Case Study: Help Me Choose a Job (or Severance)

[travelawyer]

I'm being laid off this summer, and I have a few options.  Since I can't be too terribly honest about my true motives with my coworkers, I'll ask the opinions of some internet strangers, as I think hearing other people's viewpoints can help crystalize your own.

Life Situation:  Married, 35/36, 1 kid age 2, want to have a second.  I want to be a travel nomad and DH wants to live in a HCOL.  Current plan is to FIRE around mid-2023, nomad while kid(s) are young, and be somewhere stable by the time they start middle school (or sooner).

Money Situation:  Current net worth around $1 million (including paid off house valued at $250k). Goal is $2 million, expected to reach in 2023.  May decide to OMY that due to DH's desire to live in a HCOL. We earn around $415k (me $280k, DH $135k), taxes take around $100k, and we currently save around $250k and spend around $65k (all rough numbers, I'm not a budgeter).

Job Options:

1. Job with current company (Company A) in a different department.  Likely same income, maternity leave is 4.5 months, 6 weeks annual vacation (I currently have several weeks saved up that would be paid out). Have to learn new area of law (possibly even more boring than current area), but team members seem nice. No severance.

2. Job with new company (Company B) in same area of law. Likely same income, maternity leave is 3 months, 4 weeks annual vacation (have to start over with zero).  Familiar with area of law, but new boss seems like a workaholic.  Would receive $125k severance payment.

3. Take $125k severance payment, take some time off, and find job at some other company (Company C) that may theoretically pay more than current salary.  I would probably choose this except for being almost 36 and wanting another kid (most companies require you to be there for 1 year to be eligible for maternity leave).

In case it's not already clear from my job descriptions--I love vacations! They are like mini-retirements...

[Montecarlo]

Not a ton of advice from me, but sounds like taking the severance and immediately starting a new job would shave at least 6 months off your working life.  You save 250 a year.  125K is half that, assuming you bank it all, that's 6 months right there.  Plus 4 years of compounding ahead of schedule, so probably closer to 8 months.

You'd be losing 3-4 months in the interim with option B.

Unless you're concerned about keeping your resume pristine, why not take option B and immediately look for an Option C job?

[ysette9]

I left my last employer for a combo of reasons, but what pushed me out the door was how sucky my maternity leaves were - too short and too filled with paperwork tediousness to qualify for the leave I did get. I very much value parental leave and view it as a metric by which to judge whether my employer values me or not. In your shoes if having another baby was high on the priority list, I’d go with the best parental leave option. The challenge with the option with less leave is that even if you have the $ in the bank to cover unpaid leave, can you even take it with job protection?

My babies came early so my regular maternity leave was gone by the time they reached their due dates. I had already been eating into my FMLA because I was put on partial duty while pregnant due to high risk pregnancies. If I hadn’t lived in California with the state parental leave and job protection law, I would have been in a very vulnerable position, up to the mercy of my employer.  My SIL was forced back to work after six short weeks because she had already used up her FLMA for her own surgery earlier in the same year she gave birth (she lives in TX which definitely Does Not value women and/or families). These are shitty situations. If you can and would take your lump sum and tell an employer to go pound sand if they don’t give you the leave you want, then more power to you. If instead you would suck it up and go back to work before you wanted to, then don’t put yourself in that position. You deserve better.