!!" panic which was nice.
I was also much more relaxed in the interviews etc. because I wasn't panicking for work, instead I became super picky about what I wanted and was very open about it. Asked for more money, was open about what I actually want to do and it all worked out. It was amazing - in the past I was more trying to escape a bad workplace vs. going "I know what I want, can you make this work for both of us?"
-
10k isn't going to last long, I would be freaking out applying for every job I could if that's all the money I had available.
-
I’d become an Uber driver, and I’d only take jobs that were 100% definitely better than that. I’d make sure to earn everything I needed so that my $10k isn’t drawn down.
Having the space to reject jobs and take one’s time is an excellent resource during a job search. A nice long one.
-
Not at all. I worked hard for the savings. I don't spoil that.
-
I'm in that exact situation right now thought I have more savings than that.
I'm approaching job search differently in the way that I'm not in-fact looking for job. I'm taking my time to decompress, gather my thoughts and plan what I'm going to do in the future. I think I'm going to try entrepreneurship and set up my own company and start doing handyman stuff instead of just plumbing what I've been doing to this point. I'm not overly excited about the idea of going back to work for a company. I got to check this door first atleast.
-
$10k, no change, I would still be panicking.
$100k I would be more relaxed, pay off everything except the house to lower monthly cost and try to find something perfect, that provided enough to live on.
$1M, I would retire, probably, or work part time, not worry about making enough to live on.
$10M, I would absolutely start a business, profit sharing co-op.
$100M, I would set up an endowment for charity for those in my city and probably sell my house and just travel.
-
Having adequate savings and/or additional income absolutely changes the job hunting game. This is one of the big reasons they having a 6-month emergency fund of necessary expenses is critical for financial health. It reduces the needs to make decisions that sacrifice long term benefit for short term survival. Like for many here, $10k is not that number for my household. We need much more in savings for a family of 4 with disabilities.
But let's talk about how it changes the job hunt. The big answer is that you do not need to take any given offer. You can hold out for the right offer. For my wife, that meant passing up higher-paying contract roles and roles with less-than-ideal management and work life balance situations. When she found the right job, the heading she was working with was very clear, "This is the type of company where the pay will not look as great as some at first. Look at the benefits. Look at the employee reviews. This is the last job I am ever going to find for you."
Having a safety net let us hold off until my wife found the right job. It was not about "knowing your worth" where you then ask for too much. It was about finding the best match. That ideal match has been very good for my family for many years now.
-
That would stress me the fuck out to only have $10k to live off of until I got another job. If I already had a job I’d just keep it until I found a new one. And it looks better if you have a job when you’re looking for a new one. What kind of employer wants to hire someone who doesn’t have good enough sense to stay out of that kind of situation? They’d have to wonder what could have happened to make you leave one job without having another one lined up. From their perspective how would they know if the problem was the other people or if it was you? And when there are other candidates to choose from, why would they choose the one that might bring a lot of drama?