I live in a small city, so I’d dump my car and minimize all my other costs. I could last about 41 months including my retirement assets.

If I counted the buyout my company is currently offering to get rid of employees, I could last 66 months.

Other factors to consider – if your employer convinced you to scale back your hours of work to prevent layoffs in your workplace, and your employer didn’t apply for the EI workshare program, then your employer has just screwed you out of full EI benefits (up to just under $450 a week). That’s because your EI benefit will be calculated on the number of hours you work, based on your last weeks of employment, not your best weeks.

Finally, if you live in an area of previously low unemployment, the duration of your benefits will be a lot lower than if you live in an area of high unemployment – because it takes a while for the rate to recalculate and improve benefits in your area. The duration of benefits depends on the unemployment rate where you live. Thus if you lose your job in Calgary, you’re likely to get only 19 weeks of unemployment benefits but if you lose your job in Acadie New Brunswick, you will get about 50 weeks of benefits.

Thank your conservative government for not changing this unfair regional disparity.

28 months is a very impressive time frame to be without work and not dipping into retirement funds or gaining any extra debt. I am now aggressively building an emergency fund in case an event like this would ever happen to me in the future.

So I was wrong about the clawback, although in my defence the last two times I was on EI I didn’t get clawed back because I was part of the “exception” group (receiving parental benefits).

However, it also says “you received less than 1 week of regular or fishing benefits in the preceding 10 taxation years;” as an exception. This would imply that someone who hasn’t collected EI in 10 years wouldn’t face the clawback.

http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/information/repayment_2009.shtml

So, there is a clawback but when you file your tax returns and any severance counts against EI earnings since severance is taxable income.

Say you get 400 a week, and got 4000 severance. That’s 10 weeks before you get an EI payment. I received an EI cheque for $1 one time because of this.

They may have changed this since I was last unemployed.

How would you lay yourself off? Is that even possible?

I think you can earn something like $50 a week and still be fine for EI payments. Any dollar over that gets subtracted from your EI payment. Or maybe it’s $150 a week. Not sure.

I don’t know how severance affects EI – I would assume they calculate a time period that the severance would cover and then start your EI at that time? Ie if you get laid off on Jan 1 and get 6 months severance then you wouldn’t get EI until July.

I do know there is some sort of clawback for money earned while you are collecting ei. I can’t remember the formula. One thing I’m curious about is what if you own a small business and get laid off – can you “not pay yourself” for a while in order to get EI?

Stats Canada found that an unemployed person typically takes 15-26 weeks to find a new job. So, to be safe, you should aim to cover expenses for about 30 weeks.

I believe that you are correct in saying that there is a 2 week waiting period but from my experience, it has taken at least 4 weeks to receive it. I could have accounted for the 2 week retro, which would pay for a little less than 1/2 months expenses.

I thought there was only a 2 week waiting period of EI? I mean, it could take a couple months for the first cheque to show up, but they would pay retro from after the 2wk waiting period.

If you’re going to be out of work for 6 months or more, I think you could count on a nice tax return from the previous year.