Hi All, first time poster...
Here's our situation. We were well on our way to a goal of $1MM (plus home equity), which would put us in a very comfortable position to leave our current jobs. We expected to be there in 2-3 years (pending no economic meltdown). That was the plan, anyway.
A week ago I found out that my position was being moved to another city where we have absolutely no desire to live, so I will be resigning and taking a severance package. Although I'm not certain at the moment, our income should be as normal (more or less) until late Fall, around October or November. Depending on my last day at my current company, I could be paid through 2017, and thus quite a bit closer to our goal than we are now. We tend to save 70% of our salary, but my salary accounts for at least 2/3 of our income.
So what about a new job? Unfortunately there aren't really open positions for my skillset in my current city at the moment, and I'm not sure when there will be. I may be able to land something around the time of my "transition date", in which case we would get a continuation of our standard income + severance, which would make 2017 quite nice indeed. But if that doesn't happen...that's our dilemma.
Assuming I'm not able to find work by the end of the year, we are considering our options. My wife has a good job, but again, it's only about 1/3 of our current income. We have a good bit of equity in our home, which has grown in value rapidly in recent years due to a very hot market. If we were to sell our home today, we would be in the $850M range for total assets, but with no place to live. We have been considering "retiring" to a much smaller town, where housing costs are at least 30% less than the city where we currently reside. But again, even if we drop our spending a good bit, it feels like a risk to head out to a very small town with $850M in assets, still needing to rent or buy a home, and likely needing to find some sort of employment to cover our living costs and not begin withdrawing from our retirement fund.
So here are a few scenarios:
1. Stick to the job hunt and try and redeem my previous salary, even if it takes a year or more. We would still be able to save and invest with only my wife's salary, but we'd be saving ~25% or less, down from 70%. Ouch.
2. Try and find work as soon as severance runs out, even if it pays significantly less. Honestly, I would still continue doing #1 above while working a different job.
3. Sell our home and rent locally while looking for jobs? Lock in good equity, knowing full well the market could continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace most likely.
4. Sell our home and move to the smaller town, but not having achieved our target of $1MM. This one seems the most risky to me, but we're fairly conservative.
Sorry for all the words, and I appreciate any feedback.