Comments on: Why Losing My Job Was the Best Thing That Happened To Me

By: M

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 15:55:41 +0000

I know, ha! Especially if you get a decent severance package

By: theFIREstarter

theFIREstarter — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 08:10:01 +0000

Great perspective on things! I may have to forward this to my friend who has just been told about his redundancy!

Luckily(!?) I have never been made redundant, although now I am starting to think maybe I am one of the unlucky ones. Hah!

By: M

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 18:14:23 +0000

Thanks so much for your kind words. I agree, investing in your own education pays dividends in its own way!

By: Grow Independent

Grow Independent — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 02:55:00 +0000

great story. You might have been made redundant but what truly matters is your resilience. You got hit, but you came back swinging. Investing in yourself (especially in education) is probably the best thing one can possibly do. Work and study as the same time has quite a lot to offer besides the books, also.
I am so happy that all has worked out nicely for you guys.

Thanks for sharing M.
See you around.

By: M

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 15:45:28 +0000

Thanks for your kind words NMW. It’s great that you’ve got peace of mind in your job, but more importantly, that you’re making plans towards FI. I think there is another scenario in which you could lose your job, and that is with potential economic and political problems in Belgium. The social welfare is pretty expensive and if you get more right-wing governments in the future, that could theoretically mean a cull of civil servant staff. This actually happened in the UK under Margaret Thatcher’s regime. However, under that same regime, we had enormous economic growth, so someone like you would have benefitted from immense increases on the stockmarket.

Thanks for stopping by, as always,

Cheers!

By: No More Waffles

No More Waffles — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 13:56:21 +0000

Thank you for sharing your story – very interesting! I think you made a really good call going back to school and combining it with the part-time job. Part of me wants FI to do something like that.

And since I’m only working my first job, I can’t say I’ve been layed off before. Being a civil servant I also won’t have to worry about that since the only way to lose my job would be to comit a crime while on the job or relinquish my status as a civil servant myself. That gives me a lot of peace of mind, actually.

Cheers,
NMW

By: M

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 13:29:03 +0000

Really glad you succeeded in the end though, thanks again for sharing… and I do hope you post it on your own blog, because it’s actually encouraging. I was just saying to my colleague this morning, that sometimes when things don’t go our way, it turns out that there’s something better out there waiting for us in the near future, it’s just difficult to see it when we are hurting from the pain of our immediate job loss/illness/grief/whatever bad thing just happened.

By: M

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 13:27:00 +0000

That’s great you managed to turn the situation around into something that worked out better for you!

Cheers

By: weenie

weenie — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 13:59:53 +0000

No, that’s the first time I’ve shared this story properly and I’d probably not going into much more detail – don’t want to dredge up sad old memories!

Glad you enjoyed reading it, I may copy and paste it to post on my own blog at some point.

By: Ramona

Ramona — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 21:19:05 +0000

Lost my job in 2009. Was terrified, no opportunities, debt etc. Have spent the past years working on my own web design business, earning WAY MORE than before, traveling, getting out of debt. Best thing for me, too