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It seemed like the perfect time to follow my dreams. My husband had been promoted, I was making good full-time money at my part-time job, our savings were at record highs, the house was nearly paid for, the economy was booming here in Vegas.

So there was absolutely no reason in the world why I wouldn’t choose this point to dedicate myself full-time to my lifelong dream of making handmade jewelry and other crafts, and selling them locally and on the Internet (still a fairly new thing to me, and probably to much of the rest of the world, at the time).

The first year or so was a bit rocky (I second-guessed myself a lot, and the savings took a little bit of a hit), but things started to pick up a bit once I created my eBay store and word started getting around. A dip in interest rates let us save even more via home refinancing. And by that time, the kids were out of school and (for the most part) paying their own way.

Well, I barely had time to enjoy it before the first few rumblings of economic disaster started coming. We didn’t feel it much at first, and I’ll admit that I thought it would probably blow over like so many of the ‘financial outlooks’ that have come and gone.

Suddenly, our supposedly conservative and airtight investment portfolio disintegrated, rendering our savings and retirement funds worth less than they’d been ten years ago. Our house lost so much value that we found ourselves seriously considering letting the bank foreclose — it made almost as much financial sense as continuing to pay the mortgage.