Dear Mrs. Madoff:

I understand that with your husband in jail for the rest of his life and you losing claim to millions of dollars worth of real estate and other assets in the bargain, you are being left with only $2.5 million to your name. That gives you an income of about $125,000 a year.

Keep this in mind: 90% of Americans don't make anywhere near this. But for two-income professional couples on either coast, this represents a middle class income.

So allow me to give you some general tips on how to live like the middle class, although, as the character in Casablanca says, I don't know why because it can not possibly benefit me.

First thing's first, I'd find your AARP card and join up. Lots of discounts for you there. And you're gonna need them, lady.

Housing: You might have trouble finding affordable housing. This is sure to surprise you, having up until recently enjoyed lavish homes in half a dozen locations without a thought over how they were paid for. But, and I'm sorry to tell you this, your yearly nut won't qualify you for any home anywhere you'd be interested in living. The average cost of a home in Beverly Hills is $1.9 million. While in Manhattan the average cost is $1.4 million. It's looking like nobody in town is going to rent you anything there, anyway.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's first family of personal finance, answer your questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

This economic crisis is causing more and more of us to postpone our retirement, scale back our retirement dreams or worry about outliving our money. Tapping into those fears, companies are promoting a reverse mortgage as the answer. Watch today's video to learn whether a reverse mortgage is right for you, and get a few warnings about the potential risks.

Dear Ken and Daria,

I'm wondering if a reverse mortgage is a good deal. Thanks!

--Bill

Don't give up your retirement dreams! Get more retirement tips at Dolans.com.

On the eve of my friend Bill Frank's 80th birthday, his wife Winnie announced that if Bill made the decision to retire she would be forced -- after 60 years of wedded bliss -- to pack up and move in with her sister in Indiana.

I used to think Bill and Winnie were unique. But now as my husband and I approach retirement and the crabby-old-goat stage ourselves, it's clear that arguing over what comes next is hard to avoid.

A survey by Fidelity Investments featured in this USAToday.com story, concludes that 80% of couples don't see eye to eye on retirement.

Retirees from Molson Brewing Company in Canada are learning that their retirement benefits are being cut and the worst news is that they can't even cry in their beers about the change.

Molson will begin phasing out the $1 million a year free beer program for retirees over the next five years as well as cutting back its free beer program for current employees, lowering their take from 72 dozen bottles a year to 52 dozen a year.

The move was met with anger by retirees who feel shortchanged. One, quoted by the Toronto Star, feels that Molson is simply using the economy to cut benefits without any actual need to do so. Unions representing the retirees have already filed grievances over the sobering change in pension benefits.

The allegations may have some merit as Molson-Coors, the parent company of Molson, has had a blockbuster year, with quarterly earnings up 51% compared to a year ago.

Not sure how to plan for the future? WalletPop talks with Bryan Link, CEO and co-founder of free online financial planning and advice website SimpliFi.net, about strategies in today's tough economy. Among some of his recommendations, build up a liquid emergency fund and pay off debt from credit cards and an auto loan before putting money aside for investment.

To get more tips and learn more about SimpliFi.net's new free service for middle income users, check out Walletpop Radio on BlogTalk Radio:

I'm not a big fan of job fairs, mainly because they're too general and most of the employers are looking for cheap, entry-level workers.

But a recent job fair in Sun City, Ariz., caught my eye because it allowed only job applicants 55 and older inside. And better yet, many of the employers at the job fair were looking for workers in that exact population, according to an ABC15.com story.

Here's the ABC15 news clip of the event:

Students are worrying about more than just their grades according to a new study by Edison Media Research.

Nearly one in five polled students reported that at least one parent had lost a job in the past year. Many young people are taking refuge in graduate school, buying time until the economy improves even as they amass more debt from student loans. Some of the findings in the study:

• 22% of students said they worry a lot about having enough cash to get through a typical week at school.
• One third of students said they really worry about the finances of their parents.
• Nearly one in five changed plans this year and decided to attend graduate or professional school because an undergraduate degree might not be enough to get them a job.
• 11% of those whose parents lost a job veered away from grad school because they could not afford it.

I don't want to sound like I'm short on empathy, but what's new? As long as I remember, college students have had financial problems. Many work multiple jobs and live in slum housing just to get through college. Both of my kids are in college and have to live very frugally to make it.

Like most parents, I wish we could help them more. But you know what? This is the way the world really works. In the real world, the economy goes up and down and people have to work harder to make a living. I think there are some learning experiences in this recession where kids learn there still isn't a free lunch.

Barbara Bartlein is the People Pro. For her FREE e-mail newsletter, please visit: The People Pro.

Here's an interesting question to ponder: If you were paid $35 an hour, and could work as many or few hours per week as you wished, how many hours a week would you work?

