There are SO MANY things that could mess up the "fake peace" we are currently living in.
Peak Oil (the world becoming unable to pump enough oil to meet demand), a stock market crash, the Housing Bubble (which is already bursting), any of the above combined with massive (unprecedented) personal debt -- and unprecedented mortgage debt. Even the USA is now 9 trillion in debt instead of 6 trillion (just 4 years ago), thanks to Bush and the War on Terror.
So all of this is unprecedented. There have been housing crashes before, stock market crashes, etc. but NEVER of the scale we're about to see. Too many things are coming together (as they call it, "a perfect storm").
Then there's North Korea, Russia getting very antagonistic to the US (as a reaction to the USA getting VERY high and mighty toward them...), China working with Russia to combat US world dominance, Iran, Israel itching for a huge mideast war, etc. The USA is getting VERY proud and trying to dominate the whole world. That alone will spark SOME country to fight against us, and they'll be justified! (as in, they could do so if they were a good Catholic nation)
Any one of those things could mess up our comfortable suburban lives VERY EASILY.
Whichever "event" starts affecting the common man first, SOMETHING is going to make life 1 or 2 years from now VERY, VERY different from life today.
The chances of "life as usual" continuing for more than a few months are almost zilch.
So things like "saving for retirement like Grandpa and Grandma did", etc. seem quite out of place. We need to face the reality of our current situation.
In Christ,
Matthew