Losing a job can be one of the biggest financial crises anyone faces during their lifetime. One day, you’re financially stable and the next you’re unsure you can make next month’s mortgage payment. Getting through an extended period of unemployment can be really difficult if you’re not prepared, so when your employer at the very least offers you aseverancepackage, you need to know how to make the most of it.

What Is Severance Pay?

When an employee loses a job, usually for a reason out of their control like downsizing, their employer may offer them money or other financial assistance to help them survive until they find a new job. In many cases, a displaced worker willreceiveextra pay, though it is also possible to have benefits extended or be provided some other form of compensation.

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Savings bonds are Treasury securities that are payable only to the person to whom they are registered. This means that you can’t resell them, but you can cash them in. Savings bonds can earn interest for up to 30 years, although you can cash them in after one year – the minimum holding period – with a penalty. If you redeem a bond before five years, there’s a three-month interest penalty.

The government issues two savings bonds — the I bond and the Series EE Patriot bond.

The I bond is an inflation-indexed savings bond. It has a fixed rate of return plus an inflation premium. The fixed rate and the inflation premium are adjusted every May and November by the Treasury Department. But the fixed rate assigned when you buy the bond is good for as long as you hold the bond. The

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James P. Kouris bought a four-bedroom, 4.5-bath home at 327 Elm St. in Glenview from ING Bank for $605,000 on April 5.

The 3,155-square-foot house was transferred to ING Bank in January 2010. It is located in the South Glenview neighborhood.

Kouris is chief information officer at Madison Dearborn Partners.

Previously, he was an outside technical consultant and chief information officer at The Pritzker Organization. He also was an adjunct professor at DePaul University’s Graduate School of Computer Science.

He received his B.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.S. from DePaul University, and an M.B.A. from the Northwestern University J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 619 sales in Glenview during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $370,000.

State Street may be still be that great street, but the Great Recession has taken the swagger out of the shopping strip’s once lofty retail ambitions.

In the decade before the financial crisis, when aspirational shopping was in vogue, developers and city officials held high hopes of turning the Loop shopping district into a high-end enclave that could rival the glitzy Magnificent Mile to the north.

That never happened. Instead, as the economy sank, State Street expanded its row of discount merchants.

Ballyhooed deals with the likes of Kate Spade, Coach, Lululemon, Apple, and the superchic Canyon Ranch spa vaporized. In their place: a string of popular-priced stores including Ulta, Loehmann’s, Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, H&M, and most recently American Apparel, hung up their shingles alongside Sears, TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack.

The turn of events, in the end, revitalized the street as consumers across income levels, battle weary from the recession, embraced bargain shopping as fashionable.

But two big obstacles remain. Lar

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Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, have been battling inflation in portfolios since 1997. You can buy this protection in the form of an individual bond, an exchange-traded fund or a mutual fund.

The Treasury Department uses the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, as a guide to adjust the principal for inflation on a semiannual basis. A fixed interest rate is paid semiannually on the adjusted principal.

For example, if you buy a $10,000 bond with an interest rate of 2 percent but inflation equals 3 percent that year, the face value of the bond will be increased by $300 to $10,300 and the 2 percent interest rate will be applied to the new face value. So, what happens if you own the bond in a deflationary environment? The principal will be adjusted downward, but as long as you hold until maturity you’ll receive your original investment.

TIPS bonds are meant to be long-term investments. T

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Financial emergencies can strike at any time, and unfortunately, they usually come with little to no warning. Job loss, vehicle or home repairs, medical expenses and other major events can quickly consume your emergency fund and leave you looking for a way to get by. But you don’t have to panic. Here are some tips for dealing with a financial crisis, starting with preparation:

Prepare Before Disaster Strikes

The first thing you should do is set up an emergency fund. The size of your emergency fund should be, at minimum, large enough to cover major car repairs, and on the high end, enough to cover several months of living expenses. Many financial experts recommend 6 months worth of living expenses. It can take a long time to save that much, so start small and work your way up to a larger emergency fund.

When Disaster Strikes

You never know if and when a disaster will happen, and more importantly, you won’t know the severity.

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A small Florida bank is our new leader in 3-month CD rates.

Sanibel Captiva Community Bank is offering a return of 0.95% APY with a $1,000 minimum deposit. That’s nearly a tenth of a percentage point more than you can earn at Nexity Bank, which falls to second in our rankings of the best nationally available returns.

The online bank based in Birmingham, Ala., continues to pay 0.86% APY with a $1,000 minimum deposit.

The only way to earn more is to find a deal that’s limited to local customers, such as the one River City Bank is offering in Louisville, Ky. or Green Belt Bank & Trust has for savers in north central Iowa.

The next best nationally available returns on 3-month certificates of deposit are:

0.85% APY with a $10,000 minimum from Goldwater Bank, with a single location in Scottsdale, Ariz.

0.80% APY with a $10,000 minimum from Virtual Bank, the online division of Lydian Private Bank, based in Palm Beach, Fla.

The offer from Sanibel Captiva Community Bank is open to all U.S. res

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Credit card companies often manage to combine general ineptness with being brilliant con artists, but an email we received today from a reader takes their idiot genius to a whole new level. Like the best comedy, it made me laugh at the same time as shaking my head at the sheer lunacy involved. Essentially, his credit card company hiked his limit without asking him and then wouldn’t reduce it without doing a salary check. At the risk of sounding like Richard Littlejohn you really could not make this up Email from JH: Recently I received revised terms from my credit card bank saying: ‘If we decide to increase your credit card limit we will give at least 30 days notice in writing unless you have specifically asked us for the increase.’ I didn’t request an increase but have now received a letter saying ‘Your credit limit has been increased from … to …  Ho Read more…

Russ W. Rosenzweig has listed for sale a five-bedroom, five-bath home at 1328 N. State St. in Gold Coast for $2.35 million.

Michael Rosenblum of Koenig & Strey Real Living is the listing agent for the home. Rosenzweig paid $2.23 million for the property in May 2006. The 2,304-square-foot house was built in 1944 in Gold Coast.

Rosenzweig is a CEO and owner of Round Table Group Inc., a firm that offers legal services. He previously served as senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 695 home sales in Gold Coast during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $386,000.