A sample plan
This is what a full plan looks like.
Everything below is a real plan layout built from one person’s answers — a composite, not a real member. As you scroll, the notes in the margin explain why each item is on the list at all.
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.
Two lanes have vetted partners today; the rest are honest self-serve.
PinkSlipped
On your team from day one
Your Partners
ActivateYour 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
Why each of these exists
27%1
Of unemployed Americans are actually receiving benefits. The biggest failure isn't people wrongly getting paid — it's people who qualify never filing.
41%2
Cash out their 401(k) when they leave a job. Under 59½, a 10% penalty goes with it.
15%3
More likely a child repeats a grade in the year a parent loses work.
2444
Applications now arrive for the average job opening — more than double 2022. Fewer than 1 in 20 leads to an interview. Applying harder is not the same as applying differently.
3%5
The discount workers took on their homes when a job forced them to move — unless someone was helping them plan it. With relocation help, no measurable discount at all.
34%6
Of people out of work show real psychological distress — against 16% of those working. It's the situation, not the person.
1. U.S. Dept. of Labor, Q1 2026 · 2. Wang, Zhai & Lynch · Marketing Science · 3. Stevens & Schaller · European Economic Review · 4. Greenhouse, 2026 · Ashby, Q1 2026 · 5. Allen, Rutherford & Springer · Journal of Real Estate Research · 6. Paul & Moser · Journal of Vocational Behavior