I have been living to my credit limit for the majority of my working life. I have gone from being a private in the military earning a very little amount and struggling to support my family to my existing role as solution architect for a major global outsourcing business where I earn a decent salary and a very decent 15 to 20% annual bonus and even bigger bonuses for a successful sale (one or two a year). The bottom line line is that come the end of the month I still have roughly the same amount of cash in the bank now as when I was supporting my young family as a junior soldier.
The only differences between then and now is that my credit limit has dictated the home I live in, the car I drive, the size of TV, the holidays I take, meals out etc etc....
Take my car, in 1990 I drove a renault 21 estate that was on its last legs. I now replace my BMW 5 series every two years. For holidays, in 1990 I used to camp for two weeks in the summer in west Cork or Kerry and I now visit Dubai or the Caribbean for 10 days every February as well as decent holiday in the summer in a nice location so no Malaga, Majorca or other tacky resort. My home has gone from a one bed apartment where I slept with my soon to be wife (now ex) and our baby at the end of the bed to a swanky appartment in the city with my girlfriend and I am building my dream 4 bed home and a nice piece of land with all mod cons mostly funded by my credit limit.
I could go on but my point is you have to live life for the moment not for planning hording funds (pension, property, shares, hedge fund etc etc) for any number of senarios that may or may not happen and sit on cash that could dissapear with any number of events like a bank crash or bad exchange rate and so on.
Live life and enjouy it! You only get one shot at living so make the most of it! If the worst happens so be it but be possitive and you will continue to live.
Take care everyone, I wish you all the best during this tough period but IMO its mostly media hype that it causing this downturn and causing mostly needless worry!