Most of us have spent our lives working under the standard employment system; 40 hours a week for a set salary or hourly wage. For years, I spent what I made, regardless of how much or little my 40 hours brought in, all the while chaffing at the thought my life was passing me by.

Recently, though, I've had the chance to look at income in a different way, and found it very enlightening. This exercise might be worthwhile for you, too. If you were paid $35 per hour to do a job you didn't hate and could work as many or as few hours a week as you wished, how many hours would you work?

Ah, Sunday morning! It's nearly upon us again. The languid wake-up. The mocha java. The nova and cream cheese. The tangy mimosa. The New York Times. The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Magazine's Money Issue. The glance at the table of contents. The flipping ahead. The credit and credit cards. The ballooning debt. The inevitable bankruptcy. The creeping dread. The moist paranoia. The undulating queasiness. The pushing the bagel aside. The not finishing the mimosa. The crawling back into bed. The curling into fetal position. The whimpering and weeping. The desperate wishing that it were All a Bad Dream. Ah, Sunday morning!

If you're a Times reader, get ready for a page-turning, stomach-churning weekend. The Money Issue -- given everything, the editors might as well have called it the Credit Issue -- taps into our nightmares of financial nuclear winter, on a wide level and a personal one too. The paper's economics reporter Edmund L. Andrews provides a personal tale of his experience of buying a house outside Washington, in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was supposed to know better, he says -- he was, after all, reporting on the subprime mortgage crisis -- and yet he jumped in anyway, enchanted by the lure of easy homeownership and easier money. (Andrews' article, tellingly, excerpts his forthcoming memoir, Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown.)

You might expect a few mistakes -- and a little fraud -- to crop up in the 52 million stimulus checks that the government has sent out. But a new report from Fox News may have people gasping: Millions of dollars in stimulus checks may have been sent out to between 8,000 and 10,000 dead people.

The Social Security Administration says that this could have happened because they had no record of these people's deaths, but even more curious, Fox News said that at least one of them never even collected Social Security benefits.

That person was a U.S. citizen but left for Italy in 1933 and only returned to the U.S. for a seven-month visit in 1969. Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream, New York told Fox she was expecting a check but didn't get one. Instead a check was sent to her husband, Romolo Romonini who died in Italy 34 years ago.

This recession has cost many older workers their jobs. However, according to a study just released by the American Association of Retired People (AARP), the long-term consequences for those people might be positive.

The 14-year study found that a huge 91% of respondents who changed jobs at the age of 50 or later reported they were happy with their new jobs.

Ironically, many of these new jobs lack many of what we usually consider the attributes of a top-notch job. They don't pay as well, don't include bountiful benefits, including pensions, and don't require total 24/7 dedication. They are, however, considerably less stressful. 36% of those surveyed consider their new job stressful, vs. 65% in their previous jobs.

Starting Thursday, millions of grandparents and retirees will see a $250 raise to their usual Social Security funds. The months long wait for stimulus payments for seniors, as part of the stimulus bill passed February, is now over, CNN reports. Nearly 55 million seniors and retirees will receive the $250 one-time payment between now and June 4, 2009. Most of the checks have been sent out this week. Payment will either be received as a separate check, in addition to Social Security payments, or appear in accounts as a direct deposit.

I'm a big Anna Quindlen fan, and have enjoyed her columns in Newsweek for the past nine years. In the current issue, however, I was bummed to read that she is quitting that gig. I was more bummed, however, by her reasoning. She feels that we boomers are clogging up the working world and need to get out of the way to make room for the next generation.

I feel her reasoning is flawed in several ways. First is her assumption that the work/retirement progression of our parents is the proper road map for the boomer generation; graduate from college, work 40 years, retire for 15 and die.

I just don't think this is valid. Medical advancements will keep the boomer generation healthier later in life, and the nature of our work is considerably less demanding than that of many of our parents. There is no physical need for many of us to retire at 62 if we don't so choose. And people leaving college today could well live to be 100 or more. With a work career of 70 or 80 years ahead, what's the rush?

After I finish writing this blog posting, I'm going to pick up my mom at the airport. She's coming back after five weeks of taking care of her 92-year-old father in a nursing home in in his native Puerto Rico, 3,000 miles away from where Mom lives now.

He had entered the home in January and was adapting fine, so much that we three were going to take a Caribbean cruise together last month. But a week before departure, my mom got a 3 a.m. call from the nursing home -- blood was found in Grandpa's urine. My mom had to pay $900 for an earlier flight and when she arrived, she found a host of problems -- he had deep-vein thrombosis from lying in bed too much, the nursing-home care was on the lax side (the blood came from catheters inserted improperly, and when his daily dose of aspirin ran out, no one bothered to replenish it ), and he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.