Hi everybody, Susio here now. What is the goal of money? The goal of money is for you to be secure.

And there is no better way for you to be secure than having an emergency savings account.

It is essential for your financial foundation. So all of you should be participating in

the ultimate opportunity savings account at Alliant Credit Union.

Go to myalliant.com to find out more and be secure. January 25th, 2006, welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast, as well as everybody

smart enough to listen. And today is Susie's goal. So get out your Susie notebooks because

you're going to want to take notes again on this one.

So, as I told all of you, and I've told all of you over all these years, that if you have a

question or a comment, you can write in to Ask Susie Podcast, that's S-U-Z-E-Podcast at gmail.com. And I read many of the emails, as I've told you,

if your question is chosen by K-T, it's answered on the podcast. But I read a lot of them.

And recently, I got an email from a woman by the name a Maria, and she's from Texas.

I hope she's not freezing right now, but anyway, she's from Texas.

And she said the following, Susie, all the headlines say unemployment is low and the stock

market is at all time highs, but my husband's hours were cut.

Our rent is up $300 a month, and we had to put together money for groceries,

and we then had to put them on a credit card.

Are we doing something wrong?

And I wrote her back, and I said, no, Maria, you are living in what I call the lower arm of the K

recovery. So the key is not to blame yourself, Maria. It's to understand the forces that are

working against you and then take back the power that you do have. And if you remember a few weeks ago,

I said to KT, she said, well, what are you going to do on Sunday? I said, oh, I'm going to teach

everybody about the difference between a V and a U and a K-shaped recovery. And she just looked at

...