Ask HN: How do I start feeling secure financially as a tech worker?

Take a deep breath.

You have multiple years of savings. You have an in demand skill that won't go out of demand any time soon. You have enough fundamentals of that skill so if you had to switch from one language to another it wouldn't be a huge stretch. Sounds like you have yours and your wife's health. Also sounds like you don't have to worry about immigration problems from losing your job (not on an H1B or some other work permit).

This is what helped me when I was feeling anxious about losing my job due to immigration issues in the USA.

1. I continued to keep in contact once every 3 months, just saying hi, to previous co-workers. It's a system I learned here: https://courses.jordanharbinger.com/courses/6-minute-network.... Literally just saying "hi" and not asking for anything. This means I always have a warm network of people who'll gladly send me a job in case anything ever were to go wrong.

2. Because of #1, I'd have an inbound interview probably once every 3-4 months I would take. Most of the time I'd turn down the job, but it helped me emotionally know "I got this".

3. I paid off all my debts, cut up all my credit cards, and stopped borrowing money from anyone for any reason. Ya I'm losing some arbitrage opportunities. I don't care. I'm optimizing for psychological comfort.

If you have skills and relationships you will _always_ make money. Full stop. A lot of engineers only focus on the skills. Keeping relationships is VERY easy. EVERYONE is bad as proactively reaching out and saying hi to people so if you JUST spend five minutes a day proactively saying hi people WILL remember you.

You don't need to make new relationships, you just need to nurture the ones you have.

To shake this kind of feeling, I like to "calculate" how things should go wrong for the worst case scenario to realize: if there aren't enough steps, I know what to work on, but usually it really makes me realize that I've built enough safety nets.

E.g.: right now, there are two possibilities: that I get laid off, or not. If not, everything good. If yes, there are two possibilities: that I find a job in a month or less, or not. If yes, all good. If not, I still have 2 months of savings that I can easily spread to 4 months reducing all accessories expenses. Is it enough time? If yes, all good, if not, I can buy other 6 months selling assets. Are they enough? If yes, all good, if not, I have different layers of social nets that can help me (I am not going in details here, but I have at least other 5 steps before becoming homeless, and all of them have a very low probably of failure, barring a nuclear war).

So, the worst case scenario is less probable that being hit by a car while going to my current job, so not really something I should worry about

Have you considered taking a look at your expenses?

Maybe there's an opportunity to improve - reevaluate your eating habbits, car, fun?

Download csv of last 3/6/9/12 months of payments from your bank

get into Excel and start querying and thinking about it

You probably can't. This is just a fact of modern life in a society that's polarized along a division of wealth inequality. If you're on the wrong side then you have to get used to never feeling secure. Any single catastrophic event can end your economic security.

You can hedge against it with good insurance, but that doesn't protect you against a lot of externalities (you can't insure against a second great depression for example). The only way to actually resolve it is to become "fuck you money" rich. Very few people manage that.

The best route forwards is to stoicly resolve to enjoy what you have while you have it and accept what life gives when things change. This might be harder than getting fuck you money though.

Get a job doing something 'boring'.

I work for a company which makes control systems for large industrial machinery. Our order book is about 10 years long. The products we sell will be in use for at least 30 years, and if at any time during that a safety issue is found, we are required to fix it. The team is quite small and we are fully stretched to meet the product requirements. In other words, layoffs are pretty much impossible

Therapy. Seriously. What you're describing is anxiety, and therapy can help you deal with that.

You have a lot of money in savings, and a career in a high-demand, well-paid industry. You could be better off, and it's good to strive fore more security, but no matter how secure you are, there are always going to be reasons to worry.

Learning to cope with anxiety is a must-have skill, in my opinion.

It sounds like you could use some basic guidance on finance. Take a look at Financial Peace University. They have online and in-person classes going on all the time.

> I have more than a couple years worth of savings

Not counting retirement/pension? That's actually pretty great!

It might be most effective to invest time in networking. That would be a prerequisite for any kind of entrepreneurship, but more practically would help you find a new job quicker if you were laid off.

The best you can do is set up some financial reserves, revise your spending and accept that life is a series of uncertainties.

It sounds like you already covered the reserves, good. You should have at least a few months of emergency funds, especially with kids and family. Layoffs are not the only reason for these funds, you might get sick, have an accident, need to take care of someone etc etc.

