So my wife and I are getting plan B ready. [View all]

[drray23]

I hold dual citizenship American and French. I spend most of my adult life in the United States. However, I have an appointment with the French consulate in DC next week to renew my French passport. We are not planning to leave the US unless I end up ousted from the department of energy where I work.

We figured I would not bother getting a new job, just sell our assets here in the US, move to France and buy a house there. We would rather stay in the US if we can so I will wait if and until I get laid off. The only upside is that the stock market jumped up and this netted me a lot more money. In normal circumstances, I would not be old enough to access my 401K's without penalty (you need to be above 59 1/2) but it turns out that if you are above 55 (I am 56), you also qualify in case you get laid off. That should allow us to move, buy a house there and either sell or rent our US home.

We recognize we are very fortunate to be in this situation. After the initial despair post-election, we reassessed and realized we could do this if needed. We completely cut off social media presence and reading/watching the news. We only browse DU now and ignore threads that are likely to get us really upset. That is helping to lower stress tremendously.