Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Now that I covered the non-financial side of my departure from my last job, I will cover the financial side as much as I can. Every place is different. Each time is different but I hope I can offer you something here for your next transition.

The first thing is that I was leaving around the holidays. Holidays are paid vacation days, so I made sure that I was going to save up as much vacation time as I could so I could receive a payout on those days from my company. Not every place does it, but a lot do. I took every paid holiday that was available to me, except the floating holiday that I get to use on January 1st every year. That would have been another 8 hours of vacation saved for me to receive as cash, but I didn’t want to ask my boss to approve it and then let me take the day as a 2007 vacation day. That would have been ethically shady. Either way though, I had two days for Christmas Eve and Christmas, two days for New Year’s Eve and Day, and two days post-Christmas. In two weeks, I only worked 4 days. Not too shabby.

The second thing is that I was leaving before bonus season and I had to gauge what bonuses would be like. Would they be a paltry sum or would they be the maximum amount available? Word on the street was very quiet. I couldn’t tell, so I assumed that meant they weren’t going to be that good. I weighed the opportunity cost of waiting with the present value of a higher salary. No, I didn’t do the firm mathematical calculations, but I decided the present value of a higher salary was going to be worth a lot more to me, as well as better benefits with the new firm.

The third thing is what to do with your 401k money. I knew I was forfeiting a decent chunk of my corporate match by leaving before fully vesting, but since the match is so low, it didn’t really matter. In a month or two at my new pay rate, I’ll have made that money back. I am going to pull this money out and roll it over into an existing Traditional IRA I have already. Never leave your money behind at your old company’s plan. You usually have 90-days to figure out what to do. By then you can see what your new company has in equivalent investments and roll your money into the new 401k plan, or into an existing IRA (with some restrictions).

Along with that is to double check if you have restricted funds. I just found out that due to some small transfers into an International fund, I cannot sell without a small penalty. I have to wait 60-days from my last purchase/influx of funds to sell without the penalty. C’est la vie. That’s just a calendar item for me in a few weeks. What I needed to do, was stop contributions to that fund entirely, but hopefully the market will do better anyway before I sell.

Now for the long part.

The fourth thing is that the HR person and the payroll person needed to coordinate your last paychecks. This is where things got hairy and this story gets long. I left on a Thursday. The HR person told me during the exit interview that I would receive one last direct deposit for a full ten days of work, then two weeks later, a separate physical check for the last 4 days of work in the final pay cycle. At that time, they would include my vacation payout. The last checks would come from payroll via UPS. However, that is a problem for me as I am never home to get a package. I needed them to send it via first class mail. I was told to call the payroll person to request regular mail, but never got around to it. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because as I found out later, it would have been too late by the time I had called.

I woke up the next day, on Friday, when I should have had a direct deposit, and got a random automated call from UPS regarding package delivery. I figured it was a wrong number since I wasn’t expecting a package for 2 more weeks. I went to the bank and withdrew some cash. I got the balance, which seemed low, but I figured the direct deposit was clearing that evening. Turns out I was wrong. Very wrong. The UPS was for my last three checks. The payroll person, being clever, thought I would want the money all at once. It was very nice of them to think of me, but they needed to COMMUNICATE THIS PLAN. They never told the HR person, which is why she told me the wrong thing and I had made my plans incorrectly. HECK. I would have had them hold a check for me and picked it up on the Friday after my last day as I had to drop off some hockey tickets for a co-worker anyway.

I was in a panic as I had to send out my HOA payment and was a few dollars short. I transferred some funds around and paid a $10 late fee to the HOA. I didn’t want to break a CD, though I thought about doing that to avoid the fee. I pushed my payments around till later in the month, but I hated doing it. This is why I need to put more money back into my emergency fund. It’s a little low right now.

On Monday, I called the payroll person to straighten things out about what she had done. Now I was left with trying to pick up the package at the UPS station after work at night. *sigh* I had a fun-filled week of training, work receptions, out of town guests, a hockey game, etc. It was a freakin’ MESS. A MESS I TELL YOU. I was in a tizzy driving all over the place just to live my life. I had to get my boyfriend to drop off keys for my guest at the Amtrak station in the middle of the day because there was no way I could do it while in training. This was Tuesday and I was wigging out.

I get home later that night and say hi to my friend. I ask how his trip was and if everything went ok getting keys. He said, “Oh yes. Everything went great. No problem at all. I got lunch and we met just like you said. By the way, the UPS man came and left a letter for you.” HOLY MOLEY! Because my friend was at the house, he signed for my paychecks! It was serendipity I tell you. I have to be the luckiest person in the world.

The moral of the story is, even if you have work lined up and everything is going great when it comes to the pay you are going to make at your new gig, you should still prepare in advance by having at least one or two months of money on hand to cover late paychecks, direct deposit snafus, etc. I had let my emergency fund dip too low and I was unwilling to break the CD’s I had left because the cost-benefit analysis showed that I breaking them would have cost me over $10, which was just the same as the HOA late fee.

All things being equal, planning your departure is never easy and filled with a lot of considerations. Be sure to think them through and do some serious planning. Working the numbers will really help, especially if you need to renegotiate an offer to be more financially advantageous. You won’t really know without doing the math.