At what point will the financial crisis be bad for me?

So lately there doesn't seem to be anything on the news except this and that expert doing his best Chicken Little impression with regard to the US economy. When all of this started I shrugged it off. I was still under the impression that folks like me don't have to worry until it is officially a recession and I thought we still had a few months before that label can be applied. Well, to my surprise we had less time that I thought and they recently deemed these trying times an official recession. Now we're constantly being reminded of how bad it's going to get and how everyone is going to have to tighten their belts. So why haven't I?

I've been going back and forth a bit between viewing myself as within a protective bubble and simply viewing recessions as things that only target specific segments of the economy. I'm finally realizing that it's essentially the fact that I'm working in DC that I'm not feeling it. Funny that this is where it's discussed most, and yet the place where it's probably experienced least. Around here everyone works for the government. Well, unless we decide to shut down the government when times get tight, few of us within the Beltway are going to have to feel it as intimately as, say, Detroit.

I know it's rotten of me to think of things in these terms, but as one who is about to get his first real job, this recession couldn't have come at a better time. Just today Bernanke announced that the federal lending rate would be cut to between 0.25% and 0.0% and will likely stay there for a while. Given my desire to buy my first starter house in the next few years, things are going swimmingly!

On top of all this, gas prices are about 60% of what they were when I drove cross county this summer. I'm saving $30 every week just on gas. I'm sure I'm jinxing myself for writing all of this, but I'd imagine that the recession was going come around to bite me in the rump sooner or later no matter what I blog about.