Just FYI, your credit score is NEVER irrelevant. Your credit will be checked anytime you apply for a loan or try to rent a house or apartment. If you have a knock on your score for failure to repay a debt, landlords may choose not to rent to you.

You want a better mortgage rate or loan rate? Have good credit.

Character matters. You aren’t entitled to walk away from a consent agreement without penalty.

If you don’t want to accept the risk, don’t agree.

Don’t be foolish.

All true. Take the money and put it somewhere until you hit the end of year one then you can spend half of it and wait until you hit the end of year two and you can spend the rest. Or since you’ve been living without it, leave it where it’s at. But don’t plan to leave without paying it back. Companies spend a lot of money on lawyers and have the connections to easily send your debt out to collection and ruin your credit. And you’d be surprised what bad credit can do. A number of employers check it. Your insurance can be higher because of it.

Just like anything. Do what you think you need to.

I was going to say something along these lines. One of the most important things you can do is take care of your credit history. It effects everything. Not just whether you get the mortgage, but the rate you pay. The rate you pay on your credit cards and your auto loans. The premiums you pay for insurance. It effects where you can live. I think some employers look at it too.

As far as whether to take the money or not. Always take the money. The only way you're guaranteed to short yourself money is to not take the bonus. If you don't take the money and you stay for two years, you've lost out on $15,000 (or whatever the going rate is at the time) pe-tax dollars.

If you leave and you have to pay it back, yes, you're going to have to pay back the pre-tax value even though Envoy gave you the after-tax amount. That's because Envoy paid money to the IRS on your behalf in that amount. If you file your taxes correctly, you'll either get a bigger return, or a lesser bill so it will all come out in the wash. You will not 'lose money' on the exchange.

So, the sound is advice is to take the bonus and put it away. Learn to live on your regular wages, meager as they may be as a regional FO. That 4 digit priced Bose headset can wait, the Miata can wait longer.

Someone doesn’t know what an arbitration clause is for. It’s a low cost way to make an example out of you.

I like all the comments about weighing how it would affect your credit score or how you might just be able to get away with it bc the company is too busy to pursue it lol. How about not taking 15k of someone else’s money, and promising to do something in exchange for said money, then turning around and not doing the thing you promised to do. Life happens and maybe you have to leave early so the least you could do for not keeping your word would be to pay them back. I’m pretty sure it’s prorated after a year anyway. If your word as a human being can be thrown to the wayside so easily just because you think there is a chance the person who gave you the money won’t bother to pay a lawyer to get it back, then please stay away from any company I’m working at. Your the same pilot who will steal another pilots trips or drop your unwanted trips into their schedule just because you can and know how to work the system, or file a pipeline report behind the other pilot’s back saying how they screwed up without having the decency to let them know you are filing a report. Take your untrustworthy a$$ to another airline.

envoy reneges on their recruiting promises of 5.5 year flow, top pay, min day credit, and many more. Probably a fair trade to renege on your agreement to pay back a bonus that should be included in your regular salary anyway.

No honor among thieves.

None of those things are guaranteed in the work contract that an pilot at Envoy agrees to when they begin working here. Does that make it right for the company to imply such things? No. But even if those things were guaranteed, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Only if you bring enough for everyone. . .