Reply #20: Well, my family has a lot of safety nets.

[Brickbat]

We have excellent health insurance, and I mean excellent. We have a solid family who can help out in so many ways -- in person, with money, with loving kindness. We live in a low-crime area.

It's true; I could drive to the grocery store this afternoon and be horribly injured in a terrible traffic accident. It would take an unlikely amount of things like that happening for things not to be "OK" for my kids.

Part of the reason I feel this way is that we went through a devastating period of unemployment from 2001-2005, and it meant the end of some of our dreams. If you could go back to 2003 and tell me then where I would be now, it would feel unimaginable.

We work hard and we are lucky. I know many people are not. I try to teach my kids that in this "new normal" things can change on the instant, and it's important to shore up yourself and then help others.