Losing your job: getting your money through

Before anything else, look at what should be coming to you. Your final pay — the last payment from your employer, covering everything still owed — can hold several pieces: the wages you've earned up to your last day, payouts for unused annual leave and long service leave, notice of termination (or payment in lieu of it), and, if you were made redundant, redundancy or retrenchment pay. Moneysmart's losing-your-job guidance says to ask your employer directly what you're entitled to, and points to the Fair Work Ombudsman for the detail of what belongs in a final pay.

The two pieces people know least about are minimums, not favours. Notice of termination and redundancy pay are part of the National Employment Standards — the safety net of minimum entitlements that applies regardless of your award, agreement or contract — and both scale with how long you've worked there: the longer your continuous service, the more notice (or pay instead of notice) you must be given, and the more weeks of redundancy pay apply, up to a cap. The exact week counts live in tables on the Fair Work Ombudsman's notice and redundancy fact sheet — check the current version there rather than a remembered figure.

Two catches are worth knowing. First, not everyone is eligible for redundancy pay: the fact sheet lists exceptions including most casual employees, people employed for a set period or season, very short periods of service, and most employees of small businesses — and awards or agreements can vary the rules again. Second, the pay rates differ by piece: payment in lieu of notice is at your full pay rate as if you'd worked the notice period, while redundancy pay uses your base rate for ordinary hours, without overtime, loadings or bonuses. That's exactly why the numbers deserve a slow check — against the fact sheet and Fair Work's notice and redundancy calculator, which Moneysmart recommends — before you sign anything.

The fortnight after a job ends is triage, not strategy. Job one is the final pay from the section above: confirm what's owed and check it actually lands, while the details are fresh and your old manager still answers emails. Job two is income support: Moneysmart's advice is to check what payments or benefits you can get from Centrelink while you're looking for a new job — its losing-your-job page links through to Services Australia's rundown of what might be available when you're unemployed. Start that check early rather than when savings run low: eligibility depends on your circumstances, and the sooner a claim is in, the sooner you know where you stand.

Job three is the bills. List what's essential — housing, power, food, transport, insurance — and put those first; everything else can wait a fortnight. A budget built from your actual bank statements makes the list honest, and Moneysmart suggests using the pause to spot expenses you could cut back on or live without for a while.

Job four is the counterintuitive one: tell the people you owe money to, early, before you miss anything. Moneysmart is blunt that acting quickly matters — the earlier you get help, the more options you'll have. Utility providers might extend a due date, let you pay smaller amounts over a longer period, or postpone payments for an agreed stretch. For credit cards and loans, telling your provider you're in financial difficulty and asking for a hardship arrangement is a normal, established process, and every mortgage lender has a hardship team for exactly this moment. Section four covers what they can actually do.

A redundancy payout arriving in one lump can be the biggest single deposit your account has ever seen, and that's precisely the danger: it reads as wealth when it's actually wages. The steadying move is to compute its burn rate — how fast the money drains at your real monthly spending — and its runway: money divided by monthly essentials equals months covered. That one division turns "a lot of money" into "a number of months", which is the unit that actually matters while you look for the next role. The calculator below does the arithmetic on your own figures.

Until you know the runway, resist both temptations: the splurge (a payout spent as a windfall shortens the runway before the job hunt has even started) and premature locking-away (money committed somewhere you can't easily reach it isn't runway any more). Moneysmart's suggestion for this stretch is unglamorous and right — use its budget planner to get a clear picture of what you have and what your regular costs are, trim what you can live without for a while, and lean on its managing-on-a-low-income tips if the search runs long. Note the widget asks for the payout after tax: redundancy payouts have their own tax treatment, which is worth checking with your payslip and an accountant rather than assuming — it changes the number you actually have.

If you have a mortgage, there's a genuine trade-off in where the lump sits. Paid straight off the loan, it cuts interest but is hard to get back — the opposite of runway. Parked in an offset account — a transaction account linked to your mortgage whose balance reduces the interest you're charged — it works against the loan while staying reachable, which is why Offset accounts calls it flexibility you pay for elsewhere. Left in ordinary savings, it's maximally reachable and earns a little. None of these is "correct"; they trade certainty of access against return, and the right mix depends on how long the search might run — which is, again, the runway number.

The formal machinery first. Every lender has a hardship team, and what they offer is a hardship variation — a temporary change to your loan's terms, such as pausing or reducing repayments for an agreed period, while you get back on your feet. Moneysmart notes one common shape for mortgages is switching repayments to interest-only for a time, which lowers the payment by deferring the principal. Utility and service providers run similar arrangements for bills. The whole system is built on one rule: asking early beats asking late, because the options shrink with every missed payment. Hardship help walks the process end to end.

Then the free humans. A financial counsellor — a free, independent professional who helps people sort out money problems — can review your budget and debts and find ways to improve the situation, and Moneysmart recommends one if you need a hand. The National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 is the front door: a not-for-profit service that's always free and confidential, staffed by counsellors who don't lend money, don't sell anything and work only in your interest. If things are urgent — food, housing, bills — Moneysmart's urgent-help-with-money page lists services for exactly that, alongside emotional support.

And the part that isn't about money at all: losing a job can be very stressful, and it's okay to ask for help. Moneysmart's own advice is to talk to friends and family about how you're feeling, and it points to Beyond Blue — reachable any hour on 1300 224 636 — for looking after your mental health. It also offers some perspective: enormous numbers of Australians leave or lose a job every year, for all sorts of reasons. You're not a failure; you're in a queue, and the queue moves. Take the time to process it, then work the plan.