 Lost my job, what do I do next? Look, losing your job can profoundly affect your finances. Not only will unemployment reduce your income, it can completely eliminate it. Not only do you lose your income, you can lose important benefits like health insurance. Look, reacting quickly and decisively can really help you once you've become unemployed. Reacting quickly can minimize or help you avoid some serious situations. It's really important to know what to do next once you lose your job. And we're starting right now. Hey, I'm JR Fisher. I've been selling online since 2009, long, long time. And I've sold millions of dollars of both physical and digital products. And over the years, I've picked up a few things and I share them with you on this channel. Now, I do have a course, it's a $97 course, but you can get it absolutely free. It's an e-commerce course. If you look down in the description, you'll find a link down there for that particular course. Now, if you're not a subscriber to this channel, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button down there. Don't forget, bell notifications, ring the bell, turn on the bell, turn on all notifications so that you become part of the Fisher family and I can notify you every single time I do one of these videos. Hey, have you lost your job? Oh my God, there's nothing worse than that. I've lost a couple in my life and it's devastating. It's really, really devastating when that happens to you. But if you make the right decisions, it can be a whole lot less detrimental to you when you follow some rules. I know a lot of people are really hurting out there right now, but things always do seem to work out. You've gotta stay positive. That's the number one thing you wanna do is stay positive. If you don't stay positive, it's really hard to fix any situation. I'm gonna go through a few steps that I would suggest you do that can make this a whole lot easier on you. Number one, negotiate a severance agreement. In some cases, employees who've lost their employment due to no fault of their own are entitled to what's called severance pay, which means it's extra pay that you would have received for a particular period of time, a month, three months, six months. This length of time can vary and the amount of severance can also vary. The first thing you wanna do is check out your employee handbook for that particular company if they have one. Most bigger companies do have them and see what their policy is on severance pay. Now, if your employer has over 100 employees, they fall under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988. This will entitle you to 60 days notice when there's gonna be mass layoffs at your company. If your employer does not provide you with a 60 day notice, you are entitled to severance pay. If you're entitled to it, what a lot of people don't know is it's something that you can sometimes actually negotiate and get a better deal than you would have gotten. This better deal may help you make it to the next job while you're trying to pay all the bills. Now, when a company is laying off a lot of people, they could be short of money, so number two is collect your last paycheck as soon as you can. Make sure you get paid any accrued vacation, any sick time that's due to you. Make sure all that's in the check. And you wanna do that as soon as possible, especially if they've laid off a lot of people because the first people in line are gonna be the people you're gonna get taken care of first. Many employers will just mail this to you and they're generally not allowed to withhold your last paycheck with a contingency like you've gotta come back to the business to pick it up. If you have unused paid vacation or sick days, you may be entitled to your state laws to collect payment for those particular accrued time off. Nearly half of the United States mandate that employers actually include payment for unused vacation and sick days. Even if your state doesn't fall under that requirement, it may be the company policy to actually pay it to you anyhow. You can find out the stipulations and the laws at the state labor department website. Number three, yes, do it, do it, do it, apply for unemployment benefits. If you're eligible, there's nothing wrong with applying for unemployment to take care of your family. It's really as easy as if you were laid off from your job through no fault of your own, you're probably gonna be entitled to unemployment. Usually, if you're getting unemployment, there's gonna be some stipulations that you're actively looking for another job, but in the meantime, you could be getting payments. You'll wanna go to your state employment website to find out what the stipulations are and in many cases, you can apply online. Now, unemployment will not replace your entire income. Unemployment benefits are taxable and the amount you receive actually is gonna be equal to a portion of your past wages up to a maximum. In addition to that, there are caps on how long you can collect unemployment and you'll find that on the state website. So it's super important you do this right away because having some money come in is better than having no money come in. Now, those of you who have a non-compete agreement, number four is review the non-compete agreement. In some states, like I live in California, non-compete agreements are virtually unenforceable, so you won't have to worry about it. But there are states out there that you live in where they can actually restrict where you can go to work at this point. It doesn't hurt if you could afford it to get some legal advice in this area and make sure you're doing the right thing. At the time you're negotiating your severance package, it's really a good time to talk about your non-compete agreement and see if you can make adjustments in it. Number five, decide what you're gonna do on health insurance. Health insurance is super important and having an unpaid medical bill can really sock it to you when you don't have any income. Now, it's super important that you check on health insurance because your employer's not gonna be responsible for making those premium payments and if they don't, you won't have health insurance. Now, under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, better known as COBRA, you're allowed to keep your coverage as long as you make the payments. You can have coverage up to 18 months after you leave that employer and actually you'll be making the payments through your employer. Now, the downside to this is if they were paying a portion of your insurance, you're now gonna have to cover the entire bill yourself and they will not be paying a portion. Now, some of the other options you may