To consider redundancy with an unemployed husband

[Anon46]

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).

I would keep your job. Whether you like it or not after you go back is pretty much irrelevant when you have bills to pay. If your husband hasn't found a job in several years then I don't think you can rely on him any time soon.

You have a £260k buffer - that's incredible. Plus with the payout it would exceed £300k. I think both you and he can survive on that for quite some time before needing to seek employment!

Sorry who pays rent when they have £260k sat in their account?

I had a similar situation with my last job. Made redundant on mat leave & took it for the money. It was a cruisy job & excellent pension & benefits. I couldn't stay in that role but they did have a vacancy elsewhere I could have filled.

I regret it, tbh. It's too hard to get back into govt now, and I work private for half the money, no benefits unless law, and discrimination and opportunities are terrible because I'm now part time.

So look at what is out there first. If your role is good, stay. I get it, part of my reason for leaving was to see what else was out there & it had gone from a badge of honour to embarrassing to say I worked somewhere for so long. I wish I'd stayed!

What size flat do you get for 1300?
Redundancy gives you a bit more than 12 months salary.
Then what?
What is the plan with the 260k?
You are fairly young right?

If that’s £260k and not a typo then I am not too sure what the worry is about. Though am interested that they’re not viewed as joint as you talk about your DH having spent all his savings.

I wouldn’t want to be in a position where no one in the family was bringing in a wage. You don’t know what it round the corner and I wouldn’t want to rely on a savings pot that could go a long way to securing a comfortable retirement.

The £260000 would be better used trying to get on the property ladder rather than living expenses for an unknown amount of time.

There is no way, no way in hell, that I’d have two parents without an income in a house with a dependent child.

With £260k any chance you could move away from London and buy a home outright?

Wow £260k buys a5 bed farmhouse with cottage and land with change still left where we live..
Anyway I wouldn't be paying that much rent in someone's pocket when it's not benefiting my family

No two parents one child no income...no no no. It's a very dangerous place to be especially as dh have been without a job for some time. Id leave London and buy something outright but keep working in something

You haven’t said which way around the vote is.
The
way you’ve written your post sounds like you want to take the redundancy. No one else knows your job or yours and husbands future prospects.
You have a buffer and a baby, your dh needs a job either way. Is there nothing in between his previous career and shelf stacking? Has his role been eaten by AI? It seems he hasn’t been particularly motivated in the past few years to find work, what’s your take on this? If you stay or find a new job would he be the SAHP?
I say take the redundancy- it’s over a years wages and give yourselves a time frame for at least one of you to get a job and start looking to buy a house (to help focus the job search as well as seeming like a sensible plan in your position)

Where do you live @ActiveTiger?? I’m coming…

I think in your position I would take the payout, relocate to a cheap area out of London but commutable to a major hub with civil service offices (leeds, york, Manchester), buy a modest house outright (can absolutely be done if you’re careful), and re-start the job hunt for both of you.

London is hellishly competitive in all fields atm, and you may both have more luck elsewhere - and definitely lower living costs.

This. I’m assuming that’s inheritance OP. You really need financial advice, it makes zero sense to rent a property when you have ~£300k in the bank.

Personally, I would take redundancy and look again in a year.

Coming in cold and probably thinking negatively I would be really concerned it will be Hard for your to get another job. You have 20 years in a cushy government job and it’ll be hard to describe it as anything else. It’s not screaming hot CV. Obviously you’ve seen how your h has struggled.

there is obviously a reason you haven’t brought a house already, but seems a shame for your savings to go on rent and living expenses.

if childcare is a problem are you thinking of taking 5 years out?

I’m not a firm no, but would be really worried about getting back into work.

Seriously where do you live?!

Take redundancy, move up north, buy a house outright, find a job you love

The job market right now is pretty terrible in my sector. Sounds like your DH too.
If you want to continue living in London then those savings don't last long.
So unless you want to up sticks and move out of London and find somewhere you can buy outright for 260k and then get new jobs locally or work remote then fine. Take the cash.
But otherwise keep the job. It's not worth the 50k to lose all the benefits you have in role especially as you've not even started looking for other roles

If you do buy a cheap house somewhere then make sure you keep enough of the 300k back to live off because if you use all the money for the house it's unlikely that benefits would pay enough to live off comfortably.

Utter utter madness to walk away from a DB pension scheme for a relatively small redundancy payment, especially when you have a decent savings pot already, a baby coming and an unemployed husband.

There will almost certainly be further rounds of redundancies in the future so I would sit it.out for now

What charm school did you go to?

What are your outgoings per month.£1300 for rent per month but what about everything else? Are you living off the £40k or is your capital deleting?

How long in reality will the redundancy payment last you?

I recently needed to get a new job and it was horrendous. Number of applicants is sky high and pay offered is ridiculously low. Personally unless you plan to move somewhere cheaper i wouldn't do it.