Your Last Paycheck

Your Last Paycheck™

First, Financial Triage After the Layoff to Prepare You for the Job Search. Second, Mapping Your New Personalized Career Path in the Age of AI.™

Paperback $25.95 · Hardcover $54.95 · Audible Audiobook $14.99 · Kindle $9.99
442 pages · 8.25″ x 11″ executive format · 23 self-contained Action Plans

There is a great deal of pain in the world right now, and much of it is coming from the massive workforce disruption moving through the economy — not just globally, but especially here in the United States. The numbers that matter most are not guesses, and they are not media exaggerations. They come directly from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, specifically the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).

According to BLS JOLTS data covering the last 24 months, more than 40 million Americans have been laid off or terminated, and another 80 million have voluntarily quit in the same period. The most recent BLS data also confirms the average job search now exceeds six months — considerably longer for older workers and higher-paid positions. The honest truth behind the 80 million is that tens of millions of those quits were forced exits disguised as resignations: people pressured to leave in lieu of being formally laid off or fired. They are functionally in the layoff cohort, just invisible in the official termination data.

What most people hear in the news is something very different. Headlines are typically driven by monthly announcements from an outplacement firm called Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which reports publicly announced corporate job cuts. Those figures — often around one to two million in a year — are not wrong, but they are profoundly incomplete. They capture only what large companies publicly announce, and they dramatically underrepresent what is happening across small companies, private firms, restructurings, and quiet reductions that never become a press release.

And the pattern is global. Europe, Asia, and economies once thought insulated are all living through the same upheaval — the same inflation, the same layoffs, and the same AI-driven restructuring no nation has lived through before. This is not only an American story.

But the layoff numbers are only the beginning. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average American household spent $78,535 in 2024 — about $6,545 per month. That means a six-month disruption in income can require almost $40,000 just to keep an average household intact. The Federal Reserve adds the final warning: the median family transaction-account balance is nowhere near that $40,000 runway. Most households are not sitting on six months of liquid reserves. Many are barely sitting on one. That is why a layoff is not merely an employment problem. It is a runway crisis.

At the same time, there is another pressure that receives far less attention but is just as destabilizing. Millions of households are quietly living with negative personal cash flow. Expenses exceed income, sometimes by only a small amount each month, but over time that imbalance steadily drains savings and erodes any sense of safety. Even people with solid salaries and outward stability are feeling this strain, often in silence.

Your Last Paycheck™ was written for people living at the intersection of these realities — and equally for the millions still employed who see the writing on the wall and want to get ahead of it while the paycheck is still coming. If you or someone you care about is living inside any of those numbers, this book was written specifically for that moment.

Job loss isn’t just losing a paycheck. It’s losing a rhythm, a role, a sense of identity — and, too often, a sense of safety.

In today’s world, people are being laid off through no fault of their own:

Entire departments reduced or replaced through automation and AI.
Companies restructuring so quickly that employees never see it coming.
Senior professionals pushed out because their salary line is “too big,” even when their contribution isn’t.

It is no longer unusual for a job search to last six to twelve months or more. Savings get drained. Confidence erodes. People begin to question their worth.

Your Last Paycheck™ exists to keep that spiral from swallowing you. No hype. No panic. Just the moves that work, in the order they need to be made.

Part One – Financial Triage and the Long Search

The first half of the book focuses on what you do right now — in the first hours, days, and months after disruption, whether that disruption has already happened or feels imminent.

It opens with financial triage — the immediate steps to protect your cash, your credit, and your options before the pressure builds. From there, 23 self-contained Action Plans take you from crisis to stability: rebuilding income pathways, protecting your credit, clearing the runway for what comes next, and stabilizing the household so the search can outlast the savings.

