I'm a University student at the time being, so I can't speak as to my own economic experiences quite yet. My parents, however, own a small restaurant in our home town and our numbers for the past several months have been abnormally low. My father keeps records of our numbers from the previous year, and they've consistently made more money each year they've owned the business. They were fine during the summer, but this winter has been particularly tight. They're currently in the process of preparing our house to sell, so they have less of a payment to worry about month-to-month. They're planning to remodel the basement of our restaurant and live downstairs there. It upsets me that people who work as hard and as many hours as they do are at the point of having to sell their home because their small business isn't faring as well as they would have hoped... They've been trying to sell the restaurant for the last three years without luck.