Which of these families most needs to plan its family commitments and related budget items?
Family 1: Wife is a bankruptcy lawyer whose business is booming; husband is an executive at a growing wind-energy company and has just received a nice raise, paid out of growing profits. The kids are grown. The couple's two Polish Lowland Sheepdogs are very healthy.
Family 2: Wife is a plant manager for a U.S.-owned automobile company, facing mandatory unpaid time off this year; husband is a travel agent who sells high-end vacation packages to school teachers, planners and other middle-income individuals and families. Son has graduated from college but cannot find a job and is living at home and working part-time at a burger place. Daughter will be a college junior next year at an institution that has had its funding cut by the state and has thus announced a 15 percent tuition increase.
