If the Email Came on Monday, How Many Months Could You Fund?​

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Mo Shouman​​

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The Access-Denied Screen

This is issue number 30 of Wealth Bytes, the newsletter for Australian tech professionals.

Let me tell you about someone. Not a client, but someone whose story I came across and couldn’t shake.

She worked in tech sales, and she wasn’t average. She’d hit 400% of her quota. Four times her target.

One morning she tried to log in and she was out. No meeting with her manager. No handover. Just an access-denied screen and an email.

My first instinct when I heard it was to ask what she’d done wrong. Notice if you had the same instinct, because it’s the wrong question. She didn’t do anything wrong. That’s the point.

Most of us have carried an unwritten deal in our heads: if I’m good at my job, if I work harder than the person next to me, I’m safe. I’m employable. They won’t let me go. That deal is gone. If you work in tech in Australia, you’ve probably felt it in the last two or three restructures.

This month’s podcast episode, The Redundancy-Ready Playbook, goes deep on this. This issue is the written version: the numbers, the six moves to make while you still have a payslip, and what to do in the first three months if it happens.

A quick note before we start: none of this is a prediction about your company or your role. Nobody can tell you whether you’ll be in the next round. What you can control is whether redundancy becomes a crisis or just a decision about timing.

What’s Actually Been Happening

According to global tech layoff data from Layoffs.fyi, at the time of writing:

• 2024: roughly 150,000 tech workers laid off worldwide
• 2025: roughly 120,000
• 2026: by September, already more than the whole of 2025

The detail most people miss: the cuts are spread across fewer companies than before. They’re not spreading out. They’re getting bigger and more concentrated.

And it isn’t a Silicon Valley story. Atlassian cut around 10% of its global workforce this year, including roles here. Microsoft has run several rounds over two years that reached Australian staff. Amazon has been working through tens of thousands of corporate roles globally. WiseTech and Telstra have announced significant cuts too.

One analysis earlier this year put Australia second in the world for tech job losses in the first quarter, and Sydney third of any city, behind only San Francisco and Seattle.

Different trackers count this differently, so you’ll see different totals. I’m not interested in the exact number. I’m interested in the direction, and the direction is clear.

Why This Is Now a Permanent Feature

It’s a cycle, not an event. A big tech layoff used to be news. Now it’s closer to a calendar event: a restructure, a “realignment of priorities,” then another one twelve months later. And surviving a round is its own trap. The relief tells you you’re safe. You’re not safe. You’re just not in this round.

One Microsoft leader with 17 years at the company described his situation to me this way: “I’m on a new 12-month contract this year.” What looked like a secure job no longer is one.

Performance doesn’t protect you. Large-scale cuts are decided by divisions, product lines and cost targets. A spreadsheet decides a whole team doesn’t fit the next 18 months. The stated reason keeps changing (cost, strategy, product focus, now AI), but it’s never something you control.

The double hit. This is the one I think is most underestimated. Companies often cut jobs when the business is under pressure. That’s also when the share price is often down. So the shares you were counting on, vested and unvested, can be worth a lot less at exactly the moment your salary might disappear. Your job and a big part of your wealth are tied to the same company. When it has a bad year, both get hit at once. That isn’t bad luck. It’s concentration risk, built into how you’re paid.

The quiet modellers. Many senior tech professionals I speak with, often in their forties and outwardly secure, are privately running the numbers in a spreadsheet nobody else has seen. If that’s you: you’re not being paranoid, and you’re doing the right thing. You’re probably just doing it alone, without a framework, and with a few blind spots.

Six Moves to Make While You Still Have a Payslip

I’ve sat with people in the week it happened who couldn’t sleep and were selling shares at the worst moment because the mortgage was due. I’ve also had a client message me with two laughing emojis, asking if we could plan a trip to Japan before they looked for their next role.

The difference wasn’t luck or a bigger payout. It was preparation, and being realistic enough to have a framework and a plan B in place before they needed one.

1. Know your runway.

If you were made redundant on Monday, how many months could you cover your life without touching your investments? That’s your runway. (We worked through this live in my recent Masterclass for tech professionals.)

On one side: what you’d realistically have. Your cash buffer, your likely redundancy payment and your leave entitlements, all after tax. On the other side: what your life actually costs each month. Not what you think it costs. What it actually costs.

