My freelance business is booming. I have more work than I can do. I think a lot of the clients I work for are more eager to hire a freelancer than consider another employee. I have the benefit that my husband has a job with health insurance, which allows me to do this. I don't know if this will last, but at the moment it's great.

Think about it. That flatscreen TV in your local Best Buy was manufactured and shipped on last year's prices. It's inventory now, and Best Buy doesn't want it sitting around. Hence the low price.

But you can bet that next year's flatscreen TV will be a lot more, with the increased cost of plastics, silicon, and all the other bits that make up a flatscreen, as well as increased shipping costs.

So I think the low prices we're seeing now on the goods Andrew mentioned (clothes, toys, consumer electronics) are an anomoly that will disappear as soon as this current inventory does.

I agree with Rownya. I don't agree with how they're calculating these numbers.

Toys, consumer electronics, furniture, most clothes I can do without. Hell, I could probably clothe most of an African village out of what I could toss out of my closet. If I really need a piece of furniture, I can go to Salvation Army. Gas and food? Haven't figured a way around that yet. Of course we all know we don't NEED consumer electronics. Our kids don't NEED toys. Just ask anyone who lived through or just after the Great Depression.

Who cares if all those other things are dropping, if no one is buying them? The money is going in the tank and on the table, and paying off the credit card bills.

Always perennnially underfunded... with fleets of diesel-fueled buses. How much of our local school budgets are going into diesel tanks instead of to teacher salaries, books, etc.?

I live two blocks from a seriously whacked piece of suburban (non) infrastructure... a 35 mph major arterial road with no light or crosswalk, and my kids' school on the other side. All the kids on my side of the road take the bus, because it's too dangerous to walk. The journey is less than half a mile. But no one walks or bikes because they can't. Especially not children in morning rush traffic.

I'd bet I'm not the only suburbanite looking at poorly planned neighborhoods, wondering "What were they thinking?"

How long before our messed-up lack of suburban planning catches up with fuel costs? This would mean two different public agencies (the county and the school district) would have to TALK to each other, and realize that they have to work together. No dice so far. County says no, they can't build a traffic light, it's a low priority. School district says no, they can't pay for traffic improvements, only buses.

Some day, maybe when my kids are in high school and diesel is $9/gallon, kids in my neighborhood will be able to walk to school for free instead of taking a diesel-fueled bus.

Call one today. They know the skinny in your area on what services are available, what they cost, how to get them, how to work the system. That's what they do. There are probably some solutions to this problem that you haven't even thought of. You can get there.

I also like the suggestion of the Unitarian Universalist church. A fabulous place even for athiests and agnostics looking for community. Go.

Be well. Good luck.

... that's nearing 20 years old.

If it wasn't so hard to do for insurance reasons, I'd love to designate it as a "neighborhood pickup" that everyone could share. Sort of like "Flexcar" only "Flexpickup."

Most of my neighbors have the occasional need to haul fenceposts, dirt, gravel, rocks, lumber, and so on. But of course we don't need a pickup for everyday use and commuting. But it's so darn handy, we don't want to give it up.

I don't want to do the paperwork/administration on a neighborhood "Flexpickup." But if someone else would, I'd probably donate mine. It runs, it's great, it's terribly useful about once a month.

Make sure you use it wisely.

I agree with some of the posters who said to put it away somewhere safe from yourselves.

Are you planning on kids ever? If it were me, and I were 27, I'd put most of it safely away, buy a backpack, put only the most important stuff in storage, and head off into the Wild Blue Yonder. Go everywhere in the world that I wanted. Send hilarious emails of your travels to your friends. Not the five-star travels, the "I fell off a camel and got really sick in Egypt but it was a blast" travels. If you ever want kids, you can't do this again. By the time you're free again, you'll be too old to do the things you can when you're 27.

For life when you return? Three million isn't that much. It doesn't mean you don't have to work again. It means you'll have a paid-for house, and a fully-funded retirement account. A massive leg-up in life that most of us don't have. It means you'll be able to be choosy about your work, and only do what interests you or what your passions take you to. You may not have to work full-time. But you will have to work or you'll end up broke when you're 45, wondering where the hell it all went.

Don't go there.