have is if your spouse is also employed, maybe you can be added to their policy and you won't have to carry a separate policy for yourself. Now, it's really important that you get on this right away because I believe at the time of this recording, you had about 60 days or you would lose your eligibility to be able to pay on that policy. Number six, rework your budget and cut some spending. That's the first thing you need to do is you need to look at what are necessary expenditures and which ones are not necessary expenditures. You wanna keep as much cash as you can on hand because you don't know what emergencies are gonna come up and you don't know when you're gonna have an income again. You don't look at things that you don't think about like gym memberships and cable and eating out, all these things that you really don't have to do, you may wanna trim them until you can find another position. Number seven, reach out to your network. You probably know a lot of people in your industry and knowing those people right now could be very beneficial to you. You wanna reach out to them, talk to them, let them know what your situation is. Oftentimes when somebody loses their job, they don't wanna let anybody know when in fact it happens. It happens to a lot of people. So don't worry about that. Get in touch with these people. Let them know what your skills are. Maybe they're looking for somebody just like you. Being proactive, finding a job right now is gonna be very, very beneficial to you because those proactive people, when the company see that they're proactive and they're trying to find employment as opposed to just looking at ads that are placed, those are the kind of people they probably want working for. Just because a company doesn't have an ad place for a particular position doesn't mean they won't hire you. Number eight, use LinkedIn. Now I'm not a big user of LinkedIn, but it's a great place for employment and finding jobs. Create a profile at LinkedIn if you don't have one already and a lot of times employers will go in there and look for good candidates for their company even without posting a job. Now maybe you already had a LinkedIn profile. Don't assume it's what you need there because if you made it a long time ago it may not be updated. So you'll wanna go in there and update your LinkedIn profile so it reflects your current abilities and capabilities. Number nine, evaluate your career path. Too often we get into a job that is something that we think we want to do when in fact for years we've been doing something we didn't wanna do. You may wanna look at this as an opportunity. What other things would you like to do? Why don't you broaden your scope a little bit and look in other areas where you could maybe gain employment. Number 10, update your resume. You gotta have an updated resume. Too often people will take the same resume they had and they've gained a lot of skills and they've gained a lot of talents and they don't update that resume. You wanna put all of those skills and talents into that resume that you have now so it reflects who you are now not what you were years before when you made that resume. The other thing I would tell you is don't have one resume. You wanna have a resume that is actually more custom tailored to that particular job. If you're in the healthcare industry it may have a title in there that talks about how you love healthcare and you wanna stay in healthcare but maybe you wanna go into manufacturing and you think you have the skills for manufacturing well if you had the healthcare title on there it's not gonna make a whole lot of sense. So you may wanna put something in there about getting into manufacturing and why you wanna be in manufacturing. Make sure that those resumes are actually custom to the industry that you're applying to or even the business that you're applying to. Number 11, clean up your social media accounts. I don't use social media for a lot of personal things so I don't have to worry about that quite as much but a lot of people do they'll have their political views in there associations they're members of and a lot of those things can be offensive to an employer. So you have a couple choices here you can remove a lot of that stuff from your social profile or you can just make it private. Number 12, connect with your coworkers. Your coworkers who are also out of a job or out there looking, they're meeting people they know things they may have no openings they may know of positions they may know of companies that are hiring. So make sure you stay in touch with all those people because you can be a great network for each other. Number 13, brush up on your job skills. Whatever your job was maybe you could get better at it maybe there's new talents you could learn maybe there's new certifications you could get this is your opportunity to become a more marketable person by learning new things and acquiring new skills. Number 14, and this is my favorite start an online business. Why not start your own business? This may be an opportunity for you to actually work for yourself. I know it's a scary proposition I did it and I've been working for myself since 2009 now and it's a lot of work I will tell you, don't think that if you're gonna start your online business that it's gonna be less work it's gonna be more work than a job that's just the way it is that's the way it always has been. Now it may have been presented to you that you could make millions of dollars and only work four hours a week it's just not the case it's not gonna happen that way you're gonna have to put in a lot of hours but you may find it really rewarding to work for yourself and working for yourself I know I don't mind working four hours because I'm doing it for me I'm not doing it for somebody else's dream. Okay so that gives you some guide as to what you need to do I always opt to starting an online business and since I do I've got a free course for you it's a $97 course you can click in the description below click and learn no credit card required and you can learn a new skill by selling things online don't forget if you haven't subscribed to do so join the Fisher family right the VIP group by doing what? Bell notifications click that bell right next to that subscribe button if you do when you do you'll become part of the Fisher family and I can let you know every time I do a new video put your comments below let me know the situation you're in tell me some of the details about what happened with you your job maybe you found one maybe you're still looking maybe you have questions about selling online put all that in the comments below thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one