Also take a look at your costs. Are there any unneeded expenses that you can cut, maybe temporarily? Do you really need Netflix, Spotify AND DisneyPlus right now? Cutting some expenses may not be THE definitive answer, but it gives you some sense of control and might help with anxiety.

And lastly, try to accept that life is somewhat random. There are lots of things you simply can't control. You can de-risk certain bad events, but there's never a 100% guarantee for anything. It took me a while to realize this, but once you're there you get much calmer :-)

I would Leetcode, clean up my resume, and start practicing interviews. Never hurts to look around and being ready to interview will reduce the amount of time to find another job in the event you end up in the next round of cuts. Some of my coworkers are leaving for higher paying jobs without there having been any risk of layoffs at my company. Otherwise if you weren’t part of the initial cuts, you are probably fine and remember layoffs come with a few months severance so you’re already getting a few months of runway in the worst case.

I like the idea of job security vs career security.

Job security is your boss likes you and you did do most of that new project by yourself, nobody else even really knows how it works. Seems unlikely you would get fired.

Career Security is you keep up with the most effective approaches in industry, you learn new languages on the weekend, bias for transparency and training your replacement, going to conferences, expanding your network, interviewing once a month for fun and practice. Usually this approach leads to more job security too but the arena you're playing in is the total market for tech workers rather than one company.

It's a slider scale too, you can do more or less stuff but thats kind of the way I think about it.

Having an emergency fund is nice too.

Putting money aside and living well below your means. Also, a year is a long time.. It's basically impossible to be unemployed for an entire year if you know how to turn on a computer.

Your real worry should be that there is no safe place to store value for regular people.. Real estate is not liquid enough.. Fiat devaluates quickly.. Maybe gold is a reasonable store, but it is still somewhat annoying and what guarantee do you REALLY have there anyway?

You're in a good spot.

1) Talk to your wife, make sure she knows that layoffs happened at your company and that you were not affected this time round.

2) Calculate your monthly expenses

3) Work out your exact runway. How many months can you go without working.

If you want a longer runway then reduce your expenses.

Personally I felt completely secure when I bought my house outright, no mortgage. Everything up till that point was just incremental improvements.

You never will never feel financially secure as an employee. That's the whole point.

If you have no debt, two years of savings, can afford one parent to stay at home, and work in tech, you are ahead of the overwhelmingly vast majority of people. If this simple fact doesn't make you feel secure, I'd suggest that no amount of money will make you feel secure.

Instead, focus on increasing your employability. If the economy crashed, could you easily get a job? If not, what skills do you need to learn to be in that position?

One thing (among all the other great suggestions) you can do is to make sure you’ve got a budget in place, so you understand what your projected finances look like.

I use YouNeedABudget (YNAB: https://www.youneedabudget.com/) which gives me a lot of confidence about my finances.

It’s not just about making sure you’ve got enough money either, it’s about spending it guilt free, because in your budget, you’ve already spent it. This helps me budget for things like haircuts, and other self-care things without worrying about it or feeling guilty. The net effect is that I look after myself in new ways and feel more confident about where my money is earmarked. This could be a way to help shake your feeling.

It sounds more like you’re asking about an emotional block than actual financial health. Give yourself some credit. A multi-year safety net is far more savings than most people have, and you shouldn’t dismiss that just because you haven’t bought a house. Just remember that there are people who raise families doing all kinds of jobs that earn less and offer less security. Your skills probably won’t evaporate like some JS framework. You were capable of skilling up to get where you are, and if you needed to you could reskill.

Maybe invest some of that pile in a few therapy sessions to see if you’re still living some maladaptive coping strategy that helped protect you when things were thinner. It helped me, anyway.

If you have a couple years worth of your monthly expenses in your savings then I wouldn’t be so worried about it. What you have done with that is to buy you time while you figure out the situation. This is enough for most problems you would face wrt employment.

What calms me down when I’m feeling anxious like you is to write down some plans with different scenarios: good, okay and bad.

Once I have a plan for the “bad” scenario I feel way more comfortable and can chill.

Having even 6 months of savings (outside of retirement funds, money you might be saving for a house, etc.) puts you in a very good place, and well ahead of most people.

