Our whole life is spent doing the best we can. We work to improve our careers, create meaningful relationships, and try to build a better financial future for ourselves and our family. But sometimes that isn’t enough and without warning it can all be crushed. I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but we are all expendable. Face it, all of our efforts can become meaningless in a world where someone is constantly picking winners and losers. It’s hard enough watching our own steps. But the actions of others can undo everything no matter how well we are doing. Knowing that matters because we can stay open to the possibility within our plans and include financial viability countermeasures. Instead of blindly leaving our fate to chance, we should plan and act to counter our expendability.  

There Are Many Ways Where We Are All Expendable

The economy and employment conditions are doing pretty good right now. However, there are signs warning that it might slow. For some it has already started. We’re all conditioned to believe that hard work, education, skills, reliability, preparation, and a positive attitude will keep us in the success zone. When things are going well it’s easy to be content, believing it will roll on forever. And it just might. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case when the fickle finger of fate selects us to lose. Sometimes our expendiablity is framed as part of a noble cause, for the better of many, or simply it just sucks to be you. 

My first memory of expendability

It seems unthinkable today. Having your life and chosen future plans made expendable solely on gender and date of birth. As a young teenager I was fully aware what hitting age 18 meant. My poor working class keister could get a draft notification for the jungles of Vietnam. 

Unable to get deferment through college or dodging the draft with wealth and connections, or having either to get a less lethal non front-line jungle assignment where us poor boys were sent, meant being expendable. 

It’s not personal, it’s just business 

A downturn in the economy, business, or just a change in direction and the picking of winners and losers begin. When that happens a variation of the same statement is told to thousands of the laid off, it’s not personal, it’s just business.  

Sometimes we can see this notification of our expendability coming when it’s based on last hired – first fired or by merit when we know we rank lower on the merit bell curve. Other times we can be blindsided. Especially when we are expendable in this picking of winners and losers and laid off for what we are, not what we do or how well we do it.  

Technical advances, innovation, and shifting trends 

We can become obsolete or replaceable by lower cost employees, innovation, or even shifting trends. We can be the best at what we do, but we can be left behind if we aren’t paying attention. Our expendable threat can come from companies chasing lower employee cost through offshoring, automation, and insourcing, to shifting consumer trends that our careers rely on.

I experienced this in my first career and many talented hard working people were dismissed. Advances in technology and consumer trends started to crush the century old landline telephone industry. The same thing happens from manufacturing to retail. 

Politics, policy shifts, big money lobbying, and ……..

There’s always someone of authority picking winners and losers that can cost us financially. And it isn’t limited to the corporate executives and managers that rule our paychecks. There are also our elected officials who decide who among us is expendable so they can apply favor somewhere else.  We adjust to stay relevant and financially viable by playing by the rules and then they change them. Through no fault of our own someone makes decisions that upends years, even decades of hard work and plan execution.

They can spin rationalizations all they want. But it’s just another form of “it’s not personal” but with a different flavor of “it’s business”, and in some cases it’s a dirty business. Policy shifts can make us expendable, from those toiling in the rat race to the retired. Here are a couple of the latest examples- 

• A tariff strategy that started by picking steel and aluminum to be winners, but turned into a trade war causing farmers and others to end up losers. 
• Tax reform favored corporations and the wealthy, while those in high tax states expendable losers. The deficit it creates may next add retirees to the expendable by cutting social security and medicare to help cover it. 

Financial Viability Countermeasures to Mitigate Expendability

There’s no way to completely avoid being deemed expendable and having our finances and lives tossed out the window. What we can do is mitigate the damage when we are chosen to lose. 

Set goals and don’t be complacent

When things are going well it’s easy to be complacent, believing it will continue forever. But with the many ways winners and losers are chosen in the workplace, our best may not be enough once the tide turns. When we are needing paychecks to meet our financial goals, we need to constantly set work related goals to improve our personal brand to make ourselves professionally attractive. Not only to help avoid expendability, but to have the chance to recover quicker if we are made expendable. 

Being good at what we do is a great benefit and we should enjoy being where we are. But we should always be looking for opportunities to move forward, in our field or another and evolve. Stay in front of shifting trends and innovation to mitigate expendability.

