Bankrate: For you personally then, given that you have a good job, how has everything going on with the economy affected you?
Deborah Norville: (Knocks on wood.) Our retirement savings are not the attractive number they were a year ago, but we have not been adversely impacted. My husband and I are very conservative. We're self-made people. I don't come from money; he doesn't come from money. He doesn't come from this country; I don't come from this part of the world. We came to New York as two single people who really didn't know anybody, and we worked really hard. We're blessed to be successful with our careers and to have the friends that we have. We didn't get involved in a lot of this funky stuff. We saved. We invested. We put it in our mutual funds. We had a few stocks that looked like they would be winners, and they were for a while. They weren't crap companies so they didn't go totally belly up. So we're fine. We were finer a year ago (laughs), but I've got all the lights burning right now. I'm not worried about paying the Con Ed(ison) bill. Not this week, anyway.
Bankrate: I'm amazed at how many people I talk to personally know someone affected by the Bernie Madoff scandal.
Deborah Norville: It's ridiculous, isn't it? I'll bet you everybody reading this story knows someone personally who has been seriously impacted, if not wiped out. I know people who your readers would recognize their names and go, "You've got to be kidding." And then, I know people who weren't the gazillionaires who were supposed to be the ones investing with Madoff. So that part of the (Madoff) story also turned out not to be true. It wasn't just for the uber-wealthy. It was for any poor schmo whose money adviser got him into that fund, and it's devastating. I know people whose lives are simply never going to be the same again, and it's so upsetting. I feel like "OK, that is so unfair," but I'm a big believer of "put it on paper." I think in a visual sense, you put it on paper and go, "What do I not have?" We're not going to go there. It's a very long list.
But what have I got? I have a lot of friends who care for me and if they had an opportunity that I'd be appropriate for, they'd come to me first. I've got my health. I need to stay active and physical so I don't lose my health. I have my family members. If they can help me, they will, and if they can't, they're praying for me. And you start making a list. That goes to (what I talk about in) my previous book, "Thank You Power," which is that when you focus on what you've got instead of wallowing -- as is so easy for us to do -- on the things you don't have anymore or never got, it actually starts a chemical process that allows you to strategize better. When you look at the benefits in your life, you feel it.
When you get an e-mail from a long lost friend telling you that life is good, it lifts you. When that has happened, you are better able to come up with solutions to your problems. So (I say) to the Madoff victims who are thinking, "Woe is me, my life is over," your life is different. You're absolutely right about that. But it ain't over until they put dirt over you and you're six feet under. So in the meantime, let's look at what you do have -- what you could call blessings in your life -- and let's focus on them.
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