• Income – $51,000 – $123,000 for a four-person, two-parent family.
• Housing – Home is worth $231,000.
• Home size – 2,300 square feet.
• Medical expenses – $5,100 a year with employer-provided health insurance
• Cars – Spends $12,400 on two cars.
• College savings – $4,100 a year
• Vacations – Spends $3,000 for a week-long vacation
• Retirement – Saves 3.2% of income
• Daily spending – $14,200 a year
• Work – Two parents working working 3,747 hours
• Education – High school diploma plus two years of college
• Household net worth – $84,000
• Debt – 18% of disposable income

Falling income and reduced buying power means that the family needs to cope with the rising expenses. It might be selling the house or the car but adjustments need to be made.

Savings and assets are now devalued. With the market flat, stocks and other such investments aren’t really offering any real value for the long term.

Raising a child is a millionaire’s job. From the moment of conception to the kid’s college graduation, a child is probably a person’s biggest expense in a lifetime.

With education costs sky-high and rising, families are now deliberating whether the can actually send their kid to college. And even at that, a college degree isn’t exactly a clear guarantee of future success in the job market.

And in the near future when health care becomes an issue thanks to the natural process of ageing, middle class Americans would need a fortune to cope with these expenses.

Thanks to the recession, many middle class Americans are now suffering from unemployment and reduced income. While this definitely affects the short term, long term effects can even spill over to their children’s lives.

Opportunities created by parents’ income do are largely contributory to kids’ future success. Given parents’ financial situations today, they are not likely able to help out their kids.

The money needed for college becomes hard to raise. Loans need to be taken and that even makes prospects worse for kids since these leaves them with thousands of dollar in debt even before earning their first pay check.

According to WSJ, those with college degrees generally fare better than their high school grad counterparts. Unemployment is lower and incomes are definitely higher for college graduates.

In addition, when parents used to help out kids pursue the American dream by giving them funding for start up capitals and such, parents of today won’t just have the luxury to help kids out.

CNN offers us a few things that could go wrong in 2010.

For starters, analysts think that while the latter half of 2009 offered a very positive ending to an otherwise tragic year for stocks, 2010 might not offer that much of gains for investors.

The economic growth’s sustainability is still questionable. Joblessness is still abound. The housing market is still weak. The dollar is struggling.

These indicators lead some experts to think that the economy might dip into another recession again after a short period of growth.

While there’s no reason to go about 2010 thinking that it’ll be a down year, those expecting that 2010 will be the great year of a spectacular recovery might be disappointed. Caution is always key.

Bernanke’s current term will be up in January and President Obama nominated him for another four-year term. The vote now goes to the whole Senate. It does look like he’s going to get it.

Many would consider Bernanke’s leadership as pivotal in preventing a toal economic crash – what could have been another Great Depression. Though critics would also point out that the housing bubble burst could’ve been prevented and that he has gone overboard in bailing out companies.

Bernanke’s recently been hailed by Time magazine as its Person of the Year.