I have decades of experience surviving a never ending layoff environment brought on by everything under the sun. Government ordered breakup, company merger, mismanagement and executive corruption, tech bubble burst, economic slowdown, shifting consumer trends driven by innovation, and the great recession. Even when I was part of the expendability target group for “what” I was. The same attributes that are attractive to our employer to help avoid our expendability would also be attractive to a new opportunity if the need arises.

Take control of debt

What’s worse than losing your income? Losing your income and having debt payments. When it comes to financial viability countermeasures, becoming debt free ranks high. Our chances of mitigating financial harm and beginning recovery increases because we have more options. We can stretch our financial resources like severance pay, unemployment insurance, or savings farther. We can also accept a lower paying position until we can transition to something closer in earnings to what we had.

There was a big stress difference between the layoff years when I had debt and the ones after I became debt free. Being debt free I knew we could weather the storm with less money needed. That allowed me to concentrate on my work to maintain employment viability instead of worrying about financial survival after any expendiblity event.  

Have an emergency fund

We benefit from having an emergency fund for many situations. One of those emergency situations is the loss of our income. Decide on how much to sock away. Most suggest a minimum of 3 months basic living expenses. 

When doing this calculation it’s also a great time to look at where your money is going. This is the perfect opportunity to set a budget and cut wasteful spending. Doing that will not only decrease the amount needed in the emergency fund but it’s another beneficial aspect added to our financial viability countermeasures. It frees up income to pay off debt and increase saving for both our emergency fund and retirement. 

Have a diversified investment portfolio

When it comes to investing, everything has been done to make stock investments winners and bonds, saving accounts, and CDs losers. With that being the story for years now, it’s easy to jump on the index fund investment bandwagon and go all in. But having a diversified investment portfolio that matches our long-term goals and short-term needs is another key part of our financial viability countermeasures. Because one day the expendability formula may change. 

History shows that a diversified portfolio will lose less and recover faster during any economic downturn. Claims that this time it’s different and ignoring history is easy to do when stocks are high flying. But by doing so we can be placing ourselves on the financial expendability list down the road when we can least afford it. Near retirees and retirees need diversification as a primary part of their deployed financial viability countermeasures.

Question government policy changes, investigate, and vote

Many times there is nothing we can do about avoiding government caused expendability pain. What we can do is get in front of it to soften the blow. I’m sure that many farmers today wish they could have had a way to get ahead of what’s happening to farming now. 

Another example is when the 2018 tax reform was passed. There was plenty of hype and people saw a bump on their paychecks. With only minimal working class tax cuts, what caused the bump was mostly about how payroll tax withholding tables where quietly changed. Blindly trusting the change left many with either a smaller tax refund than expected or owing money. Some owing a lot of money due to new deduction restrictions. It upended personal financial situations across the country. 

Question policy changes to see exactly what it really does. It’s always a game of picking winners and losers with a dose of unintended consequences. Investigate and keep your eyes open to possible impacts. That way you may have a chance to make adjustments to beat it or at least prepare in advance for any hits. 

Prioritize maintaining your relationships

It’s easy to get lost in our work and professional identity. But we all need relationships both professionally and personally. Once made expendable, having strong relationships is one of the key financial viability countermeasures we can rely on. Our network and personal relationships can help us to get a foot in the door of opportunity and begin our recovery. They also can keep our spirits up or offer a hand. Isolation is the last thing needed when tossed aside as expendable. 

Last but far from least, be sure to care for your relationship with your spouse. Nothing is worse than the surprise of being deemed expendable at home. Devastating both on a personal level and a financial one. 

Don’t Live Paranoid, Just Live Aware 

Face it, we are all expendable. Some live a charmed life and never taste or even recognize it. But we should all be aware that it’s always there. We all accept that we need to be aware of our surroundings and what we are doing to stay safe while out and about in this world. The same is true in our careers, retirement, and personal finances. We either leave everything to fate or take countermeasures to improve our odds.

The picking of winners and losers by those in power swings wildly. The trick is living and working in a way that makes the best of everything we have while never allowing complacency and a false sense of security add to our expendability risk.