The Severance Chronicles Ends
A New Life Chapter
Last week was a big week. The biggest thing had nothing to do with employment. My daughter started Kindergarten. There are a handful of moments that you can look back on as an entirely new chapter, and the start of kindergarten certainly feels like one of those.
New schedules, new routines, new weekend activities, new parent friend groups. Instead of being able to casually walk my daughter to her pre-school sometime between 8-9pm we need to make sure she is in her class between 7:50-8am otherwise she will receive a tardy.
School also ends at 2:30pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Electing to end at 12:30pm on Wednesdays. This feels like an impossible feat for two working parents. Luckily there is a great after-school program within the school itself that runs until 6pm every day. Oh, and I suppose my household only has 1 working parent at the moment.
Closing the Previous Chapter
A new chapter beginning also symbolizes the close of the previous chapter. It is only fitting that last week I received my final Meta severance payout after being laid off by Meta on May 24th.
The one remaining, and very appreciative, attachment to Meta is my health insurance. Meta is covering the full cost of Cobra for the next 6 months through January.
I don’t feel like I need to go into too much detail on the severance specifics since much has already been published on it, including directly from Meta. Excerpt from Meta newsroom post where Mark shared details:
I also received a Calendar notification reminding me about Meta’s RSU vesting. A vest that I will no longer receive, but will still happily remind you what I would have done if I did receive it (and I am very jealous of those in New York with May layoff dates who thanks to the states 90 day warn period would have still received the August vest). If you have never sold RSU’s before you can check out my post outlining 5 different approaches to selling RSUs and how to deal with wash sales.
Key Financial Timelines:
May 23rd: Official Last Day Worked
May 24th:
Received Layoff Emails
Warn Period Starts: Officially be employed by Meta for 60 days in California
May 25th: Kick off Filing for Unemployment
This is state specific. In California Warn Pay or in-lieu of notice payment doesn’t make you ineligible for unemployment.
Maximum weekly benefit is $450 and will be reduced by any earned income (ie income from this newsletter and my 1:1 coaching). So if I make >$450 from 1:1 coaching and substack subscriptions, I would receive $0 for that week.
July 28th: Final paycheck from Meta + PTO payout
August 18th: Final Severance Payout (can vary by state)
Closing Thoughts
I am currently caught up in some level of uncertainty around what is next. Focusing on FIRE brings with it a wealth— of optionality. A luxurious position to be in — but not without some draw backs.
I always felt that the conversations about life after FIRE quickly become existential.
“I won the game I was playing, now what? What is my purpose? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?
For so many of us, work gives us a sense of purpose. We define ourselves by where we work, our job titles, our scope. Our entire friend groups are filled with current and former co-workers. We are conditioned our entire lives to have a significant portion of our lives revolve around work that it is really difficult to conceptualize a life absent such a dominating presence.” - Excerpt from FIRE = TIME
A year and a half ago I wrote “FIRE = TIME” and included this chart.
“Being able to fully control what happens within each of these squares is what FIRE means to me.”
Truthfully… I am very much still trying to figure it out. Fortunately I have the time.