You’ll find:

A step-by-step checklist for what to secure before access is shut off (documents, contacts, IP, benefits, references, LinkedIn positioning, and more).
How to stabilize your finances for a long search, not a short one, including how to identify and reverse negative cash flow.
Guidance for difficult relationships with family and friends when everyone is scared but no one wants to say it out loud.
Support for the emotional crash — shame, fear, anger, numbness, and the “what do I tell people?” panic.
Ways to structure your days so you don’t drift, collapse, or grind yourself into exhaustion.

This section is written as if I’m sitting at your kitchen table, helping you think clearly when clarity feels hardest to access.

Part Two – Mapping Your New Personalized Career Path in the Age of AI

The second half of the book is what makes Your Last Paycheck™ a fundamentally different kind of layoff guide. Chapter 20 — the heart of Part Two and roughly 30 percent of the entire book — is a comprehensive career reference for the AI-transformed job market, scannable across every level of the corporate ladder.

Inside Chapter 20 you will find 100 AI job and career titles you’ve probably never heard of, spanning the full corporate ladder from immediate income lanes at $25,000 up to the Chief AI Officer tier at $600,000 annually. Each of the 100 entries names:

The 2026 compensation range
The specific AI skills to build on top of the Compound Knowledge™ you already carry from decades of prior experience
Generalized incremental learning hours needed to become minimally proficient
The exact first step to take this week
Real job-title variants you can search on LinkedIn and share with recruiters

You are not starting over. You are leveling up. And none of the 100 requires you to write a single line of code.

Whether you want to enhance the career you already have by closing targeted AI skill gaps — the specific capabilities employers are now paying premiums for — or pivot entirely into an AI-focused role by identifying which paths you can realistically achieve with the right training, the book maps both routes clearly.

Chapter 20 also carries a bonus appendix at the back of the book — the Upwork Exposé — sourced entirely from Upwork’s own SEC filings and large-scale research from third-party platforms, with every claim independently verifiable. If you are considering Upwork as a bridge income during your job search, please read the Exposé first. Your runway cannot afford the lesson otherwise.

You will not read Chapter 20 cover to cover. You will go directly to the entry that matches your experience, your goals, and your next move. This is not about chasing hype. It is about crafting a resilient, realistic strategy in a reshaping job market — built on the Compound Knowledge™ you already have.

Stability now. AI-positioned for what comes next. You are not starting over — you are leveling up. And none of the 100 requires you to write a single line of code.

How the Book Helps You Think Clearly

Your Last Paycheck™ does not rely on downloadable tools, spreadsheets, templates, or worksheets. Instead, it walks you through how to think about the decisions that matter most when time, money, and emotional bandwidth are limited.

Throughout the book, you’ll find clear explanations of how to assess your financial runway, how to reason through tradeoffs without panic, and how to evaluate career options realistically in an AI-shifting labor market.

Rather than telling you what to do, the book focuses on helping you understand why certain decisions protect you and others quietly increase risk — so you can apply the same thinking again as circumstances change.

The goal is not to hand you a checklist and send you on your way. The goal is to help you regain judgment, perspective, and agency at a moment when those are easiest to lose.

Who This Book Is For

Your Last Paycheck™ is for:

Anyone who has just been laid off, is facing a restructure, or senses it may be coming.
Anyone whose “voluntary” resignation was, in honest truth, a forced exit dressed up as a resignation — and who needs the same financial triage and AI-repositioning the formally separated population does.
Anyone still employed who sees the writing on the wall and wants to get their financial ducks in order now — while the paycheck is still coming — and start mapping their new personalized career path before disruption arrives.
People who still have a job but are living with negative personal cash flow that is steadily depleting savings.
Spouses and partners trying to support someone through disruption.
Parents, adult children, close friends, and other loved ones who want to help someone they care about without saying the wrong thing or making it worse.
Professionals who can see their industry shrinking and want to act before they are forced to.
Career counselors, coaches, and HR professionals who need a grounded resource to put in people’s hands when there’s bad news.

