It’s old wisdom that losing a job can turn someone’s life upside down. There’s a mortgage, car payments, kids to send to college and you just lost your income and pension. That sounds pretty bleak.
But really, losing your corporate job isn’t as much of a death sentence as it used to be. In fact, if you look at it as an opportunity, losing your job can make your life better and become your ultimate retirement fix.
Here’s why.
Your job was probably killing you
Having a regular, corporate job implies that your life is structured. You need to show up every day, answer to bosses, meet deadlines and do well on your annual review. Your security as an employee is contingent on all these factors, whether you have a contract or not. Being made redundant is a possibility.
Chronic stress from a corporate job can have a lot of negative health effects, including:
- Heart attacks
- Arrhythmias
- Headaches
- Coronary disease
- Depression
- And more
And if you don’t actually like your job, it gets even worse. Recent research has shown that people with low job satisfaction are more likely to have anxiety, depression, common colds, back pain, and a slew of other health problems.
While everyone should consider these health risks subconsciously, you realize how undervalued you are as senior staff. You suffer through hour long meetings with junior staff that could have been finished in 15 minutes. How many brain cells do you burn in trade to get the paycheck? What’s your time really worth?
Losing your corporate job could be great for your health. If your job was stressful, or you just outright hated it, then good riddance.
Now you can travel
Another perk of losing your 9-5 job is that you no longer have somewhere you need to be 5-days a week. Maybe I’m biased, but the possibility of traveling and seeing the world are attractive.
Maybe you’re thinking:
How can I travel the world with no money? I’m being made redundant. I need to find another job.
It’s true, you need to start working again after losing your corporate job, but now it’s easier than ever to do that remotely. Start a business or secure a position that allows you to work from your laptop, and you can start making up for the years you spent stuck behind a desk. Just check out these retirement destinations to inspire you.
You can reassess your priorities
I’m a financial advisor, and one thing I like to ask my clients is, “What is your perfect day?”
You might think this question has nothing to do with losing your corporate job and finding a retirement fix, but trust me, it does.
Working a 9-5 job pins you down. A lot of people are brainwashed by the system — it never even occurred to them to think about what they’d really like to do day-to-day. So if you want financial security, a retirement fix and true happiness all in one, you need to answer the question:
What is your perfect day?
My 19 year-old sophomore in college thinks of everything in the context of her Perfect Day. I never thought about it until a couple of years ago. I had bought into the whole American Dream of working for 40 years and retiring, then I ran out of runway.
Here’s how you start.
- Where would you live?
- What time would you wake up?
- Would your life goals change?
- What would you do every morning?
- What kind of friends would you have?
- How much time would you spend with family?
- What would your work day look like?
- What would your evening routine be?
Answering these questions will paint a picture of the lifestyle you want, and start to hint at the kind of work that would fit into this lifestyle and be fulfilling at the same time.
Losing your corporate job means you can finally pursue your dream
Honestly, you might not know you even have a dream until you ask yourself what your perfect day looks like. But a picture will start to form slowly.
Eventually, you’ll realize the true benefit of losing your corporate job. Because that dream day and that dream job, the ideal scenario, isn’t actually a dream. Only if you’re stuck behind a desk. But for you, the jobless, it’s an opportunity.
There’s nothing stopping you from making it happen. Just take the right steps, and you’ll see why losing your corporate job is the best thing that ever happened to you.