Five photographs follow one woman. The first notes that 7.4 million people have lost a job in the last three years. You're not alone. Your plan should still be yours. She walks out of her office carrying a box of her things. At three in the morning she stands at her kitchen counter, the severance agreement in front of her, while everything that comes with a layoff arrives at once: a severance agreement with 21 days to sign, a COBRA election, an unemployment claim, the 401(k), what to tell the kids. The next morning she opens her laptop, and PinkSlipped follows her answers rather than asking everyone a fixed set of questions. Then she is holding her phone, reading her PinkSlipped Plan: what to do now, what comes next, and what can wait. In the last scene she slides the phone into her pocket and walks toward her family at a backyard dinner.
Losing your job is hard.
Most-used guides
Always free for workers.
7.4 million people have lost a job in the last three years.
You're not alone. Your plan should still be yours.
Everything lands in the same week.
The internet answers everyone's questions.
This one follows yours.
Welcome Maya to your PinkSlipped Plan.
This is your plan — a working list of what's worth doing next, in roughly the order that tends to help. Nothing here is a deadline we invented. Move things, check them off, delete what doesn't apply, and add anything we missed.
What's worth your attention this week.
Confirm the exact date your coverage ends
Not the date in the packet. The date HR or the carrier confirms. Every other coverage date in this plan is calculated from this one, so it's worth the phone call.
File your Minnesota unemployment claim
Benefits date from when you file, not when you were separated. Rules and amounts vary by state, and severance can affect timing in some of them — file anyway.
Get the packet in front of an employment attorney
Identified in the first 72 hours, called in week two — the Kit's order, and it's the right one. Send it clean; don't annotate it first.
Close enough to plan around, far enough not to worry about.
Write the three numbers: runway, floor, cushion
Not twenty numbers. Runway is cash divided by monthly spend, in months. Floor is the absolute minimum that keeps the lights on. Cushion is severance and unemployment treated as a finite resource, not income. Written down. Looked at once.
Get the reference language in writing
If it isn't in writing, it isn't a reference. Ask for the exact words HR will use with a future employer, and ask now, while there's still something open to ask inside.
One low-stakes commitment for the week
One walk a day. One phone-free hour. One honest conversation with the person you live with. Not a plan. A pace.
No fixed dates on purpose. They'll come to you.
Move the 401(k)
Leave it, roll it, or transfer it. Doing nothing is itself a choice, and it has fees attached.
To develop your plan.
So you can get back to what matters.
We turn everything that lands on you into one ordered plan — and put vetted people next to the parts that need them.
- 01
Tell us what happened.
A short, private intake. About six questions in you'll see the first things worth doing — and nothing reaches anyone else without your say-so.
3–10 minutes
- 02
Get your free PinkSlipped Plan.
A plan, built from your answers — with dates you can move, the partners you matched with, and reading picked for your situation. It's yours to edit. It covers four lanes — money & benefits, agreements & rights, people & headspace, and your next step.
Always free
- 03
Get connected with real people.
Where a lane needs a specialist, we match you to a vetted partner — and tell you the cost, and whether that partner pays us, before you talk to anyone.
Vetted partners
- Always free for workers.
- Three to ten minutes — save and return anytime.
- Nothing reaches anyone else without your say-so.
How PinkSlipped works, in three steps. You lose your job — severance, health coverage, the 401(k), unemployment and family conversations all land at once, each with its own deadline and no order given. One: a short, private intake — about six questions in you see the first things worth doing, and nothing is shared without your say-so. Two: your PinkSlipped Plan — one ordered list with dates you can move, partners you matched with, and recommended reading chosen for your situation. Three: where a lane needs a specialist you are matched to a vetted partner, with the cost and any paid relationship stated up front.
How PinkSlipped works: three steps, from job loss to a plan and the people who can help.
Why I built this
Built by someone who's been on the other side.
The systems that were supposed to help me were never actually designed for me.
Jarrett lost his job in a fifteen-minute call. PinkSlipped is the place he wished had existed that same afternoon.
Latest from the site
Field Notes
Plain-language pieces on the parts of a layoff nobody prepares you for — the paperwork, social challenges, the decisions, the week after. Free to read, no email required.