For some reasons (undisclosed here) , I may be incomeless for a few years. i have about 200K savings, staying in my parent home but i gave them a lump sum of 50K at one shot. told them is for next few years of me being jobless( not that i want)
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Should not have any expenses since i would not go out at all! So maybe phone bill cost $30 per month and insurance which i should have enough saving to tank for five years of payment.
Anyone similar situation to me? So my question is has anyone also incomeless for a few years? So when u get back to salaryman – how did u cope. And what u do when u are incomeless and mental wise all ok? Asking for reference and mental preparation
Netizens’ comments
- Might want to have a plan? Like what you intend to do during these few years.
Last time I had a friend who did that, left the company and took a break for a few years, then back in, after a few years,she quit again but was feeling restless at home so she got a job which is different from her previous job, which also means she will start at the bottom but get to learn new stuff and she doesn’t mind since she has the financial means to do so.
My mum was let go after her boss sold the company but like my dad said “her backside got nails, cannot sit at home one” , so instead of retiring, she went out to find a new job.
Depending on your industry, you might have to play some catch up after the break to get back on track with the newer technology etc. - Here’s sharing my experience: I took an unplanned and unintended career break due to illness, from approx 2016 to 2021. I can’t really put a finger down to the number of years I stopped work, cos I had stepped down my employment gradually from FTE to part-time, to self-employed, then freelance, until my health required me to stop working totally.
When my health got better in late 2020, I started reading up on how to re-enter the workforce/restart my career after a break. Honestly, despite all the hell that the pandemic caused, there were two good things that came out of it that benefitted me:
The SGUnited heavily subsidised training/skills/mid-career programmes that came with monthly training allowance. I personally took a 9-mths long SGUS prog in digital HR to brush up my rusty skills and make myself more relevant to today’s needs, and also got to upskill in the newer tech skill
WFH corporate jobs were previously rare in Sg, but companies were forced to make it happen and now some of them have realised the good in a hybrid workforce. Though it’s still too soon to say for sure, we will have to see how things go after Apr 26.
And remote/hybrid work arrangements were what I really needed so as to manage my energy output better to avoid crashes/relapses. I have since started working in Feb 2022, although in a lower role but getting to restart is of more importance.
In terms of finances I can’t really offer much advice given that I actually had to turn to family for help ultimately cos the medical expenses plus not working expended all of my savings. But the break also forced me to cut my monthly bills to only what is most essential, and I realised that a lot of the expenses that I thought were important or necessary may not actually be. So it’s important to rank your expenses I think, and perhaps as you go along your break, you can slowly cut away those things that you can do without.
Finally, to end this off, I can’t emphasise enough that HEALTH IS WEALTH. Please take care of yourselves first and foremost, be it physically, mentally, emotionally. No matter how much you slog for any company, or offer your time and money to any religion, or bend over backwards to cater to your friends/network/etc, when disaster hits, not all of them will be willing to stay with you to ride it out and give a helping hand. But I also don’t regret or blame the higher being for having to go through what I did, cos the “social cleansing” really helped me to now know who are my important people (honestly many of those whom I thought would be in this group ended up taking flight but it’s okay, good riddance to them).