The economy is now officially in a recession.  It finally happened.  It feels like a self fullfilling prophecy to me, but we'll truly never know how that tail wags.  The news on the personal front has shifted a bit from retirement and stock holdings to layoffs.  I've had two friends lose jobs on Friday and a few more that are uneasy.  The thing to remember is that your personal economy can crash very quickly and without warning.  Reflecting back to my windfall allocation discussion regarding buying stock vs. paying down the mortgage, this is a great example of where folks could do right by themselves to pay off the house.  If you live within your means as it is, you could probably come close to making ends meet bagging groceries if you had no debt to pay (house, car, all paid off, no stupid credit card debt).  If you can't, that should be your goal.

While it is important to keep an eye on the macro, you can't do much about economic cycles.  The president and congress cannot do much about it either (even though they like to tell you they can, or at least how the other guy messed it all up).  However, you can do a ton for your personal economy.

All of the items I blog about ... trading systems, option plays, ETF and even individual stock buys should be considered after your financial house is clean.  I take it for granted that my readers are probably well aware of this, but I think it bears the occassional repeat just in case you missed it.