During the recession, late 2008, DH's plant was closing and six months of looking netted no job at all, my job in a small town library wouldn't even cover the mortgage.
The company offered DH a job at headquarters, in Germany---but without all the help nornally given to expats.
We had 6 weeks to sell or store our things, 4 suitcasese each that we got to take with us, no German langauge skills and two kids in school who had to jump into German speaking schools. It was a HUGE risk, and the first few years were really tough (especially on our poor kids---they were too old to pick up the langauge easily, but young enough that often people assumed they could and ere not trying; other kids were not always kind to the new non native speakers, etc).
BUT, in the end we are very happy here---and even my oldest, who is back in the US now, is glad to have had the time they did here. It totally altered the course of our lives---but for the better.