Smart Money Strategy

CHAPTER 5Strategy Stacking around Significant Life Events

Many life events, especially if they are unexpected and/or traumatising, can have a significant impact on your life and change the course of your ‘why’ — which may lead you to rethink the goals you have set yourself. In this chapter, I take a look at some of these major life events and some of the key issues you might need to consider.

Remember: it's always best to seek personal financial advice for your own situation.

Redundancy

Whether we're talking downsizing, right-sizing, rationalising, restructuring or simply redundancy, it all means the same thing: the business you work for has decided that your role is no longer needed, and so you find yourself unemployed. There are rules around what happens to employees who have their positions made redundant. You are entitled to an amount of money based on your years of service and your wage or salary, as well as remuneration for any unused annual leave and long service leave.

There are a number of issues to consider, which may include:

• Budgeting and cashflow
• Managing debt, if any is held
• Finding a new job and obtaining government unemployment benefits to help manage the time between jobs
• Considering early retirement (if your age permits)
• Using capital from the redundancy payment to make a non-concessional contribution to your superannuation to maximise your pension value (if you're at retirement age — Chapter 11 covers Superannuation Strategies)
• Utilising transition to ...