Welcome to episode 57 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we discuss how to prepare for unanticipated career opportunities, part 5, Lessons in Personal Finance.
Original Recording Date: 10-27-2019
Topics – Preparing for Unexpected Career Opportunities, Part 5
A Review of the Series to Date

* Go back and listen if you missed these episodes…

* Part 1 – Preparation
* Part 2 – Contact
* Part 3 – Agreeing to a Discussion
* Part 4 – Decision Time

1:27 – Update on John’s Employment

* John is officially employed now and is a Customer Engineer at Google representing the Google Cloud portfolio of products.

2:54 – Personal Finance

* We realized a lot of the advice we gave in previous episodes centered around being in a financially health place and wanted to dig into that a bit further.
* Financial struggles are an emotional strain whether you are employed or unemployed. Debt applies pressure and drains mental energy from people.

* John cites lack of debt as a way to provide freedom during a job search.

6:08 – Advice from Manager Tools

* Check out the following episodes from Manager Tools:

* Getting Laid Off – Finances Rule

* Their main advice in the event of a layoff is control expenses event before applying for other jobs.
* They recommend a 6 month emergency fund to cover expenses in case this happens to you.

* Annual Layoff Immunization

* They advise have a number of items readily available at home…

* Printed personal contacts list

* This is not something proprietary from your last company…don’t be that person.

* Printed recruiter list
* Access to business reviews
* Current resume

9:54 – Sharing Our Favorite Sources

* John

* Personal Finance for Dummies Cheat Sheet
* Bogleheads Personal Finance Planning Start-Up Kit

* Inspired by John Bogle
* There are articles on a number of immediate actions one can take to change personal finance situations.

* Nick

* Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps
* Advice from The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach