Americans Hang on After Recession Claims Wealth Looking back, the financial lives many Americans enjoyed until just a few years ago can seem like a mirage. On a suburban cul-de-sac northwest of Atlanta, Michael and Patricia Jackson are struggling to keep a house worth $100,000 less than they owe. In a small town in West Virginia, Michael Bobic, who last year lost his job as a college professor, sells Star Trek collectibles on eBay to get by. Their voices and those of many others tell the story of a country that, for all the economic turmoil of the past few years, continues to believe things will get better. But until it does, families are trying to hang on to what they've got left. The Great Recession claimed nearly 40 percent of Americans' wealth, the Federal Reserve reported last week. The new figures, showing Americans' net worth has plunged back to what it was in 1992, left economists shuddering while sharpening attention on the pocketbook issues at the center of the presidential campaign. But for families across the country, the report, tracking the period from 2007 to 2010, confirms what they already felt in their gut and saw in their checkbooks. It is one more reminder that they're not alone. ADVANCE FOR USE SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 2012 AND THEREAFTER - In this Thursday, June 14, 2012 photo, Mike Lamm talks with his wife Tracey in the showroom of his jewelry shop in Mediapolis, Iowa. These days, people aren't buying much jewelry. What saves him is his ability to repair watches and make rings. There's still enough call for that kind of work in the small town in rural southeastern Iowa. When the government reported that the Great Recession claimed nearly 40 percent of Americans' wealth, the figure alarmed economists. But for families across the country, the numbers merely confirm that they are not alone. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) Close Most of the wealth was lost to the mortgage crisis and the drop in home values, wiping out equity many families counted on. But incomes and stock-based retirement accounts fell, too. In the 18 months since the Fed completed its survey, home prices have continued to fall in many cities, while stocks rose and then fell back to nearly the same level. "There's nothing in this report that makes me feel good," says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and an economic official in the Clinton administration. Bubble-inflated housing wealth was a fiction whose end should have been expected, she said, but the drop in incomes is especially troubling, because it gives people even less flexibility and confidence to save for the future. There are signs of improvement, but I think that everybody is scared. It's not just plummeting wealth affecting Americans' financial psyche. Incomes have been stagnating for years. But until the bubble burst, lenders and credit card companies gave consumers freedom to borrow and spend. No more. Americans "were told they were much wealthier than they really were and they believed it," says Robert Manning, author of the book "Credit Card Nation" and an expert on consumer finance. Now they're kind of hearing they're a lot less wealthy then they believed - and they're in denial. In New York, Michael and Patricia Jackson shared a bedroom made from a walled-in front porch, in a house cut into three cramped apartments. Then, on a visit to Georgia in 2000, they drove past spacious new homes and lawns in subdivisions promising affordability, and they began to dream. By the time they moved in to their brick-face colonial in Marietta four years later, even bigger dreams seemed within reach. The house in the new Hampton Chase neighborhood cost a little more than $200,000 and values were rising fast.