Living dangerously: Diary of an ABS professional, Week 14

In which Mr ABS learns the joys of being made redundant if you are young, free and single, and have just received a guaranteed bonus.

On Wednesday I had a few drinks with one of my former colleagues who left the bank I was working for last year in return for a guaranteed bonus. His guaranteed bonus has just been paid but, sadly (or not), he no longer has a job.

He was sent home by his new shop together with the rest of his team, but unlike them he had the safety net of the ineluctable payout to smooth his path. Around 12 months ago I remember him asking me whether I thought he'd done the right thing to go for a guarantee over the upside of being potentially paid a third more. By August, I reckon he must have stopped wondering whether he had made the right choice.

Being a CDO guy, he knows that his market is dead and that there will be no such thing as an Easter resurrection. There are opportunities, but they're only temporary: no one wants to hire a CDO dude for an indefinite period.

Not that he is letting this faze him. Equipped with the guarantee, he's instead giving himself three weeks to organise a sabbatical of between six and 12 months, which will involve going round the world, starting with the southern hemisphere and returning to the northern one when summer returns. I suspect he's seen the cult surfer film, Endless Summer. Either that or he has pretensions to become a migratory bird.

He is single, mortgage-free and delighted in telling me that once he has moved out of his funky rented pad he has enough to keep him going for between 7 and 20 years, depending on how extravagant he decides to be ... probably even until death if he moves back in with his parents.

I have to say that I envy him, not for the prospect of rotting away with his parents, but for being able to take a serious break. Taking a sabbatical was one of the recommendations I received from an eFinancialCareers reader the week I was chopped, and it did make me think for a while - until the family and mortgage came to mind.

I have not heard of other ABS people temping like me, but it looks as though there are a fair few CDO people doing it. I have heard of a well-known name who was made redundant and then hired back on a temporary contract by his bank two weeks later to unwind some complex structure. It sounds brilliant. He apparently has heavily drafted confidentiality clauses because his bank does not want this to be leaked to the market.

I have recently been to interviews for a pseudo-permanent position. Before going I enquired whether they had headcount for this year and was assured that they did. This was even confirmed at the interviews. I have since been told that they haven't. Time wasters.

According to the FT, it looks like the Government wants to revive the mortgage market. Darling would not have been my natural pick for mouth to mouth, but I shall oblige if he insists.