With a second child on the way and having seen co-workers get laid off, it's entirely understandable that you're nervous. Diversifying your income isn't what you need to do, instead you may benefit from talking to a financial advisor to make sure you're allocating your excess income appropriately to prepare for the future. Talking to a therapist about your concerns could also help you work through the anxiety.

You’re fine. If you don’t feel fine the good news is you can afford years of therapy and still be very wealthy. It seems likely you’re feeling insecure because you’re comparing yourself to others around you who are even more wealthy. This is not a good use of your energies. Go hug your kid, kiss your wife, and sleep well.

I’m not in your life situation but been wondering this same question recently. I also have at least 6 months worth of savings paid, but my wife works a decent job

First off it’s important to remember you really are fine. You have more savings than majority of people. You work in a lucrative field and have a set of skills that are in demand. Even if the economic situation is dire. Your savings runway alone has me confident in your situation

It’s scary though! The best I would do is worry less about trying to bring in a second income yourself. Don’t deprive yourself of time with your family. Reduce costs at home where you can and pocket those savings.

Downloading my expenses from the past year into CSV and just plotting that out in Excel helped a lot.

> I have more than a couple years worth of savings.

You seem to be quite well placed. However, as yourself a few questions.

How liquid are those savings? I.e., how fast can you pull those savings into bank account, if needed.

Where all have you saved them? Equity, debt etc. And for each of those asset classes how vulnerable are your savings? Assume stock markets were to go down by 30%, how will that impact your savings?

Post 2008 major financial institutions and banks were required to periodically conduct stress test simulations and publish results. I suggest you do the same for your situation. Run a few scenarios, maybe even a worst case. Whatever you believe is going to be the worst case.

There is multiple answers here, for me they fall into two broad categories: advice in how to deal with yourself and advice on how to deal with this as an society

If you have multiple years of savings and still feel anxiety, you might consider that this could have to do more with your own character, psyche and situation than with actual real risks, especially if you are working in a sector where people of your skill are always sought after.

The other answer would be worker rights — so either live somewhere where they exist or start fixing them by joining an union. As someone living in a country with universal healthcare, decent worker rights and social services I don't have to be that afraid of what happens when my boss decides to hand me my 3 months notice (including a valid cititation of what I did wrong) or if they don't prolong my 4 year contract. They also cannot throw me out if I have an accident and cannot come for half a year. I also won't pay a penny in health care costs when that happens because universal healthcare.

Having a solidaric environment directly translates into ease of mind. I am still a (too) hard working person and I earn well, but I don't have to worry about certain things and I like to work in an environment where others don't have to worry either.

So fix yourself and/or fix the world

Multiple years of savings is the definition of security in my opinion, well done and don’t overthink it. A lot of us don’t have anywhere near that in savings, you should be fine.

I don't think there is much you can do. Based on what you have written, I would assume you already invest a good portion in 401K, index funds, and other options.

If you have savings which aren't counted in that, you are better than 90% of the people out there who are happy and chugging along.

I would recommend building document with your backup plans and runaway. That should give you ample time to reflect.

Your wife should invest in skills / employability to the point that she can get a job with benefits (who cares about the pay). If you are worried about your job, I would recommend this first.

If your wife can step in and provide baseline benefits and income, that frees you up for higher-wage contracting/consulting/entrepreneurship.

Certainly don't get a house now. What if you need to move to another city for a job? You are obviously living below your means. That is a goddamn superpower in today's economy, which relies on people being under the guillotine constantly.

If your wife makes you feel more uncomfortable about your collective economic security rather than provides a backstop, then, well, that's why wives are the #1 enemy of feminism. You and your wife should have a willingness to face good times and bad with a collective desire to work and be secure.

Since you haven't lost your job yet, the time to get on this is now, to discuss possible uncertain economics with her to set expectations.

I shaked that feeling many years ago (2008 crisis, so same anxiety as you I guess; layoffs all around etc) by buying a house. I did not have much money so I had to move to a much cheaper country, but the weight did suddenly drop off as at least no need to pay rent or mortgage (paid cash; interest was high at the time), and the house will gain in value as well. Moving turned out to be greater than we thought; everything is cheaper and suddenly after everything, monthly cost was slashed by 60+% which now became pure savings. And as I always worked from home as software engineer, so my income went up while cost stayed more or less equal (with some inflation, however even this year, things here didn’t really get more expensive for us outside gasoline).