For Corporate Buyers: A Stabilizing Resource

Your Last Paycheck™ is also an unusually strong fit for organizations navigating layoffs, restructures, role eliminations, and AI-driven workforce change — especially companies that want to handle disruption without destroying trust.

When job loss hits, employees rarely need another pep talk. They need a practical sequence. They need clarity under stress. And they need tools that reduce panic-driven decisions and protect families from cascading financial and emotional damage.

The book works well in outplacement programs, EAP and wellbeing initiatives, and as a retention tool for high performers who are quietly burning out or disengaging. Its strength is realism. And realism is what creates adoption. For organizations addressing both the formal layoff cohort and the forced-exit cohort hidden inside the 80-million voluntary-quit number, Your Last Paycheck™ is the right resource for both — the operational content addresses the same problems regardless of how the departure was officially classified.

A Glimpse of the Tone

This book will not try to talk you out of reality. It will not tell you that everything happens for a reason, or that a layoff is secretly a gift, or that you just need to “stay positive.” When people are scared, those lines don’t help. They usually make things worse.

Instead, the tone of this book is calm, direct, and protective. It treats job disruption and financial instability as serious events that deserve seriousness. It also treats the reader like an adult who can think clearly again once the panic stops flooding their system.

If your mind is spinning, if your household is tense, if you are trying to act normal while privately running worst-case scenarios, this book is written for that moment. It is designed to help you regain traction and make the next decisions with steadiness instead of fear.

“This is hard. It’s not your fault. Let’s stop the bleeding, protect what matters, and build what comes next — one clear decision at a time.”

Join the Your Last Paycheck™ Advance Reader Team

Before a book is released publicly, there is a small window where it can still become stronger.

The Advance Reader Team is a select group of early readers who receive the manuscript before publication and offer thoughtful, real-world feedback. Their insights help refine clarity, strengthen structure, and ensure the final version is genuinely useful for the people who will rely on it during their own transition.

The ask is deliberately light. You do not need to read the entire manuscript. Even reading two Action Plans that speak to your situation and sharing your honest reaction is a complete contribution. If you happen to read more, that is a bonus — never a requirement.

If you would like to:

Read the current PDF manuscript before publication
Receive the final PDF manuscript when it’s ready — yours to keep
Offer honest feedback on what resonates and what needs tightening
Help catch rough spots or confusing sections
Optionally have your name included in the Acknowledgements

…you are warmly invited to apply.

Advance Readers are the first people I think about when I’m revising. Your feedback does not just improve the book — it improves the experience of the person who will open it during a difficult season and quietly hope it helps. When you join, you’re also helping this book reach the tens of millions of Americans who need it.

Click: Apply to join the Your Last Paycheck™ Advance Reader Team

Not Ready to Join the Advance Reader Team?

That is completely fine.

If you would simply like to receive updates when Your Last Paycheck™ is released – along with occasional behind-the-scenes notes as it develops – you can join the interest list below.

No noise. No marketing clutter. Just meaningful updates when they matter.

Thanks,

Robert

Robert Lee Goodman, MBA
CEO and Publisher, Good-Man LLC
Founder and Author, Five Year Life™ Series
44X Founder · Rocket Scientist ·
33K Compound Knowledgist™ ·
Chief Dragonslayer™ – Business & Love ·
Novelist Who Successfully Found His Heroine™

P.S. — If you’ve ever wondered what 1,200 first dates, 15,000 serious relationships, and a decade-long personal quest actually produce — there’s a page on this site you probably shouldn’t miss. It’s the real backstory behind Efficient Love™ and the decade that made it possible. Some of it is embarrassing. All of it is true. And somewhere inside it is the methodology that led me to the one woman in 2 million who became my wife.

→ The Story Behind Novelist Seeks Heroine™

P.P.S. — The frameworks in these books didn’t come from research or theory. They came from something far harder to replicate: 33,000 deeply candid, one-on-one relationships — across business and love — with people who couldn’t see their own best path forward and were looking to me to help them find it. If you want to understand why these books are different from anything else you’ll find, that’s where the answer lives.

