Background: I've been offered voluntary redundancy from my job working for the Government. I earn £40k with a rise every year. My payout would be in the region of £50-55k after tax. I'm currently on maternity leave. I rent privately in London (£1300pcm) and have approx £260k in my savings account.
Pros of leaving:
£50-55k is a lot of money.
I would need to get childcare if I returned to work (and my husband found a job) instead so a large chunk of my take home pay would be spent on that. Not to mention being knackered from running around doing the nursery drop offs.
I don't really enjoy the job. It's a low skilled job that I fell into about 20 years ago and it made sense to stay as it paid the bills. I was looking forward to going on maternity leave for a long time.
I only have to wait 6 months before returning to a Government job if I want to avoid repaying the redundancy compensation. It's worth noting that it's much harder to get a job nowadays and the majority of jobs tend to get filled by internal candidates.
A HUGE pro IMO: I run the risk of returning from maternity leave and realising that I either don't like what my job has become whilst I was away or childcare costs make going to work a bit pointless therefore leaving at a later date with no payout i.e. I would be better off leaving now and getting a large amount of money instead of returning to work for six months and leaving empty handed.
Cons of leaving:
I have a relatively easy job which is well paid for what I actually do and I WFH for part of the week. I could get a job elsewhere doing the same work as it's non specialised however I doubt I would earn the same. The Government tends to pay quite well for my kind of work.
I have a defined benefit pension, 33 days annual leave plus bank holidays. You get the jist. It's a pretty family friendly & flexible place to work.
I have a laid back manager who doesn't micro manage me. Although she could leave at any moment of course.
My husband is unemployed. He used to have a very well paid job but lost it several years ago. He has spent the past year applying for jobs in his field without success. He's now applying for supermarket jobs to get some money coming in. He's reliant on me financially as he's spent his savings. Ideally he would get another well paid job meaning that he wouldn't be available for childcare anymore. But I have a week to decide on redundancy and who knows how long it will take him to find a job.
Making myself unemployed means even less chance of getting a mortgage.
My aforementioned savings rule me out of claiming any benefits (my husband is also ineligible because of this too).