As an illustration (hypothetical, not a client):
What you’d have (after tax) What life costs each month
Cash buffer and offset $40,000 Mortgage $7,500
Estimated redundancy payment $50,000 Childcare and school $2,500
Unused leave $20,000 Living costs, bills, subscriptions $4,000
Total $110,000 Total $14,000

$110,000 divided by $14,000 is a runway of just under 8 months.

The first time people do this properly, the answer is usually shorter than they expected. Not because they earn too little, but because their life has quietly grown to match their income.

2. Don’t count unvested shares as money.
They show up in your portal and they look like money. They’re not. They’re a promise, and a weak one, usually conditional on you still being employed. In many plans, leaving before vesting means losing some or all of them. Some plans have good-leaver provisions for redundancy, but read your plan rather than assume. Leave unvested shares out of your runway completely. If your plan only works because of them, it isn’t a plan.

3. Reduce concentration risk on your own terms.
Holding a lot of employer shares is a specific bet: that your company does well and keeps employing you. There can be good reasons to hold, including tax considerations around when you sell. But holding because you decided to is different from holding because you never got round to deciding. The worst time to work out a sell strategy is the week you lose your job. The best time is now, calmly.

4. Use your payslip while you have it.
Plenty of financial doors open more easily while you’re employed. Lenders want to see stable income, so refinancing or restructuring a loan is generally easier now. Personal insurance applications ask health and employment questions, and that process can look very different between jobs. Super contribution decisions are easier to plan while income is predictable. Anything that depends on you being employed, think about doing now.

5. Find out what your insurance actually covers.

“It’s fine, I’ve got income protection.” I hear this constantly. Income protection is designed for when you can’t work because of illness or injury. It generally doesn’t pay out because your role was made redundant.

And many tech professionals hold life, disability or income protection cover through super, sometimes arranged through their employer. When you leave, that cover can change or end, and options to keep it may only stay open for a short window. Find out three things now: what cover you have, where it’s held, and what happens to it if you leave.

6. Have the conversation at home before you need to.
In many households, one person carries the financial picture and the other trusts it’s handled. Redundancy is a household event. It touches the mortgage, school decisions and the holiday you’ve booked. If the first time your partner hears about your runway is the night you lose your job, that’s the hardest possible time to have it.

Keep it simple: “If my role went in the next restructure, here’s roughly how long we’d be fine, here’s what we’d cut first, and here’s what I’d want to do next.” The couples who’ve had this conversation don’t argue about money when it happens. They’ve already agreed the plan.

If It Happens: Three Stages

First, let it land. Angry, shocked, strangely relieved: all normal. Avoid big financial decisions in the first 48 hours if you can.

Week one: slow down. - Don’t sign the separation agreement on the spot. Take time to read it, and consider having an employment lawyer look at it. (I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.) - Find out exactly what happens to your shares: what’s vested, what isn’t, any good-leaver terms, and the key dates. - Find out what happens to your insurance. This is the one with a clock on it. Put the deadline in your calendar. - Don’t sell shares on reflex. Sometimes selling is right, but it should be a decision, not a reaction. - Pause big new
commitments: the renovation, the car upgrade, the property purchase. - Don’t go quiet. Tell a few trusted people early. Your network is one of your most valuable assets right now.

First month: get the tax right.
A redundancy payment isn’t taxed like normal salary. Depending on whether it’s a genuine redundancy and how the payment is made up, parts of it may be treated quite differently, and unused leave can be different again. Timing matters too: which financial year the money lands in, and how it sits alongside your other income and any RSUs vesting in the same year. Get advice before the money arrives, not after you’ve lodged.

Three months: rebuild the plan.
By now you know your runway, your options and maybe your next role. Maybe it pays more. Maybe it pays less and gives you your evenings back. Maybe you take six months off, or finally start the business. The people with a plan aren’t panicking. They’re choosing.

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When Safety Beats Optimisation

Something advisers don’t often say: the most tax-efficient move isn’t always the right move.

I worked with a senior tech leader (details changed) who’d been through several restructures and could feel the next one coming. He was doing all the right things: modelling his runway, looking at selling an investment property, working out what his leave was worth. I walked them through a strategy that was clearly more tax-efficient on paper. He stopped me: “I hear you. But right now I’m defensive. I just want the mortgage down. I want to deleverage.”