Anyway; for me, owning a house removed all the (unfounded) money worries I had while renting.

One of the effects of layoffs/firings, if not always the primary intention, is to put the employees in a state of insecurity and anxiety -- to make you work harder, longer, etc.

Best solution I can think of is to try to form a union, so you have some ability to fight back if and when someone lays you off, fires you, harasses you, etc.

That said, both the process of forming a union, and then trying to exist post-union, can get you fired or effectively fired. Companies, e.g. Tesla, will just close down entire factories to escape labor laws, etc. Of course, in IT, it's much easier to outsource jobs. Other companies will just shut down to kill a union, and sometimes re-form once the union is dead. This is all in America, which is a very anti-labor country.

That's about all you can do really. The thing I found is make yourself invaluable. That means throwing what interests you technology wise under a bus and learn stuff that isn't glamorous. Pick a niche with a perpetual vacuum yet hedge on something ubiquitous. For me I do AWS crap for the ubiquitous and Linux sysadmin for the vacuum. There are very few people around who truly can do the latter. I picked 20/30 different career paths and scanned around job sites for stupid salaries and contract rates where I don't have to invest much and just do that.

But always have 12 months cash in the bank. That doesn't have to be 12 months of luxury, but 12 months of survival.

Shortened: minimise risks through security and skill hedging.

It helps if you can live somewhere where (a) buying your own home is achievable without giant cost (this is still do-able many places if you ignore posh areas) (b) amenities e:g decent shops, schools etc are walkable , work is remote or cycling distance or reachable by half decent public transport, and living without a car for some time is feasible. This enables you to overpay a mortgage once you have one, and/or be resilient to loss of income due to layoff , or increase in costs. Or continue to run a car but know its not the end of the world if it breaks or you have to go without one for a while. All the above are of course much easier to achieve in UK or Europe than much of USA though I dare say .....

Solo entrepreneur and freelancer here, for 10 years+. I know this feeling very well, I have a wife and two kids.

Something that can potentially help you (it helps me, alot!) is to do liquidity planning as if you're a business. I use a Google sheet to track monthly spend, and income, as well as yearly stuff such as insurance premiums, mortgage payments and taxes. Add your liquidity (bank account in your case) and see how far it goes.

Doesn't have to be super precise (it can't be), but it should give you a rough idea of how long you have. And in your case, as you are on very solid financial footing, it might calm you down a little.

For me personally, it gives me a feeling of being in control, if only a little, of the uncontrollable.

I grew up working class, and am a product of public schools. I gruadated with 75k of student loan debt and then struggled all through my 20s before finally landing a career. When I got my first "big kid job" at 27, my manager recommended the book "I Will Teach you To Be Rich" by Ramit Setih. Ignore the hoaky clickbaity title, the book saved my a$$ and very likely my retirement. It's a 6 week program and by the end of it just about everything is automated. I have to log in every december and tweak my investment portfolio, that's about it. Please do yourself a favor if you are starting from the same level of knowledge that I did (zero) and check out that book.

Spend less. Regulate indoor temps, cook for yourself, and . . . you're already married so that part's fine.

Live outside the bay area.

Stop to smell the flowers. Seriously. It will help you focus on something other than money. Then plant some flowers. Pass it on!

Spend some of your bankroll on your wife learning monied skills! Seriously, she's a second income while you're together and a reason you don't pay alimony if she's skilled and you break up.

Your feeling is from being selfish. Give some. Figure out who deserves it. They'll look out for you, too, if you choose right. Be more social!

> ..I have more than a couple years worth of savings...

> ...How do I shake this feeling?...

Sounds like you could consider meditation. You need to be able to state the scenario that you're worried about to be able to deal with it.

You’re asking about how to change a feeling of insecurity to security. My answer is this: give yourself a sense that you have an abundance of options. The feeling of insecurity may stem from a fear of being left without options. So now, not later, interview at a variety of places.

Prepare well for those interviews, and know that if you make it to even 1 place in 10 that you interview (or 20 - whatever it might be), then you have options in case something happens.

