Federal workers now have until at least Monday to accept an offer to resign in exchange for an eight-month severance.
DALLAS — Federal workers now have a few more days, at least, to decide whether to accept the offer to voluntarily resign with the promise of a buyout worth eight months of their salary.
Roughly 2.3 million people work for the federal government and more than 40,000 have taken the deal, about 2% of the workforce.
A federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s buyout offer to federal civilian employees from taking effect Thursday, after a lawsuit filed by federal workers unions.
WFAA spoke with Colby Bryan Dickson, a Wealth Management Advisor with Northwestern Mutual to get some advice for those facing sudden and unexpected retirement.
“It’s different for different people,” Dickson said. “For those folks that are, you know, five years away from retirement, and even those that are younger in their career, I would say, number one, don’t panic.”
“You want to make sure you have an emergency fund that could carry you through something like this unexpected,” he said. “That’s exactly what it’s for. Another thing to be aware of is when, anytime you lose a job, most often, especially in this situation, there are benefits that are going to go away and you need to be aware of what those benefits are. Whether it’s, you know, life insurance benefits to protect your family or retirement benefits and having an understanding of what is going to go away and what you can do to get ahead of that as you have that job loss is very important as well.”
Federal workers who are considering the option are similar to other workers in other industries presented with offers to resign.
“Have someone look over that severance with you, maybe even meet with your HR so you understand everything in that severance, so that you can truly be prepared of what that’s going to look like if it comes to fruition,” Dickson said.
And don’t be afraid to get help and crunch the numbers, he added.
“We had a client that had a sudden job loss, different situation, but, you know, they were starting to panic,” Dickson said. “We ran a financial plan for them and, in reality, they were in great shape. They chose to continue the job search, but if they wanted to, they could have stopped then and they would have been okay financially. They didn’t know that because they haven’t ran the math or met with anybody to help them be strategic around what that looks like for them personally.”
