People have been complaining that the ReStart package leaves out those with “money in the bank” or “significant redundancy payments”. Excuse me, but since when is 25k an “insignificant amount”? Even after taxes, that is not chump change. I would not be turning up my nose at something like that. I believe the savings cut off was around $16k. Which I think is fair enough. I know that’s not a huge amount, but if you have 16k you can live off some of that for a little while. I know it will hurt, but that’s what you save your EF for, after all. (Bear in mind this is coming from a student with barely a quarter of that to her name)
If you are important/wellpaid enough to end up with 25k or more in redundancy payouts, that’s not something to take lightly. Many of us wouldn’t get anything, or very little, so be grateful for what you have! Let’s say you end up with $17k after taxes. That’s enough for a couple of months. I tend not to look at the very top of my bank statement, the line that shows the total amount IN for the month and the total amount OUT. It shocks me to see that 6-8k passes through our account each month! Bear in mind that we pay the total rent for our house, $405, and so we get the rent from our two flatmates in every week. But it’s still so much more than I imagined, and so little of it stays in our account.
Nonetheless, we have certainly cut back since the whole situation with BF’s employment, and $17k would have kept us going for awhile!