You don’t need to actually take any of the jobs. Just create the sense of an abundance of options.

To feel secure in these times you need to know how your company makes revenue, and specifically how you fit in to that picture. If you can't answer that question, then you are at risk. Once you know how you fit into the picture, you can gauge how your company will be impacted by what's going on in the world.

A lot of tech companies out there don't have a real business plan and it's going to be hell for them.

Around half of Americans can't afford an unexpected $400 expense. Two years of savings in the bank seems like solid financial security by comparison.

I have worked as a programmer for forty years, through ups and downs, layoffs, recessions. And raised three kids. You roll with it, keep your skills sharp, stay in contact with colleagues, don't burn bridges. Plenty of work always available in the tech industry, paying far more than most people make. Avoid companies that don't make a profit or have narcissists and sociopaths in charge.

If you have more than a couple (I assume this means >2) years of living expenses in the bank then you have nothing to worry about. If you lose your job do you realistically think it will take more than two years of interviewing to find another?

You don't.

Unless you plan ahead and live well below your means, the volatility of what attracts so many new people into this industry will never afford you a relaxed moment, particularly when they do everything possible to keep you spun up.

> Ny wife wouldn’t be able to make high skilled wages unless she invested substantial time into upskilling which she doesn’t have at the moment.

Every day spent with the kids is worth 10 years of being a wage slave imho

Take ownership of your own wealth management outside of work, if possible find a good financial planner and see what they have to say.

Invest your money, save your money, live frugally in the meantime.

Not to be snarky at all but, why just two years of savings as a tech worker? Is it because you are early in your career?

Increase income, reduce spending.

Alternatively winning the lotto would work too

Get a higher paying job. While that is harder said than done, the process of preparing for such a job search, could keep you prepared for the worst should it come.

This is the wrong question to be asking because this is about how you are feeling, and any rational person right now should rightfully be worried. Some of us are preparing for the worst because the people in office, and appointed are not doing their jobs and have in many respects violated their oaths of office simply by inaction.

Technology Sectors have for the most part given up on a reasonable standard division of labor and are now actively seeking to automate jobs away. Rather than augment existing labor many are simply replacing labor with AI without understanding the caveats. They will pay for that mistake, but when you have a coordinated effort to do that finding alternatives will be rough so its a perfect time to start a company (if you know how, and can overcome that barrier to entry).

Inevitably the first jobs to go are the more expensive mid-tier jobs. The second are the low end.

So there are many reasons you should be very concerned. Not owning a house will set you back on building financial wealth because those tax breaks are not open to you, and the housing market has been inflated beyond what anyone should pay. There will be a crash in the housing market, now is not a good time to buy.

A lot depends on what you mean by upskilling, certificates are not that great at upskilling.

What's worse, all the money you had is worth significantly less today than previously. In the last 2 years you've lost roughly 1/5th of your buying power in saved income, and this is expected to continue into the near future.

Hyper-inflation is one of the worst taxes the government can impose, counterparty currency and banking risk have never been higher, especially now that we no longer have fractional banking (look at the reserve requirements the fed imposes on banks since 2020, 0% now) but you also can't just put everything into a solid commodity like gold/silver because the spot price is heavily suppressed and you can't easily exchange it without taking a loss on taxes from maintaining your purchasing power/stock.

In a hyper-inflation environment, the only thing you can do is to invest in assets that will maintain their value for sale, or are goods you will use yourself. Your costs from goods will continue to rise with inflation, this includes rent, so growing food/properly canning/etc will allow you greater financial flexibility.

For mental health, its important to step away from the echo chambers during these times. Focus on what's important, practice meditation (stilling your thoughts), and other destressors. Stop giving the 150% you may be doing and limit it to %100 when you are on-the-clock.

Use shef.com for food.

You have couple years of savings and yet you worry. You are going to be awesome dad.

I am afraid of being poor anytime and never want to have kids. I never buy Elon Musks populate earth nonsense who did fire people in so indecent manner.

r/overemployed

Dont be a tech worker. Especially with a family. Especially if they have placed you in an area where you cant afford real estate.

Corporate robot execs are programmed to exploit that trap/insecurity. They will use it every review to extract as much they can and throw you out when required. They have no other moves cause if they dont do it some other corporate robot will, and take their jobs.