Well its been a crazy couple weeks for me and my family up here in New York. Well for those who don’t know Gm offered a buyout for me of a cash payment to walk away cold turkey. You know if you look at the surface one hundred and forty thousand looks like a lot of money. But after I did some looking into it thats not that much after taxes and figuring that I would need to find a job comparable in wages and benefits. I think the worst hit we would take is on health insurance. After a lot of thought I think it will be better to ride this train a little longer. Trust me this has not been a popular decisions for my family who would like to move back to Maryland. All I can say to that is trust me that I will do the right thing for the whole family and will do what it takes to make sure they are taken care of.
So where I’m at is the following, one of my core thoughts was a Drywall Company. With that money it would make it easy to start something going. But that choices has major risks also. I’m really experienced in the doing of the work, but the business end I’m not so good with and for me to make this work I need some education in my opinion. Plus at this time the economy is in the dumps, new building has been dramatically slashed. I imagine any work out there has produced feeding frenzy’s from existing companies. I really dont think its the right time to hit this market.
My second thinking is I love computers and think there is a huge field in network administration and programming. The idea of getting paid to sit on a computer and install and maintain networks is also very appealing. Once again education is needed. So I think the no brain thing is I need to start with some education. I’m really mad at myself though because GM has offered me tuition reimbursement all this time and I never took advantage of it.
So I know things are changing I will probably only stay at my current wage at Gm for another four years. The next contract I think I will be on the chopping block. Which is ok at that point it will give me time to take classes and prepare for our future. At that time this buyout will come out or a buydown. All I can say is that I’m energized and ready to take the bull by the horns and ready to do some battle. In that four years I will have accrued another four years service toward my pensions and in the mean time our 401k keeps getting bigger.
So in my opinion the risk far out base the positives. I’m really sorry for anyone that feels that I’m being selfish In my decisions I really am trying to do the right thing and all I can say is trust me because I refuse for Gm to just kick me to the side
