Happy New Year!

Happy 2010! As the new year is dawning, I hope that you are enjoying the first days of the new year and the new decade.

It seems like yesterday the Y2K hysteria was going on and naysayers were sure that the Apocalypse was immanent. Thankfully, they were wrong.

The 2000's started out as a decade of over indulgence and bigger is better. Coasting through the decade, everyone was trying to outdo the Joneses, and many were caught up in economically overstretching and using credit for everything from a gallon of milk, to 100% financing on housing. Hey, this was the American dream.

That bubble burst, and burst loudly in the mid-decade. Gone was the wanton spending, replaced by a panic for the future and millions of dollars lost in the now defunct real estate market. Times were bleak, so many were without jobs, and yet there was the hope that things would rebound.

By the end of 2009, frugality and stretching dollars was in vogue and people were starting to find jobs, and finally feel a little more secure. Gone was the frivolous spending that started the decade, replaced by a Depression Era sensibility of recycling, reusing, rethinking.

Hopefully, this new mindset will buoy us all through whatever plan is in store for us all. In the meantime, why don't we all sit down and make some financial resolutions for this new year along with the usual yearly goals?

Happy New Year!