The author of ‘Practical Steps to Financial Freedom
and Independence,’ Usiere Uko, writes about
preparing for a job loss before it happens.
......................................
Chike is a top management employee of a bank. He
owns a house in Victoria Garden City and travels
abroad with his family every year on summer
vacation. He drives a Range Rover Sports while his
wife drives a Honda Pilot and owns a shop at Ikota
Shopping Complex. The shop is just to keep her busy
so that she gets to leave the house in-between school
runs. Their kids attend one of the most expensive
schools in the Lekki area. In addition to a good pay
package, Chike had access to staff loans at single
digit interest rates. He was the shining light of his
extended family. Then the unimaginable happened!
The consolidation party ended and in came Lamido
Sanusi as the new Governor of the Central Bank of
Nigeria. His Managing Director was fired and sent to
jail.
The devil’s alternative
Overnight, the future did not look as bright as before.
Soon, his bank was acquired by another bank. Chike
was called in by the new management and given a
choice – the devil’s alternative as he called it. Take
your benefits and leave or forfeit your benefits and
start as a new hire with new conditions of service.
Chike was raving mad when he came to meet me for
advice. He wanted to call it a day. He felt insulted
that after putting in two decades and rising to the
top, he was being asked to start afresh at God-
knows-what position. The snag was he owed his
former bank; if his new employers deducted the
outstanding balance on his loan he would go home
virtually empty handed. If he chose to stay, he would
lose all his entitlements and start all over again from
ground zero. He was too angry to contemplate the
option of starting afresh. At the same time, he could
not afford to walk away empty handed. What was my
advice?
I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I
understood how he felt and would readily ask him to
go and do something else with his life, but with
what? There are bills to be paid and seed capital to
put up. I could not ask him to go back under the
prevailing circumstances. Rather than offer my
opinion, I asked him to go and sleep on it and think it
through. Often, when we are angry, we tend to think
we have options and may take a rash decision that
we may later regret. Chike eventually opted to start
afresh. That was the better of the two evils. I thought
so too. Only this time, he needed to quickly put his
house in order and achieve financial independence,
which will give him the option to choose tomorrow.
Lifestyle fuelled by earned income
Many are in Chike’s shoes. They live a high
consumption lifestyle fuelled by earned income. As
income rises, consumption goes up accordingly
without any corresponding increase in savings and
investment in income generating assets. If anything
happens to that income source, there is a crisis. The
standard of living can nosedive drastically if an
equivalent job is not secured as soon as possible.
Many have not paused to ask themselves if they can
maintain their current lifestyle if their salaries stop
today. Their basic assumption is that their job will
always be there till they retire, their income will
always go up, their pension will always be there after
they have retired and their pension will support them
throughout their old age.
All these are assumptions and not facts. Things can
and do change. Basing your future on these
assumptions is taking a very risky position without a
safety net. For one, your company may not be there
till you retire. In this era of mergers and acquisitions,
your employer does not need your permission to sell
off the company and move on if he gets an offer he
cannot refuse. The marketplace has become very
dynamic and many known brands in the brick and
mortar era have become extinct.
Your income may not always go up. Sometimes
workers opt for a pay cut rather than retrenchment
during a period of economic downturn. Putting all
your hopes on your pension is another risky
proposition. A market crash can punch giant holes in
your portfolio and leave you stranded while it lasts. A
deal gone bad can also jeopardise your nest egg.
Pension fund managers by law are required to spread
the risks, but this may not always be the case in
reality.
Assuming all things went as you had hoped they
would and you got a pension for life, inflation and ill
health could eat away at your purchasing power,
driving down your standard of living unless your
children are able and willing to bail you out every
month.
Tomorrow will surely come
Planning for retirement goes beyond funding your
pension. You should aim to achieve financial
independence as soon as you possibly can. Never
assume that your job will be there for you forever. In
the information age, forever is not as long as it used
to be. Companies downsize when profits go down.
The myth of job security went with the industrial age.
You need to start planning for eventualities. What if?
You need to prepare for a possible job loss before it
happens. You don’t wait for war to break out before
enrolling in the military academy. The best time to
prepare for war is in the time of peace. The best time
to take insurance is when you don’t need it. By the
time an incident happens, it may be too late.
Forward looking companies do scenario planning.
They brainstorm and throw up different scenarios
and plan for them. Companies that run on data
usually have a duplicate copy of their data stored at a
separate location as part of their disaster recovery
plan for business continuity. They back up their data
and store it in a safe place. They don’t assume
nothing will happen.
Everything that has a beginning has an end. Your job
will come to an end some day, often without warning.
Even when you get a handsome severance package,
if you don’t have a plan for it, others will help you to
spend it and you will be back to square one, and
without a job. If you cannot maintain your current
standard of living without your salary, it may be time
to consider cutting back the waste and invest in
securing your family’s financial future.

u need money to maintain ur way of life

Learnt so much from this piece. Thanks for sharing op.

Wise words! Thanks very much for sharing.