I am going to be laid off in a month. I got the official letter yesterday. I am a government contractor and in all its wisdom, the government has deferred many new contracts indefinitely. Basically, the funding fell through. If I am not making money for my company, they can’t keep paying me. Considering I have only been working for the company for a year and a half, a month is actually pretty generous. But without a job, there is no employer-sponsored health insurance.
It seems that all the contortions I have made to avoid this situation, all the jobs I took that I didn’t want, all the opportunities I didn’t take because I needed comprehensive healthcare may have been a wasted effort.
I have been obsessed with saving for retirement since before I was even in the non-summer-job workforce. I was 20 when I opened my first IRA. Even then, I knew my retirement wouldn’t look like everyone else’s. It was going to be hugely expensive to cover all the meds and medical equipment I am going to need, and who knows where social security will be by the time I retire?
So, I constantly took jobs that paid a little more, were in secure industries (I thought), and had robust 401k benefits. I paid in as much as I needed to get the company match. With the exception of two or three vacations, I put everything I had left after monthly bills into a second retirement account. I still only have about half of what I have calculated I will need to reach my goal.
And now this. I had been putting non-retirement money aside to reach some goals: what-if-I-lose-my-job fund, down payment on a new car (mine is 16 and has over 200,000 miles on it), an apartment renovation, a vacation for my 50th birthday. I had about 20% of what I needed when I took two-thirds of it to help pay for my condo last year, and it was just starting to look good again when coronavirus hit. I suspect I will run through it faster than I saved it, although unemployment insurance will help, as will the Affordable Care Act/Medicaid.
I was anxious before. We all are. We have been told that our old lives pose a threat to us, our families, and anyone we come into contact with, so we have (rightly) ceded control to those who know more about how these things work and have more information on how things stand. We stay home because it is safer even if it stresses us psychologically and/or threatens our livelihoods. The ones who don’t have a choice are certainly risking their lives. Uncertainty in any situation breeds anxiety. Not only is this not an exception, it is global. I have never experienced global anxiety before. I would guess it is similar to the anxiety felt during certain parts of the Cold War, when neither side was sure the other wasn’t going to nuke them.
Now I am scared. I got a little teary yesterday when I had to correct an email from saying “I suspect that I will be laid off” to “I will be laid off”. Just because you plan for something bad – and I am privileged to have been able to plan for this – doesn’t mean you’re ready for it when it happens. I haven’t been without a job for 20 years. I am a policy analyst, and a good one, but it’s not a skill that is in high demand. I don’t know how long it will take me to get a new job in this environment. The only control I have over the situation is to apply and apply and apply.
I have a month.