Stick with your financial diet

If there's one thing to thank this miserable recession for, it's that a lot of us are now much more thoughtful about our finances than we used to be. These days, Americans are padding their emergency funds, trimming expenses, and reducing risk in their portfolios.

Just one problem: With the worst of the recession seemingly over, history suggests that many of us will soon revert to boom-time bad habits. People grow overly optimistic about their circumstances in periods of economic growth, says Meir Statman, a behavioral finance expert at Santa Clara University.