moi

Hello,
Unfortunately, my husband was laid off 2 weeks ago from his job after 6 years with zero notice. (A big oil/gas company). He was a Logistics Manager. He has severance for 10 weeks and health benefits covered until then. He then has Cobra option for I think 18 months. I heard it is very expensive. I only work 28 hours and don't have health benefits due to it been just 3 employees. We have an 11 year old and 1 1/2 year old that we adopted at 3 days old. Besides feeling like my world has collapsed and worried sick that I don't have benefits to cover us anymore and have to watch every single penny. Do you know what routes we could take to get insurance?
I am also concerned because he has been putting his resume out there every day and has only had a couple of calls. He is in Supply Chain Management and I don't know how much it is in demand. We are in Northern NJ. He has worked for Heineken, Thales, and Total. I guess I could go look for a full time position as an executive/administrative assistant to try and get benefits, but loved the fact that I only had to work 28 hours, which worked really well with the kids schedules and really don't want to have to.

petitefrancaise

Oh dear, what a worry for you.
I'll ping Kodokan on this. She went through it all a couple of years ago.

scrubbedexpat097

Sorry to hear this.

From a job point of view is he just looking where you are or is he looking all over the US?

Oil and Gas in Texas has laid off a lot but there are still many companies still hiring.

kodokan

Hi, moi! Sorry to hear about the layoff Yes, we went through this a couple of years ago; my hubby coincidentally also works in supply chain.

Insurance - our COBRA figure was something like $1,300 a month for continuation of benefits. We chose instead to take out a plan via the ACA healthcare.gov website, which provided good PPO coverage for $715 a month (this was in AZ, in 2015). The deductibles were pretty high, around $12k versus the $3-6k on the COBRA plan, but we're emergency-only healthcare people so hoped not to use it anyway.

If you have a HSA, you can use your account to pay your COBRA premiums, or pay your ACA premiums if you're also claimining unemployment benefits (which I assume you will be once your paid notice period expires). If he had remained unemployed for the whole of 2015, we would have received a whacking tax rebate for subsidies too, making the insurance almost free (but he ended up working/ earning for enough of 2015 to make us ineligible for subsidies).

His notice period (including healthcare coverage) ran through to something like the 3rd of the month, which made that month entirely covered for healthcare purposes; that was handy.

As far as job hunting goes, it can be a fairly long haul. Hubby was hunting for 6-7 months before he found his new role; he was hunting nationally as his level is such that a local role was unlikely. Online applications are often a grim and thankless task, with tiresome pitfalls about not accepting non-US addresses for work history, or insisting on a GPA for your non-US degree. His best leads came from approaches to him, via LinkedIn. Read every possible article on how to boost your LinkedIn presence, build your network and connections, be active in groups, etc.

In the end, his non-working period was a positive and unique family experience for us, as he spent a ton of time with the kids in the minutiae of their everyday lives. We sold the house in AZ just at the start of the summer school vacation, so we put everything in storage and took a two-month camper van road trip through much of the US. He job hunted on the road, doing telephone or Skype interviews as we went - libraries have private meeting rooms and great wifi - and we ended up driving straight to his new job in Ohio that he got while traveling.

He now has a great job with a slightly higher salary in a cheaper cost of living area, and even better benefits - non-contributory healthcare! - so often these things work out better in the long run. It's still a very stressful time to live through, though. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to unburden to someone sympathetically neutral.

scrubbedexpat099

I know you have time to accept Cobra, so you can see how it goes and take it only if you have issues, I forget how long you have but would give you a few more months.

Nutmegger

I believe NJ has an ACA program. The change in your circumstances should make your family eligible. Check for their website and get a quote. Good luck, OP.

petitefrancaise

yes, I think you have 3 months.

kodokan

And it's retroactive - you can not take it out, have a health emergency a month or two later, trigger it, and still be covered. I think you'd then have to pay the backdated premiums, though.

Using healthcare.gov made more financial sense for us, though. It was a realistic possibility that hubby - laid off/ end of paid notice in March - would have been out of work for the rest of the year, in which case we would have got a tax rebate that would repay almost all the premiums for April-December as we would have had almost no household income (I don't work).

Bob

Oh no, sorry to hear that and good luck!

Are you looking locally, or willing to relocate? There was a thing a month or so ago around the Boston area for oil/gas and green energy tech that had something to do with the consulate. So there might be jobs around here too.

moi

Could you please tell me what an ACA program is? Sorry, new to all this insurance lingo.

moi

He is looking right now at the NJ area, but if we have to we would consider moving, although not our priority, but maybe we won't have a choice.

moi

Kodokan - how would the tax rebate have worked out? Is it just based on a much lower income?

moi

Hi Kodokan,
Seems like we were just only corresponding about schools and at that point I had no idea what was around the corner. That is very coincidental that your husband is in supply chain too!! You can never be prepared for everything. I'm happy for you that hubby finally found something better, but as you know to get there in similar circumstances, is extremely worrisome. Kuddos to you on how you were able to travel the US in a camper! I would not be able to do that as the stress would overcome the fun times. My husband is constantly on LinkedIn and has had a couple of recruiters reach out, but then nothing becomes of it. He is American so we don't have to deal with issues of non-US work history or non-US universities so I guess that is one advantage.
We are covered for 10 weeks, now 8 weeks left, for severance/unemployment/benefits. Just received paperwork regarding Cobra that I need to read up on. We don't have a HSA. We were doing PPO. What is ACA?
How old are your children, if you don't mind me asking? My older son (11) is getting down because everything we used to provide is basically on hold for now (even eating pizza out etc) I guess it is a lesson for him to save for a rainy day. My husband is feeling guilty too because we have our 1 year old in daycare while he job hunts. So it is money we should be saving, while he doesn't have a job, but my 1 year old would make it impossible to look for a job as he is a constant handful. Anyway, thank you for all the valuable advice.

kodokan

Yes, that's right. ACA is the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. If you purchase a health insurance policy through healthcare.gov, you are eligible for any subsidy relevant to your income. This is for incomes up to a level of 400% of the federal poverty level, and dependent on the size of your family - for example, as a family of 4 you would be eligible for a subsidy if your income for the calendar year is below roughly $97k. It's on a sliding scale, of course.

