What the redundancy did to
our portfolio. The real numbers.

February 2026 was the most financially stressful month of our lives. Oliver's redundancy was confirmed on the 4th. Our first baby was due on the 19th. The portfolio was sitting at its peak of £13,725.

We had decisions to make quickly.

What the portfolio looked like

We'd been rebuilding since January 2024, fourteen months of regular contributions into the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF inside a Stocks and Shares ISA. The portfolio had grown well. Then February happened.

The decision we made

We decided to sell most of it. Not all, we left £4,275 invested. The logic was: we needed a cash buffer for an unknown period, new baby costs are real, job hunting takes time, and uncertainty was high. Selling inside the ISA meant the gains were tax-free, which simplified things.

We didn't panic-sell. We made a deliberate call that having cash available was worth more to us in that moment than staying fully invested.

What happened next

Oliver found contract work within six weeks. The cash buffer turned out to be larger than we needed, we'd sold more than was strictly necessary, partly because uncertainty made us cautious and partly because we hadn't done precise maths on our monthly outgoings.

In April 2026, with income resuming and things stabilising, we made our biggest ever single buy: £3,378 back into the S&P 500 ETF. Portfolio now sits at £10,824 and we're contributing again monthly.

What we'd do differently

Two things. First, we'd have done a proper budget before selling, actual monthly outgoings, actual income gap, actual number of months' buffer needed. We estimated. If we'd known precisely, we'd probably have sold £6,000-£7,000 rather than £9,450 and kept more invested through the recovery.

Second, we'd have kept a small amount earmarked specifically for buying back in at the low point. The market was down in March. We had cash but were too cautious to deploy it because we didn't know how long the redundancy period would last. In hindsight, even £500 into the dip would have been worthwhile.

Selling wasn't the mistake. Selling more than we needed because we hadn't done the exact maths, that's the part we'd change.

The thing nobody tells you

Accessing an ISA in an emergency is straightforward. You can sell and have cash in your account within a few days. We'd worried it would be complicated or slow. It wasn't. The ISA did exactly what it's supposed to do, flexible, accessible, tax-free. That part worked perfectly.