My job wasn’t to win the argument. It was to listen. He needed to feel safe: less debt, more cash, fewer moving parts. His partner had been saying the same thing for months: why don’t we just simplify all this?

Peace of mind has value, even if a spreadsheet can’t measure it. A plan someone will actually stick to through a restructure beats a cleverer plan they’ll abandon. That’s what co-creating the plan means: sometimes the second-best strategy on paper is the best one in real life.

Where This Fits in The Confident Choice System™

If you’re new here, The Confident Choice System™ is the 9-step roadmap I use with every tech professional I advise. It works through three phases in order: Solid Foundations (stability), Strategic Wealth (clarity) and Contingency (options). The destination is the freedom to choose when, where and how you work. Or whether you work at all.

Redundancy-readiness touches four of the nine steps:

• Step 1, Understand Money Flow: your runway starts with knowing what your life actually costs.
• Step 3, Establish Emergency Reserves: the buffer that turns a redundancy into a timing decision.
• Step 4, Reduce Concentration Risk: normally the start of Phase 2. If redundancy is on your mind, bring it forward.
• Step 7, Protect Your Income: the least exciting step and the one most people skip.
In a redundancy, it can turn out to be the most important.

The Bottom Line

Redundancy in tech is no longer a rare event, and performing well doesn’t make you immune.

You can’t control whether it happens. You can control whether it becomes a crisis.

Preparation doesn’t buy you certainty. It buys you choice.

What This Means for You

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• This week: work out your runway. Cash, likely payout and leave on one side, true monthly costs on the other. Leave unvested shares out.
• This month: find your insurance. What cover you have, where it’s held, and what happens to it if you leave your employer.
• This quarter: decide your employer-share strategy: how much you’re comfortable holding, and what happens to each new vest. Then have the conversation at home.

Want the full version? Listen to The Redundancy-Ready Playbook on the Wealth Bytes podcast.

Need Help Clarifying Your Strategy?

If you’re not sure what your runway is, or what you’d do in week one, let’s talk.

Whenever you’re ready, here are a few ways I can help:

• Follow me on LinkedIn for practical financial planning tips every weekday.
• Book a 30-minute Financial Clarity Call. Come with your numbers and I’ll be
straight with you about where you stand, whether or not you choose to work with
me.
• Listen to the Wealth Bytes podcast: financial strategies for tech professionals.
Real strategies, no jargon.
• Subscribe to Wealth Bytes for concise financial insights every month, tailored for
tech professionals.

Let’s make sure the next restructure is a decision you get to make, not one made for you.

Personal Update

• Recognition: In September I was named in the Top 50 advisers in Australia. In October I was announced as a finalist in two categories at the 2026 IFA Excellence Awards: Client Outcome of the Year and SMSF Adviser of the Year, one of 10 finalists in each category nationwide. [Mo: confirm the 10-finalist count against the
published shortlist.] [Mo: update with the result if announced before sending.] The category that means most to me is Client Outcome, because it’s judged on what changed for a real person, in the short and the long term, not on what I say about myself. Some of the outcomes I’m proudest of have nothing to do with returns.
They’re about someone getting the phone call they’d been dreading, and the call not wrecking their life. They took the call and moved on.

• Client conversations: almost every meeting this month has touched on job security, often from people who’ve survived two or three rounds and can feel the next one coming. The ones who sleep best aren’t the ones with the biggest portfolios. They’re the ones who know their number.

Warm regards,

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Mo Shouman My Wealth Choice | 20+ years of financial planning for tech professionals mywealthchoice.com.au | 0492 953 924

P.S. Reply to this email with one number: how many months of runway you think you have. I’ll reply with the first thing I’d check to see whether it’s real.

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General advice warning: This is general information only and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation, or needs. Please consider whether it’s appropriate for you before acting, and seek personal advice where needed. Nothing in this newsletter is legal or tax advice. Examples are hypothetical and for illustration only. Layoff figures are from Layoffs.fyi at the time of writing and are counted differently by different trackers.

My Wealth Choice Pty Ltd is an Authorised Representative (No. 001247597) of Beryllium
Advisers Pty Ltd (AFSL 528250).