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Against the back drop of bleak media reporting and legislative blame games, millions of families are struggling with day-to-day realities. While they worked toward their dreams, the economic tsunami blew that distant horizon off the map. Security and stability have been upended in every area of life that touches the average person. From fuel prices and employment concerns to real estate and investment values, economic conditions find people questioning past decisions and looking for new roadmaps to follow.

In those personal lives and individual stories, we discover how the state of the economy hits home with dreadful consequences. Jobless auto and textile workers try to keep food on the table, while they watch their mortgages slip into foreclosure. Even as they look to retraining programs, they wonder if jobs will be there at the end.

Retirees who invested a lifetime in honest work and prudent investments face alarming economic trends and difficult decisions. Whether they sought carefree daily golf rounds or a modest mobile home lifestyle, their savings and investments have eroded, their dollars buy less, and they turn to rejoining the work force. Even that prospect is dim, as the current job market finds so many vying for so few jobs.

Families struggle, add the second job, pare their expenses. The had-to-have SUV or van that shuttled soccer players to practice or allowed extra room on road trips, guzzles gas at far higher prices than when the purchase was made. Taxes increase, services decrease and even their children's schools are changing schedules and eliminating teachers to cope with budget cuts. How do you schedule after-school care or work schedules, when the education system keeps changing? It seems their security is an ever-moving target.

Some savvy investors saw the market decline and moved their wealth from stocks to real estate, only to see the ultimate kingpin of value join the economic landslide. Conditions have changed so drastically, people with money are uncertain where to invest. For years, they followed the maxim that your money should work for you, reaping dividends or increasing wealth; but cold cash under the mattress seems safest today.

When we begin to see the economic haze lift, we need to learn the bitter lessons the crisis has delivered. Commerce and banking stretched the horizons of risky investments and questionable ethics with iffy promises of new wealth. They discovered the foundation was made of sand. Mergers and acquisitions brought

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