It started with a text message.
Brent: "hunh"
Me: "What?"
Brent: "That was (redacted) asking if the news was going to affect me."
Me: "What news?"
We hadn't heard a word yet but the leaks had started. Massive layoffs coming down the pike.
The next day the rumor mill at work was churning. There had been multiple leaks to news organizations and the numbers everyone was hearing were large.
Then the announcement came that a company wide meeting was being moved up.
Well shit.
The meeting happened and the numbers were huge. Like I mentioned yesterday 15,000. Holy. Shit.
There would be three phases, early retirement, voluntary separation, then involuntary. There was a package offer for all of it. Which at first we didn't know, we thought it was if you did it voluntarily you got the package and if you waited and were let go, you got nothing, which is how it's been done in the past.
Yes, in the past. In the decades that Brent's been with Intel this is our (we want to say) third time through a massive workforce cull. Though this is the largest for sure. Each time it's happened before it wasn't the right time for us to leave. Katie was still young, or ready to leave for college. The packages were nice, but we are pretty fiscally conservative, not big risk takers at all when it comes to money. Brent's a former finance guy so it's in his personality makeup and I grew up poor so I'm always pretty convinced we are one step away from the street.
But we have regretted not doing it. Especially since we've had friends who took the packages, went to work someplace else for a little bit, then came back to Intel later for higher pay.
And this time he hit two of the three markers to make him eligible for the early retirement package. Which in the past he hadn't been eligible for that bigger offer.
As the information came out as to what they would pay you to leave, and what benefits they would cover for how long we started looking at how we could make that work. We sent the information to our accountant to see the tax hit. We talked to our investment guy to see if we had the money to make it work.
See, we've had a five year plan going for awhile. With a three year super stretch goal. Suddenly we had a five week plan with a three week planning period.
A lot of sleepless nights and long discussions. What would we need to do to make it work? Could we make it work? Do we want to make it work?
And happening all around us making that decision were other people making the decision to stay or leave. Which if you stay and 15,000 coworkers don't, your workload is going to change. And they are not only culling a large chunk of the workforce but they are changing pay and bonus structures and cutting some benefits. So more work for less compensation.
Also in the mix is the fact that he's almost 56. That's not old by any stretch, unless you are talking job hunting. Then it's practically ancient. So if he took the package from Intel with the plan of working for someone else would that even happen?
Finally the tax ramifications came back; ouch. A little over a third of the pay out gone to taxes. And it would bump us into a higher tax bracket for the year so we would owe more on what he's already made. And then the results from our investment guy. They ran the Monte Carlo (computer simulations for future casting) and it came back 50/50 that we would have enough to last until 80. And since I'm planning on living to be 100 I had already given up 20 years of lifespan to even get that close.
The biggest hits were the mortgage and health care. We have almost 10 years before we are eligible for medicare. We've been putting money in an HSA to cover the gap if he retires in his early 60s but cutting out five years of growing the account and starting to draw from it right now left us short. For those of you that don't live here, looking at getting health insurance for the two of us was between $15,000 and $30,000 a year. And that's just the premiums, not the deductible or not covered items (which with the 15K there are a lot of not covered items).
Once we lined it all out, what we would need to do to make it work, what we would need to give up, what we would need to reduce, what the chances are that it would work out, after Brent talked to other friends in his network about the chances of getting another job (the tech industry as a whole is struggling so it was a giant risk) we decided to ride it out. As Brent said, when we penciled it out we discovered we didn't have enough lead...
He's not taking the voluntary early retirement. So now we wait and see if they come tap him on the shoulder and tell him he's going anyway. We don't think they will. They never have in the past, it doesn't seem like he's at risk now, but you never know. And if they do then we are no worse off than we would be if we took it now. In fact we'd be a few months better off, a few more months of pay and benefits before they ended.
It's been stressful trying to figure it out. And if we had a year to get situated the decision might have been different. We would be able to move more easily (trying to move without an income makes getting a loan harder, not impossible, but much harder). We would have been able to really load up on the HSA and some other retirement investments and savings plans. But three weeks wasn't enough time. And especially knowing that he'd still need to work to be safe. As the finance guy said, "You already have a job that pays (this much) so why go look for a different job that pays less than that?"
So now we wait...
But we also got the chance to see what was really important to us as far as spending goes. The first thing we did was let Katie know that if we did it she would get less when we died and we wouldn't be as strong of a safety net for her if something happened in her volatile industry. So clearly our number one priority is still being able to help her if we need to. The second thing we discovered is that we would really miss travel. The idea of not being able to travel unless the stock market had a really great year was a little disconcerting.
We still might look at moving. Even moving just across the river to Vancouver would save us money on the house and on taxes so that's a consideration we will explore. We also are still thinking about moving to a place where the cost of living is better. Just to help move that needle. One of our challenges there is politics. The cheapest places have the worst politics. And to be really fair our biggest challenge is me. I don't want to move. I love Oregon. I love that Katie is now close. It will be difficult to get me to uproot. But I'm willing to consider it.
Here's where I worry we are making the wrong choice. Brent's dad died at 58. Will I look back in a few years and wish we would have made it work because I missed the chance to spend extra time with him? Or do we move forward knowing that Brent has made different health choices to break the early Mastenbrook male death trend? My dad was the oldest living Clifton male ever. He broke a bad trend. Brent could as well. But those are 2 AM thoughts...
Right now we just move forward like nothing has changed. Brent's sabbatical is still on the calendar, though we know that could end up not happening as they have to restructure work loads. If it does we will still take the trips we planned and already reserved but it will be a week off here, a week off there, instead of the full deal. And then he'll take it next year, or get paid out for it depending on what they want.
And once we pass the involuntary time period we make plans for the things we want to do before he leaves the workforce and we enjoy the opportunities we have. And understand that he will need those breaks even more because it's going to be rough going covering for everyone else who leaves.
Assuming we pass the involuntary time period. October 1 is when they will have let everyone know.
Wish us luck!
Wake me up when September ends....
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