Almost all U.S. households make strategic investment decisions to best protect their hard-earned money.
Yet, as anyone who makes a financial game plan knows, even the most detailed, thorough outlines can fail when real life intervenes.
Just ask the thousands of Americans suffering while tornadoes and flooding continue hammering the U.S. South and Midwest regions, leaving whole towns of people homeless and jobless.
The rising Mississippi River has swept through an area that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon described as "literally the most productive part of our continent," meaning farmers have watched their only sources of income wash away in floodwaters.