NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly a third of General Motors' hourly workforce has signed up for payout packages designed to help the company cut costs.

And at auto parts maker Delphi, a GM spin-off, about 40 percent of its hourly workforce has agreed to take the retirement packages on offer.

The initial read by financial planners who have worked closely with the auto workers affected is that the packages are a pretty fair shake.

"In a bad situation, it was a reasonable win-win," said Leon LaBrecque, an attorney, accountant and financial planner who has worked with hourly GM workers through a human resource center run jointly by GM and the United Auto Workers union.

"The packages are relatively generous," said Rick D. Luedtke, a certified financial planner at Ameriprise in Toledo.

Nevertheless, not every worker who opts for a package is looking at a future of financial ease.

Much depends on their expenses relative to the fixed income they'll have coming in, how much they have saved for retirement on their own and whether they are prepared psychologically and professionally to find other work if need be, Luedtke said.

Generally speaking, LaBrecque said, those likely to be best off are those workers who are at or near retirement. And thus far, they constitute the majority of workers who have accepted a package.

There were three main retirement packages to choose from:

Workers with 30-plus years of service: They are entitled to take a $35,000 lump sum payout and will be given their full retirement benefits, including pension and healthcare, payable when they leave.

The $35,000 is roughly equivalent to what a GM retiree with a full pension earns in one year ($2,950 a month or $35,400 a year).

Workers within three years of the 30-year milestone: They are entitled to accept a monthly payout of between $2,750 and $2,900 until reaching the 30-year mark, after which they would be entitled to receive full retirement benefits, including healthcare, payable when they leave.

Workers age 50 and up with 10-plus years of service: They could opt for the Mutually Satisfactory Retirement option in which they and the company agreed to a deal that would let them retire early. The deal lets them receive full retirement benefits, including healthcare, but the pension they receive will be reduced by a formula tied to their age, said GM spokeswoman Katie McBride.

There also were two main buyout packages available to all hourly workers, retirement eligible or not:

Workers with 10 or more years of service: They could opt to receive a $140,000 lump-sum payout plus vested pension benefits, but they would forfeit other post-retirement benefits, including healthcare.

The average base pay of high-skilled trade worker, not including overtime, is $50,400 a year, LaBrecque said. So the $140,000 lump-sum payout is worth almost three years of pay.

Some retirement-eligible workers chose this option, LaBrecque said, if they had a spouse with retiree healthcare benefits. In that case, he said, "the $140,000 is a really wonderful deal."

Workers with fewer than 10 years of service: They could opt for a $70,000 lump-sum payout and the guarantee of their vested pension benefits to date, but no healthcare or other post-retirement benefits.

The younger workers who might be in their mid-30s to mid-40s who opted for the $70k/$140k packages are the ones most likely to need to find other work because they are in their prime working years, are the most likely to still have young kids and because the lump-sums aren't enough to support them for long.

LaBrecque, Luedtke and Toledo-based certified financial planner Chris Cooper have all heard from workers concerned that they wouldn't be able to find another job that pays as well as GM -- where they might be earning $27.50 an hour.

If they live in an area where GM has been the major employer and is closing a plant, it may be tough to find work there at all. Or if they're unskilled, any jobs they find are likely to pay far less than their old jobs.

Even if they're skilled, it may be slim pickings unless they move to another automaker in another part of the country or to another industry altogether. With the large number of people taking the buyouts, "you're flooding the market, Cooper said.

But the payout packages do offer many workers the opportunity for a fresh start if they want one.

When consulting with workers who were deciding whether to take a package, Luedtke asked them first to consider how they'd like to spend the rest of their careers. For those who have dreamed of doing something different, "the retirement offer gave them the extra push to go for it," he said.

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