I know I will be made redundant in next few months - what should I do to prepare?

goggle

I know that sometime within the next 3-9 months I will be made redundant - our site is closing so it's definite. I could be gone by Christmas, but due to the project I am on it I may be able to hang on till Easter-ish. When I go, I think I will get somewhere in the region of £8K in redundancy pay. My outgoings are fairly small - If I'm careful, I should be able to live off £600 a month for everything (bills, mortgage, council tax, food etc).

Using my redundancy money to live on, I intend to take maybe 3 months off to figure out what to do with life - I am not going to be able to get back into the job/field I'm currently working in so it'll be quite a life change! If I take a couple of months off & live on savings etc, can I start to claim contributions-based JSA when I am ready to start looking for work, or will they reject it because I didn't claim from day 1? I have some savings and with my redundancy payment I doubt I'd get any other benefts anyway!
I may put my redundancy pay towards paying off my mortgage & live off my other savings for a while, if the worst happened & I wasn't able to find a new job in say a years time (I reckon I could live frugally for 1 yr on my savings if I had to - I'd want to be looking for a new job long before then though!), would I hit any problems then if I needed to claim benefits at that point? Surely the fact that I'd supported myself for a year on my savings would be acceptable?

Other than trying to keep my living expenses down, is there anything else I should be doing at this time to prepare for the inevitable?

nimbo

i believe the first 6 months of your claim would be contributions based - so you can try from day one.

there will be experts on the Benefits board who wil know better though.

PS good luck.

Oldernotwiser

You can get 6 months' contributions based JSA regardless of savings/capital.

goggle

I know I can get 6 months contrib-based JSA, but I don't actually WANT to start claiming straight away, I want to take a bit of time out to live on my savings & review what I want to do, what jobs I may be interested in etc - is it ok to start claiming when I am ready & therefore meet the "available & actively looking for work" criteria? or will I be penalised because I haven't claimed from day 1 of my redundancy?

goggle

can you tell this is a bit new to me lol!

amcluesent

Nothing to stop you claiming JSA right off and then making up excuses at their silly intervies IIRC you can even just go online to say what youve done to look for work. Just take a daily paper with some job ads circled as proof you're looking.

Dont forget by cliaming JSA you're also keeping up full payments history for the state pension.

Tubbss

Hi

I was in a similar position. I knew I woud be made redundant but not sure when! The axe finally fell on 7th May and by 21st MaY I had a new job (could not start till 14th June as was on garden leave!). Get your CV done now! If you have any friends etc that work in HR or recruitment ask them to check it out BEFORE you do anything with it. If you dont know anyone there are lodas of CV tip site on the net (job centre has on on their site).

Post it on Monster, Myjobsite, Reeds, Totaljobs etc etc .(I started posting in May 2009 as we knew it could happen at any time) You can adjust the filter to state that you are just seeing what is available and see what comes up! I even went to a few interviews (for practice as I had not had a job interview for over 9 years) on the back of e-mails that the sites sent me. Thankfully when the axe did fall I was offered a the job from the 1st interview I had after the redundancy.

As the saying go's - "fail to plan and plan to fail"

good luck

ceridwen

goggle wrote: »

I know I can get 6 months contrib-based JSA, but I don't actually WANT to start claiming straight away, I want to take a bit of time out to live on my savings & review what I want to do, what jobs I may be interested in etc - is it ok to start claiming when I am ready & therefore meet the "available & actively looking for work" criteria? or will I be penalised because I haven't claimed from day 1 of my redundancy?

I can see where you are coming from - so will be following this with interest.

In my case - if I lost my job then I would only ever be eligible for the contributions-based JSA (long story....) - so would want to postpone claiming it for as long as possible (in the hope that I wouldnt have to - I would be trying to manage without having to claim it ever - in order not to get put through the hassle of having to sign on/search for jobs). If I had to eventually sign on/search for jobs - then I had to - but it would be good to know that I could just leave that possibility there "on the table" and just claim the money if I needed it IYSWIM - rather than having to claim it right away or miss out on it.

ceridwen

amcluesent wrote: »

Nothing to stop you claiming JSA right off and then making up excuses at their silly intervies IIRC you can even just go online to say what youve done to look for work. Just take a daily paper with some job ads circled as proof you're looking.

Dont forget by cliaming JSA you're also keeping up full payments history for the state pension.

Well - as long as O.P. will manage to get in 30 years worth of NI payments by the time they reach their State Pension Age then they will have done whats necessary to get a full State Pension. I would imagine that between the years they have paid in for it so far and the ones they will do by the time they reach 65/66/67/68 that their total will be at least 30 years worth.

The only NI consideration AFAIK that might matter is the one about having had to pay NI stamps for the last whatever-amount-of-time in order to be able to claim the non-contributory element of JSA (think its 2 years - cant be sure...). I guess the payment or otherwise of NI stamps wouldnt affect the means-tested JSA - so this consideration probably doesnt apply to O.P.

VfM4meplse

This is interesting, redundancy is a very real prospect within my organisation but it didn't occur to me until reading this thread that claiming benefits is an option!

gallygirl

After 3 months then what? It may take a year to get another job which would give you 15 months to evaluate your life! You have between now and probably Easter so that is plenty time. The longer you are out of work the harder it is to find another. I think you should plan now and claim from day 1 - realistically you will still have some time off.

Good luck :T