[Thermalseeker]

My house is paid off and I don't borrow money to pay bills. Guess I'm just one of the idiots who acted responsibly so I could pay for the irrisponsible ones.

Well, there are at least two of us in this boat.....but the overwhelming majority of folks I know would/will be out on the street if they miss 3 paychecks. These same people called me "lucky" when I paid off my house and farm in 2001 after 15 years of working 100 hour weeks and 280 days a year traveling in pursuit of my profession. Luck had nothing to do with it. It's called living within your means. A lot of these same folks are about to get a big dose of that "living within your means" stuff, I guarantee.....

[refermech]

I did without a lot of stuff through the years, living off things others throw away, going to the second hand store. I still lived high on the hog in my opinion and have a fair amount saved for a rainy day(is it raining now?) I can fix anything(almost) so I hope to get my family through this. No luck involved. Just lived within my means just like you said.

[cripplecreek]

Luck had nothing to do with it. It's called living within your means.

We hear horror stories of the great depression but we never hear about the people who did OK. It's as if they didn't exist but they did exist. Neither set of my great grandparents lost their farms or ended up in bread lines. They lived within their means and did OK.