The first 30 days after losing your job: a practical checklist

The first week: final pay, paperwork and a pause

Start with the money you are owed. Employment New Zealand says your final pay must include your final wages, all the holiday pay you are entitled to and any other payments owing. Holiday and leave pay must be paid on or before the pay day for your final pay period, which can be after your last day. There is no legal right to be paid out unused sick leave, unless your employment agreement provides for it.

Check the final payslip line by line against your agreement: the notice period, any redundancy clause, and the holiday pay. If you were made redundant, our guide to redundancy in New Zealand explains what the law requires and the time limits if you think the process was unfair.

Then gather the paperwork into one folder: your employment agreement, the letter ending your employment, your last few payslips and any redundancy calculation. You will need several of these for Work and Income.

After that, take a pause. A few days to rest, tell the people close to you and let the shock settle is not wasted time. Applications written in the first raw week are rarely your best.

Money: your runway, Work and Income and the stand-down

Contact Work and Income early, before your last day if you can. Its redundancy support can start helping before your job finishes, and it can explain which payments you might get. For a single person aged 25 or over with no children, the maximum Jobseeker Support rate is $372.55 a week after tax, or $426.12 before tax.

Most benefits have a stand-down, usually 1 or 2 weeks with no payment after your application is approved. Its length depends on your average weekly income before tax over the last 26 or 52 weeks and how many children you have. For a single person with no children, it is 2 weeks if that average was $1,620.68 or more. Three more rules affect when money arrives:

• Redundancy pay is counted in that income, so it can make the stand-down 2 weeks, but it does not change the date your job is treated as ending.
• Holiday pay paid out when you leave, and pay in lieu of notice, push back the date your job is treated as ending by the days they cover, so they can delay your first payment.
• Payment in arrears means no money in the first week after payments start, because Work and Income pays for the week just gone.

If you left without a good reason or were dismissed for misconduct, you may wait up to 13 weeks, which is a non-entitlement period rather than a stand-down. Work and Income can sometimes help with urgent costs during a stand-down, so ask.

Now work out your runway: your savings, plus your final pay after tax, divided by the weekly gap between your outgoings and your income. In jobtracker.co.nz, the money runway in Insights does that sum with the after-tax benefit rates, leaves out income until the first benefit payment date you enter, and shows the week your savings would run out.

KiwiSaver, student loan and tax codes

Inland Revenue sets out what changes when a job ends:

• KiwiSaver. Contributions from your pay stop when your job ends, and none are taken from a redundancy payment. Your savings stay where they are. Voluntary contributions while you are not working could still earn the government's yearly contribution. If you start a new job and money is tight, a savings suspension can pause contributions from your pay for 3 months to 1 year once you have been a contributing member for 12 months.
• Student loan. Repayments should be deducted from a redundancy payment. If you do not get another job soon, check your income for the year so far: if it is over the repayment threshold, keep paying so a bill does not arrive after 31 March.
• Tax. A redundancy payment is taxed at the lump sum rate. Your income for the year may end up higher or lower than usual, so after the tax year ends Inland Revenue works out whether you paid the right amount, and you may get a refund or owe more.

When you start a new job, give your employer the right tax code straight away, with SL added if you have a student loan. Our guide to KiwiSaver and money between jobs has the detail, including hardship withdrawals.

Getting your records and referees while they are fresh

People move on and memories fade, so do this in the first two weeks:

• Ask for a statement of service and a reference. Employment New Zealand says your employer should provide a statement of service, but does not have to give a reference unless it has agreed to.
• Ask for your personal information, such as performance reviews, if you want copies. Under the Privacy Act, organisations must respond to your request within 20 working days.
• Write down your achievements now, with numbers, while you still remember them.
• Line up referees. Ask former managers and colleagues whether they would be willing, and get personal phone numbers or email addresses, because work ones stop working.

In jobtracker.co.nz, Contacts is free and keeps each person's details, and On the Move adds a referee record that notes when each referee agreed and how often you have given their name.

Starting the hunt: a steady weekly plan

By week three, move from recovery to routine. A search you can keep up for months beats a burst of fifty applications in a week:

1. Decide what you are looking for: the roles, the pay you need and the places you would work.
2. Set up job alerts on Seek and LinkedIn, and tell your network what you want.
3. Aim for a handful of tailored applications each week, with a follow-up on each.
4. Keep one weekly slot to review what is working and plan the next week.

If you go onto Jobseeker Support, you will have obligations to look for work and may be asked to show what you have done. Our guide to job hunting on Jobseeker Support explains what counts. In jobtracker.co.nz, the Work and Income record turns what you log into a dated activity table for the period your case manager asks about, ready to print or save as a PDF. The demo shows that record filled in from a sample hunt, with no account needed.

Start the hunt organised