Subsidies can be claimed up front if you're confident of what your income will be, or you can't otherwise afford the insurance. Otherwise, it's all tidied up the following Feb/ March when you do your tax return. We didn't bother trying to get subsidies up front - it seemed to require more complicated paperwork to prove an income when we didn't know what it would be for that year - so paid the full premium of $715 each month (monthly COBRA would have been 1,300-something).

Hubby was on paid notice through to March that year, then we did Obamacare from April-August, then he started his new job. So income-wise over the entire year, he earned enough to take us out of the subsidy bracket so we would have ended up owing the whole premium and having to repay any subsidy we'd taken anyway.

Heads-up: as and when you cancel the ACA policy and go back onto employer insurance, they require 2 weeks' notice.

I assume you're on green cards, so no visa issues from the employment loss? And is your husband getting outplacement advice, help with his resume, etc? Job hunting can be such a grind, especially with a non-standard employment background like being foreign. Hubby was looking for supply chain/ materials roles at the director/ senior director level, and despite an excellent resume - advanced degree, multinational household name company, regularly promoted, worked in multiple countries, etc etc - it took 7 months to find something, which was apparently still 'quick'. His outplacement consultant said at the outset to be prepared for up to a year, or sometimes more if restricting location or industry.

We had the added complication of a high schooler, so we had to triangulate moving around the possibility of a new job, and selling our AZ house, and his need to not miss any classes because credits. We spent March/ April getting the house ready to sell and marketed it from late April for the 'want to move during summer vacation' crowd, sold it in June, then did our job-hunting-while-camping road trip through California, the Pacific NW and so on.

Our plan was then to either return to Phoenix, rent a furnished holiday villa, and put the kids back in their usual schools while we waited to see what happened next. Or, as it turned out, to get a new job and move ready to start the new school year neatly.

From your previous posting, I suppose it wouldn't be altogether terrible if you ended up moving, and could pick a new school environment for your son..?

kodokan

Well, once we'd sold the house we figured we could either be stressed living in a furnished vacation rental while job hunting, or we could be stressed driving around the US. Financially it was a wash; renting would've cost around $2-2.5k a month, so we spent that on gas, campsites and leisure activities instead.

It was also quite useful for hubby to have a quirky icebreaker story with which to amuse interviewers - 'we decided this would be a great mini-sabbatical time to do an epic road trip with the kids while I explored future employment opportunities... yes, we're in Montana this week' sounds much more discerning and in-demand than 'I haven't worked for 6 months and have been spending my time anxiously sending hundreds of online applications into the void'.

ACA = see above, our last posts crossed. For info, high deductible/ HSA and PPO are not mutually exclusive. HD/ HSA refers to a type of plan where you trade off risk by taking a higher deductible in exchange for lower premiums, and have access to a tax-advantaged account in which to save the difference towards any future claims, or to keep if you are healthy and don't claim. PPO and HMO refer to the types of medical networks you can access with your plan, and whether you can go direct to specialists or have to first consult a GP gatekeeper for sign off.

All our insurances, employer and Obamacare ones, have been high deductible HSA plans, but with access to a full PPO network of GPs, specialists, etc. The ACA plan was an Anthem Blue Cross one which even included overseas coverage; they're not second-rate or skimpy. Part of the Affordable Care Act was to guarantee that every plan sold must include minimum coverage for conditions, free wellness care, no lifetime caps, etc. Any plan sold on the healthcare.gov site will have the same coverage as your COBRA one; the only differences will be the deductible/ out of pocket percentages, and whether they are HMO or PPO models (there's usually a choice).

Eight weeks from now... does that maybe run into June? My hubby's paid notice went to to something like 3rd March, which meant he was covered for healthcare for the whole month of March due to being on their books on March 1.

Yes, it's a bit tough on the kids, but a useful life lesson ('Seeeeee - this is why Mummy spends all that time on spreadsheets, weebling on about emergency funds and budgeting!'). We immediately cancelled our karate classes ($250+ a month), which was hard because my son and I were only about 9 months from our black belts. We still had some small treats, because this can be a long haul. My emergency fund covers an essentials-only spending plan for 18 months, but even that includes enough for a cheap meal out and a cinema visit each month if we smuggle in our own snacks

My kids were 15 and 11 when the job loss happened; the older one was more pragmatic and adult about it, certainly. But they didn't worry overmuch about meals out and so on - they knew it was almost inevitable that it would generate another move, so their focus was more on having to move house, schools and make new friends.

Job hunting is absolutely a full time job; it wouldn't be possible to combine it with a toddler and remain professional. It's not like with your older one, where you can ask them not to come into the study for an hour because you're on the phone; your husband shouldn't feel bad about that at all. Of course, if it's not financially possible then you simply have to work around it.