→ Compound Knowledge™ – What It Is and Why It Matters to You

P.P.P.S. — If you are a corporate buyer, HR leader, coach, or program director interested in bulk purchase or organizational use, contact: SpecialSales@FiveYearLife.com

Job loss is never just a financial event. It's an identity shock, a loss of stability, and a rupture in how you understand your own value. And in today's economy, finding stable work often takes far longer than people expect — especially as AI continues to reshape entire professions.

Your Last Paycheck™ was written to prevent panic-driven decisions during one of the most vulnerable periods of a person's life — and equally for the millions still employed who see the writing on the wall.

Part One provides a calm, step-by-step financial triage plan for the critical early weeks: what to secure, what to protect, how to preserve both finances and emotional footing.

Part Two maps your new career path in the Age of AI — 100 AI job and career titles you've probably never heard of. No code required. You are not starting over. You are leveling up.

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/YourLastPaycheck

There comes a point in nearly every life when the internal alignment that once held everything together begins to fracture. You feel it before you can explain it — a heaviness, a resistance, a sense that you are living slightly out of phase with yourself.

Reset Protocol™ exists for that moment. It guides you through 108 carefully sequenced questions designed to reveal patterns you've lived with for years, surface truths you may have been avoiding, and help you see your life with clarity rather than judgment.

You'll also learn the Five-Year Lens™ — a future-focused way to evaluate decisions based on who you are becoming, not just what you're trying to escape. Not the familiar path, but the one most aligned with what you actually want.

Reset Protocol™ is not about blowing up your life; it's about realignment — done deliberately, honestly, and with realistic compassion. It's how you move beyond the road less traveled and step onto the road most desired.

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/ResetProtocol

Some people prefer to read and reflect. Others need to engage, write, and move. This Workbook is built for action.

The Reset Protocol Workbook™ transforms insight into execution. It follows the same 108 carefully sequenced questions, but provides structured space to capture your answers, clarify your thinking, and turn reflection into forward momentum.

This is where your Reset Protocol becomes your own — not just something you understand, but something you actively work through, decision by decision.

Whether you use it alongside the main book or on its own, the purpose is the same: to move you from awareness into alignment, and from alignment into action.

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/ResetProtocolWorkbook

"I had 1,200 first dates" sounds like a gimmick. It wasn't. It was the byproduct of an accidental experiment that started with a simple website: NovelistSeeksHeroine.com.

That page described the 28 traits I believed mattered most for long-term compatibility. More than 15,000 women responded, convinced they matched. What followed was a decade-long journey — roughly 1,200 first dates, over 300 second dates, and a hard-earned education in the difference between attraction, projection, and true alignment.

Out of those 15,000, out of those 1,200 first dates, there was one — and only one — woman I asked to marry me. She said yes. That was more than two decades ago… and we're still happily together and counting.

But this book isn't about my story. It's about yours.

Efficient Love™ shows you how to avoid years of unnecessary detours, identify real compatibility earlier, and find the person who is right for you — where you also happen to be right for them.

It distills everything learned from that journey — including the Three Lists — into a practical, repeatable approach you can apply immediately to your own search.

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/EfficientLove

Stark Naked Startup™: A Novel – Book 1 — Loneliness Epidemic, Solved By An AI Startup. Sexual Intimacy and Desire, Uncontrollably Addictive. Unintended Consequences, Their Truth Algorithm Weaponized — And Every Government on Earth Their Enemy.™

It begins with a problem that has quietly grown into a worldwide epidemic, spreading across cultures, countries, and generations, affecting not just millions, but likely hundreds of millions and even billions of souls on this planet, often without being openly acknowledged because it hides so easily behind lives that appear complete from the outside.

