What were you thinking in the fall of 2008?

[Cheryl C.]

I felt some amount of fear/panic. I'm old enough to have been around for "black Monday" in the later 80's. Good thing I had no money in the Market then as I witnessed a number of people go bankrupt on margin calls. The Fall/Winter of 2008 was a scary time. We (half-heartedly) joked with friends about "plan B" - going to our farm 60 miles away and living off the land. Were you really concerned and did this change/alter your financial planning?

[Ryan B.]

I would probably have felt a lot more worried about the situation except that events from the prior few months really changed my perspective on life.

My wife had spent about three months in the hospital battling an illness that nearly took her and our unborn child. She had to have a surgery on her abdomen and the specialists did not expect our child to live through it. They did an ultra sound so that we would have at least known the sex of our child. They said it was a boy and we both started crying because he would have completed our family perfectly going along with our 17 month old daughter.

After the surgery they were unable to hear his heartbeat through all the bandages, so we would have to wait until the next morning before we knew anything. That was the longest night of my life. The next morning all the doctors and nurses waited around after their shifts and were as happy as us when they found a heartbeat. Three days later my wife became septic and they gave us the bad news that they would have to reopen her to figure out what was wrong. The doctors would not even look me in the eyes when I asked about the danger of going back in again.

A miracle happened and they both pulled through. After recovering for a couple months my wife had complications and our son was born two months premature. I spent every night after work going to the NICU at the childrens hospital to see our son in his incubator. After a little over a month he was able to come home. He is now your average hell on wheels little boy.

Sorry for the long post, but like I said, after that I stopped worrying about a lot of things in life. I just figured no matter what, the sun was still gonna come up tomorrow so it was a good day.