My wife was informed this morning that her last day with her company will be December 31st. We were expecting it, but now it is real.

She is already on top of the search for a new job having updated her resume and cover letter last week and requested letters of recommendation. She even applied to a few companies over the weekend and updated her profile on job search websites.

We’ve begun taking a look at were we can dramatically reduce our monthly expenses and have started gathering information on unemployment. My wife has a few vacation days that she will cash in before her last day. More importantly, my wife found out on Friday that she will receive a $3,544 quarterly bonus on 12/15. Thank God for his perfect timing. She also learned that she will receive another quarterly bonus in March, even though she will not be with the company.

With ~$450/week for employment and earning the rare buck or two baby sitting our neighbors child, we shouldn’t have to pull any money from savings for quite some time.

There’s a lot happening right now, I’ll keep you posted.

After returning to work from my business trip, I found out that my company ended up laying off 7 employees (1 more than my manager told me). I was surprised by a couple of the employees chosen for the reduction in force, especially a woman who had been with the company for nearly 20 years and appeared to be a hard worker.

It’s never a good time to be let go, but right before Thanksgiving has to be one of the harder times of the year to lose your job. Many companies operate on a skeleton crew during the holiday season because everyone is on vacation. I have to think this is not an ideal interviewing time, especially with the unemployment rates increasing because of the economic downturn. I hope they are able to find new jobs quickly.

I learned that the employees were given 1 week of severance for each year of employment. Should the worst ever happen to me, it’s comforting to know that I may get the same package. That would be ~7-1/2 weeks of severance for me. I’m going to work my tail off to ensure that it never comes to that though. God willing.

I will be on a business trip in Europe next week, so my boss took me to lunch today to let me know that our company will be laying off 6 employees next Friday. We’re a small company, so this represents 15% of our employees. They are basically cutting one employee from each department. I did not find out who will be let go, but was assured it won’t be me or my sales representative.

To survive during this tough economic time, my company is going to continue to dramatically reduce expenses. The Owner of the company has recently quit taking a paycheck, and my boss and our controller took a 20% reduction in pay. If things keep getting worse, my company may move to a 4 day work week and ask all employees to take a 20% cut in pay. Quite frankly, I’d much prefer that to loosing my job.
I feel bad knowing that some of my co-workers/friends are going to be out of a job next week. I thank God that I made it thru this first cut and hope my company is able to get through these tough times.

On a related note, my wife’s company will be having a big shake-up in December. Her boss, who has been with the company 23 years, has already been informed that his position will no longer exist. He was able to find a rep position to move to in the company in December, but new employees, like my wife, won’t know where they stand until December.

These are scary times. In addition to praying for our companies and jobs, we’ve cut expenses and tried to bolster our savings. It looks like we should plan to tighten our belts a bit further.