Question: How is the economic crisis effecting you?

Answer: It's not.

Oh, I could buy the argument that it effects everyone. But in all honesty, it's not effecting me personally. Why not? Because I have a solid income, a solid mortgage (which I pay every month), and very little money invested anywhere (and even the "little" is in an IRA that I won't need for many years to come).

The biggest thing that effects me is the never-ending bad news. It frustrates me because I know things will turn around. I know it's not the end of the world. But the way you hear about it on the news you'd think it's the apocalypse! The thing that makes this bad is that if you tell people that things are terrible, they will believe you!! People are going to believe what they hear on the news. They're going to hear about the doom and gloom, and then what? Then they stop spending money. And that only makes things worse.

So why don't we try this: stop talking about it for a while. Let the markets do what they will, but leave the media out of it. If people really need to know what the market is doing, they can find out without hearing it on the evening news. Stop editorializing about it and making predictions you can't substantiate. Stop starting every single morning with bad news... or rumors of bad news as the case may be. Just stop it. All you're doing is feeding the frenzy and the fear... making people think things are dire when the reality is maybe things are okay for most of us.

I do think that the presidential candidates need to be able to answer for how they will help the economic situation. That's going to be part of their job, if elected. But it's not the only part of the job. There are many other things at stake here. The economy just happens to be the "crisis of the moment" - but sooner or later something else will replace it. Something will be more important, more devastating, or more interesting. And we'll forget all about the current thing and look toward our leaders for help and hope regarding the next thing.

I just hope that we can all keep things in perspective. Hold on and know that this is going to pass, and when it does we'll all still be living our day-to-day lives just like we are now.