“F.U. Funds”, Emergency Funds, Losing Your Job, etc.

Tiredbuthappy at Tired but Happy asks if you have an FU fund. Single Ma asks the same question. Both of them come out with the same answer, YES. It’s good to have one. (Miguel’s comment on Single Ma’s post is particularly good. It’s a MasterCard commercial-style list and you can guess what comes out priceless.)

My story is a little different. Remember when Single Ma asked what you would do if you lost your job? Well, I initially posted this about what I would do. But there is more to the story.

I walked out of a job last year. I did have a job offer in the works with a very slow moving government contractor, but I did not have it in hand, and in the end, it fell through for various reasons. I am sure y’all are thinking that I shouldn’t have quit without something lined up, but once you’ve had it doing tech support, you’ve had it. You’re done. You’re toast. 5 years of technical support is a long time. I had burned out once before after doing lots of 24-hour support work and I finally was in a position to find a new line of work as a programmer. After 2 years at this particular firm, it was time to go. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for another client having a bad hair day to scream at me.*

So I quit. I went home and figured out my finances. I picked up shifts at my second job. Got a gig through a friend waiting tables/running food. Calculated my stock option buyback check and my monthly expenditures. I decided at that time to pay off my car note immediately with my HELOC and reduce my monthly bills by $300.00. It ended up increasing the interest rate on what I had remaining on the car, but because I lacked substantial cash reserves, I needed a short-term solution to extend what little resources available. Plus if I really had to do it, I could sell the car because I owned the title, free and clear. The other thing I did was write myself a check for cash off that HELOC. After writing those two HELOC checks, I had enough cash to last me about 2-4 months as long as I worked those two part-time jobs.

I’m writing this post now because I have just noticed that it’s taken me 10 months to get my HELOC balance to the point where it was the day I quit last year. Those two balance transfers are paid off, but I wish I had had a real emergency fund back then instead of using my good credit to see me through.

Please learn from my hard lesson that an emergency fund is the way to go. (And though I don’t recommend pillaging the fund for a splurge like a motorcycle, I still have money left in my fund for 2+ months’ worth of expenses. I think at this point, I can’t bear to drain it down completely.)

* Yes, it really did happen to me. And apparently the client had a poor reputation with the other analysts. My management, to their credit, did the right thing and called the client on his horrible behavior. To all support analysts out there, never take a phone call alone with a non-technical management rep from your client’s firm. Let the business people talk to the business people and the techies talk to the techies.When someone has an axe to grind with your management team, give them the number of the right person to call and just hang up the phone. Luckily I have a happy ending to my story and I would certainly work with a great majority of my co-workers from my old firm. For they are good people who told me that it’s ok to hang up on a client when his/her behavior/demeanor is unacceptable. (Yup. They don’t call it ‘demeaning’ for nothing!)

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