A sample plan
This is what a full plan looks like.
A real plan layout built from one person’s answers — a composite, not a real member. The work is sorted, timed, and connected to help.
Why build a plan
The decisions after a layoff carry real weight.
A plan helps surface the deadlines, tradeoffs, and support that are easiest to miss when everything arrives at once.
Explore the example
See how it all comes together.
Now, Next, and Later keep the work in order. Deadlines, matched partners, and useful reading stay alongside it.
Welcome Steve 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.
Now
What's worth your attention this week.
Have an attorney read the agreement before you sign
You have 21 days to consider it. That clock is yours, not theirs.
Confirm the exact date your coverage ends
HR can tell you today. Almost everything else depends on this one number.
File for unemployment
Filing early doesn't cost you anything. Waiting can.
Next
Close enough to plan around, far enough not to worry about.
Decide what happens to the 401(k)
Three options, one deadline. A partner can walk it with you.
Tell the kids, in your words, once
There's a Field Note in your resources written by a family therapist on exactly this.
Later
No fixed dates on purpose. They'll come to you.
Rewrite the LinkedIn headline
Reconnect with five people who owe you nothing
Revisit the move question — once there's an offer
Not before. A hypothetical move costs you focus you don't have yet.
Your team.
Three lanes have partners today; the rest are honest self-serve.
PinkSlipped
On your team from day one
Your Partners
Your pack
The room your former coworkers are already in — or a free Job Search Council if there isn’t one yet.
Run by the people who lived it, not by us.
Your resources
Things worth reading.
Teaching them the unknown is survivable.
You told us someone depends on you.
What to know when you don't know.
You have an unsigned release in front of you.
The First 72 Hours.
The first three days, in the order they actually happen. Your plan picks up where it leaves off.
Need something else?
If your situation changed since intake — you found a role and need to move, say — add the service and we'll fold it into your plan.
Severance consideration
Aug 21
In 20 days
Unemployment filing
Aug 6
In 5 days
COBRA election
Sep 12
In 6 weeks
HSA contribution
Dec 31
In 5 months