Redundancy Advice seeked

fd1972uk

Hi All,

Well after 24 years I find myself being made redundant. My position finishes off at the end of the month.
I’m actually on holiday next week, but have cut short by a week to deal with the hand over process (my role is redundant, but a new job was created, but it wasn’t for me), so hoping it won’t last long and I’ll get lieu of notice of the outstanding notice period (12 weeks).
I’ve only ever been in the 1 proper job (couple of TUPE situations, but always the same role), so the whole process of job hunting, interviews, job centres, benefits is going to be so new to me (we don’t get any tax credits at the moment).
Plan is to get straight back in to a job. Obviously the more money entailed in the job the better but I might not need to be as picky, and into the bargain I can now look at something closer to home as I was doing around 350 miles a week to work.
It’s exciting and daunting, but I’m confident I can get back into something, even if it isn’t exactly what I’m doing at the moment. As long as I can match the bills I’m happy, there will obviously be a bit of belt tightening.
I will get a little redundancy, not too much, just under £10k, 3 months notice (just under £5k) and outstanding holidays which could amount to another £1k (if I am paid holiday pay for my Notice period even if I am paid in lieu – is this normal?).
Obviously budgeting is going to be the challenge, got a bit of debt (around £30k) and was looking to have this cleared in 3 years time, now the plan is to still do that if I can get a job to a certain grade of pay, but wondering what to do with the redundancy money.
I did think about DMP but thinking I can get out of this quickly and find a job, and hoping the redundancy money will be a bonus. I would nearly clear off a bank loan which has around £12k left on it (obviously if I have my notice period I could pay this for another few months as normal, meaning it’ll be lower). And then with my redundancy if I had it would pay a huge slice of it meaning I’d only have several months to pay instead of 3 years, but only worry is a new job doesn’t work out and I’m back to square money with zero money (outwith benefits).
I’ve got a car loan which I could pay off and have money left, that has 3 years left too.
And lastly there is credit cards amounting to around £8k, that could also be cleared but with us running a few cards and being able to use the 0% offers in past few years I’m thinking not to go down paying this, we’re currently got 1 finishing October 17 and the other mid’18, there is also the flexibility of changing the monthly payments on this in the meantime.
The wife works part-time but due to family commitments, the job she is in we can’t start looking at that from her side of employment, I really do need to be the one to get a new job.
Anyone any advice on what they have done in such a situation?


TIA


FD

dancingfairy

It sounds like you will get approx 6 months of money ( assuming 3 months is 5k)?
I'd probably use the money to live off and pay minimums in the debts until you've found a new job. Once you've secured a new job you can see how much you have left and put it to debts accordingly.
Df

fd1972uk

Hi,

Yeah, thanks.

Looking at it, does sound the best course of action.

Hopefully getting a new job straight away which enables us to pay off the bills as is would be great, and enable any extra money as you said to lessen the strain.


FD