Call it loneliness, if you want, though that word barely captures the full weight of it, because what is actually being felt is not simply the absence of company, but the absence of being truly known, truly understood, and truly connected in ways that feel real, dependable, and impossible to fake, whether in romantic love, friendship, family, or the quieter forms of human connection that give life its meaning.

Four founders come together around that recognition, not because they believe they have all the answers, but because they share the conviction that this epidemic is neither small nor inevitable, and that if something could be understood at a deeper level, perhaps it could be changed, not merely for a few fortunate people, but in a way that might genuinely make the world a better place.

What draws them forward is , and at the beginning it still looks, at least from a distance, like a startup story, a few brilliant, driven people building something ambitious and hopeful in the face of a problem that seems too large for any small company to solve.

Then something begins to shift, though not in any clean or predictable way, and not in any form the founders would have recognized at first for what it really was, because whatever they had touched was no longer simply shaping what people said to one another, but the space beneath what they said, where hesitation, desire, restraint, and truth normally remain guarded, filtered, and quietly distorted.

Because when two people connect through , the distance between what is felt and what is revealed does not gradually close the way it usually does, but instead begins to collapse, giving way to a form of shared awareness that feels at once intoxicating, disorienting, and impossible to resist.

It does not feel reckless. It does not feel confused. It feels certain in a way that is almost unnerving, because the usual space people rely on to stay in control seems to dissolve almost immediately, leaving behind the unmistakable sense that something deeper has already recognized what neither of them has yet spoken aloud.

Time does not disappear. It accelerates until hesitation has no place to live, until desire and certainty arrive together, and what would have taken months becomes something neither of them can delay, and neither of them would ever choose to.

This is not the familiar courtship minuet people have come to expect, not the cautious circling, not the incremental testing of boundaries. It is something else entirely, a different kind of dance, where recognition arrives first, where alignment follows immediately, and where passion does not wander aimlessly but locks into place with a precision that feels both overwhelming and inevitable.

Desire is unmistakably part of it, but it does not stand alone, because what rises with it is something far more disarming, a sense of alignment so complete that the usual friction is simply not there, no second-guessing, no misread signals, no quiet holding back that people are used to carrying even in their most intimate moments.

Here, there is to reinterpret, to correct, and almost no place left for the subtle evasions that normally prevent passion from becoming what it was always capable of becoming.

What unfolds in that space is not merely erotic, though it is undeniably that, and not merely romantic, though it is deeply that as well. It is the experience of two people entering a form of connection where closeness is no longer negotiated, but revealed, where desire and certainty rise together, and where intimacy carries a depth that feels both intensely physical and profoundly understood at the same time.

Within that convergence, moments begin to emerge in which , where sensation deepens into meaning, and where the line between emotional connection and physical experience becomes impossible to separate.

And yet what begins here is not confined to romance, because the same underlying shift begins to extend into , , and , suggesting that what is being touched is not merely a better way for people to fall in love, but a deeper way for human beings to recognize, understand, and relate to one another across nearly every meaningful dimension of life.

What began as an attempt to address a global epidemic affecting hundreds of millions, and likely billions, starts to reveal implications far beyond anything the founders imagined, becoming less a product and more the early edge of a black swan event, one capable of producing outcomes no one can fully model and no existing system of control can comfortably absorb.

And that is when the attention shifts, because something like this will never be left alone once outside forces begin to grasp even fragments of what may be possible.

What follows is no longer simply a question of whether the founders can protect what they have built, but whether what they have touched can remain what it was meant to be once others begin trying to control, redirect, weaponize, or own it.

Especially once it becomes clear that beneath the emotional, romantic, and philosophical implications there may also be elements of that extend beyond fiction.

That realization was never part of the original plan, and yet somewhere in the process of developing this story, it became impossible to ignore the possibility that what was being described might represent something more tangible, something that could, under the right conditions, constitute , with the specific details intentionally withheld for reasons that should be self-evident.

This is not just a story. It is a partially redacted case file. And whatever is happening inside it has already begun.

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/SNSPreview