Tom, you should take some credit yourself. Many times it is the intangiables that swing things our way. I too am also blessed with a good wife incidentally.
We also were very fortunate to have four daughters that grew up pretty well. Not perfect mind you but far better adjusted than the mean average both emotionally and intellectually. I should ask the wife sometime if they are really mine as well. That way I can have my head served up for dinner.
I have always had more than one iron in the fire. Even today possibly from habit at age 67 I still do it. Call it fall back positions perhaps.
I also try to keep it balanced so if one iron gets cold another is hot enough already to easily meet current needs. The reserve ones keep piling up and could employ many people or my time for the next hundred years.
I do not really know how people develop enough self confidence. In my mind it is a critical component to well being. . At the same time perhaps a lot of people did not either have the opportunities or were distracted too much from aquiring the essentials of life to develop it. One small item can rotate a persons life. The ability to see what others cannot percieve sometimes is a blessing and a curse.
I also see life as a bit of a gamble. You have to at times engage risk. Especially when young. The secret perhaps is adaquatly and accuratly evaluating it before engaging. Or just possesing enough awareness to structure it better your self.
If the engagement of risk is forced on you then it may be just coincidence on how it works out. Then the factor of the unknown enters the picture sometimes as well. Not a pleasant senario to travel through. That journey can be a major learning experience or be a fear development event. Much depends on your perception.
One thing that has not been mentioned with unemployment that is unexpected or prolonged is the depressing factor. Actually an interm clinical depression type syndrome can develop that further inhibits a persons chances of gaining employment. Basically the person may start to feel almost worthless for example. This in my opinion is quite understandable. We are fundementally emotional creatures.
This area can leave very long lasting mental shadows. For example my mother and father lived through the great depression. They were semi scarred by the event to some extent permanently.
A lot of members on site have possibly heard relatives for example talk about it at one time or another. For many the unemployment lasted a very long time and changed hopes and life for perhaps millions of people. Our expected system at that time just took a very long nosedive. This is one reason that regardless of cause I take longer periods of unemployment as a serious social issue.
I do not think one can develop a clear picture of how it impacts an individual really without being there yourself. One can say for example I am 200k underwater on my house. I would not personally experience the feelings that senario develops in the individual. Nor could I properly visualise them.
Once again it is a situation you have to be exposed to yourself to appreciate the true effects in my opinion. I suspect for example either a rise in divorce rates attribuatable to this or a reduction. It is too early to tell as people are waiting for a value recovery and how much percentagewise wise it will be.
It may for example help to sit down with paper and pen. List true replacement costs for the house ignoring the currrent markets evaluation. Theoretically it should at least recover to true current replacement value. supply and demand should enable that after awhile.
If one just paid the market price during a peak that really had no relationship to true value there will be difficulty. For example if I can have a builder put up a simular new house for say 200k today in your area and you paid 350k for your property there is no true recovery.
Sure ultimatly you will see 350 again but not in todays dollars. The reality then is you have lost 150k in real wealth long term. I understand the forces that enabled it. In a way it has the scope of the 1929 crash but in a normally more secure area. The best hope currently is some form of recovery adaquate enough to reabsorb the unemployed.