Well how about that, I also grew up in the Chicago Suburbs…on the south side though near Orland Park but worked near Barrington (Hoffman Estates) for a while.

I also went through the layoff experience as well a few years ago. I was laid off 2 times in a row. Once from a Tier 1 automotive component manufacturer whose initials are BW (let’s see who can figure that out) and at my next job at Conagra in Downers Grove. I had only been at the Conagra job for about 2 months when one day they brought all 150 of us in the division HQ there into a conference room and told us that they intended to move that HQ to Omaha, NE where the corporate HQ was at in order to lower overhead costs!!!! Gee, you think they knew that was in the works when the CFO of that division hired me??? Unbelieveable.

In the end it worked out for my wife and I because it turned that Conagra was quite generous with their severance package and I found a much better job here in San Diego.

Even though things worked out for me in the end, it still taught me to be very conservative with debt, spending, risk mitigation. Now my wife and I keep at least 6 months of minimum expenses in reserve (cash). That experience between 03 and 04 really changed my perspective on life quite a bit and might have been the reason I sensed something wrong with the housing market here in SD when we moved here in the Fall of 04…at the height of the madness.