[djmcmath]

I was thinking the same thing that daepp was thinking -- more financial openness, both at a personal and at a corporate (and hopefully federal) level. To some extent, the reason that we're in this mess is because of a complete lack of transparency on Wall St. Fiscal honesty is liable to lead to fiscal responsibility, which is what we desperately need on a national scale.

It also occurs to me that the more extravagant lifestyle -- where money is easy enough to blow on things like "whole life coaches" -- is largely fueled by debt. At a fundamental level, that seems irresponsible to me.

So I've had this conversation with a remarkable number of people recently (ok, like 3 different people in the last 3 months or so), where they say that they've had a paradigm shift. Instead of both parents working, maintaining a "healthy" level of debt, and living a high stress life, they've paid down their debt, shifted to a simpler life, and brought the wife home to raise the kids. Of those polled, the result is, surprisingly, more happiness and less stress.

One more story: my wife and I were looking for a house. We dropped by an open house at the local new house builder place. The house was quite nice: maybe 3600sqft total, 2 car garage, marble floors in the entryway, hardwood everywhere, a walk-in closet big enough to park my car in, full size gourmet kitchen, the works. What really blew me away was the sales-lady's attitude: "Oh, it's just the two of you? Well, you know, a place like this would make a GREAT starter home, but once you start having kids, you'll definitely want to move up into one of our larger models." Excuse me? My parents NEVER had anything this big, and they raised 3 of us with no problems.

So if this depression brings an end to that kind of stupidity, maybe there is a silver lining after all.


Dan