 It's a horrible thing, but you certainly learn a lot from the process. River came up over the road for quite some time. We had eight inches on the main floor of our house. The north wall and the south wall were off and it looked like a dollhouse. The water level on the main floor had reached about two and a half to three feet. Do we walk away from the house? Can we afford to even rebuild? View what's in front of you in the case of a marathon, not a sprint. The University of Minnesota Extension and North Dakota State University Extension Service have developed Recovery After Disaster, the family financial toolkit to assist in financial recovery from disaster. The toolkit is free and available at this website. These tools will help you think through the situation that you're in to establish priorities and decide what needs to be done and help you to act with purpose in moving forward after the disaster. We look differently at our finances than we ever used to. This was home and territory for us and for everyone in the Valley to basically figure out what can we afford to do. Financially recovering after a disaster is like putting together a picture puzzle. First, you must identify the puzzle pieces of your current or post-disaster financial picture. The more pieces you identify, the easier it is to find the next pieces. The more you know about your current financial situation, the easier it will be to figure out what you need as you work toward financial recovery. At some point you do have to say, okay, here's what our budget is and here's what we can afford and if taking out all those loans takes you outside of what you can afford, you're going to have to choose some other options. Knowing your net worth is great in terms of just kind of a snapshot of your financial health and it's another great thing to just kind of track over time. There may be low interest loans available to disaster survivors. That's a great thing, but if I can't afford the payment I may end up losing my house anyway. Knowing the big picture of your financial situation will help you make the best decisions for your situation and possibly speed your recovery from disaster. If we can make it look good on paper, we have a chance to make it look in reality. If we can't make it look good on paper, there's no way that we're going to magically make it look in reality. There are people out there who are ready and willing to help you make those decisions and to make the right decisions and to make sure you're going to be taken care of as you go forward in this. It is important to recognize that your life will never be exactly the same as it was. What do you want your new reality to look like? You made smart decisions hopefully before the flood. Now you've got to make smart decisions again. These decisions may be a little different, but you've just got to, you know, obviously be smart with your finances.