Surviving the changes....

As my family and I make our way through this "post-gainfully employed nightmare" also known as being laid off, there have actually been a few bright spots....and no, the bright spots are not the lights of an on-coming train. I mean, lessons learned. And hopefully before its too late.

There we quite a few of us let go from the IT department of the same company in this area, and one thing we all realized quite soon....we took too much for granted, at work and at home, and we should have been better prepared. After all, we assisted with disaster recovery contingency plans at our former employer, trying to prepare for recovery when a disaster struck, and keep the business going. Why did we not do the same for our families?

And I don't mean a will, or a living will, or even a trust, although those are important, and have their place. I mean actually believing too much in the company you work for to take care of you and your family. How many of you reading this have life insurance for your kids, your spouse, or even just yourself with your employer? Have you considered, in this current economic situation we all find ourselves in, how stupid that is? To actually believe that trusting your Corporate employer to take care of your family is a good idea? (yes, there are some small companies that actually do care about employee's families.) Remember, ultimately, besides the safeguards offered by incorporation, why is a corporation formed? To make profits for the shareholders by using the employees' skills and abilities for as little compensation as possible while keeping a viable and productive workforce) Let's put it this way...do you actually believe the HR department actually has YOUR best interests at heart? Remember who actually provides the paychecks to the "oh-so-caring" HR staff member who dutifully listens (sorta) to whatever issue you brought to his/her desk? Unless you work at some aberration of a company, the HR staff is there to watch out for the Corporation's interests, while convincing you enough that they actually care so you will openly inform them of anything that might be detrimental to the Corporation providing a profit to the shareholders, and therefore reduce the bonuses and raises upper management will earn for doing such a smashing job of using their departmental resources.

Hey, I was stupid, and had all of my eggs in one basket too....if I ever have the opportunity again, I will remember this lesson. When I lost my employment, I not only lost the only life insurance coverage I had for myself, or my family, I also lost all the $$ I had paid in over the years. And since I no longer had a job, my little bit of savings was going to vanish fast.

So if I died in the weeks, months after losing my job, how was my family going to pay the bills, regardless of how much expense cutting we did after being laid off? I got the life insurance to take care of my family if I died....so not only did my former employer take my career from me, they also took the safety net I was counting on for my family. If you want to supplement your life insurance with some from your employer, fine, its cheap enough. But don't make the mistake I did...because right now, I have nothing to show for what came out of my paycheck every two weeks under the heading "Supplemental Life" other than the lesson to not let it happen again, IF I get lucky enough to secure a job one of these days.