Five personal finance highlights from around the Web:

• FICO, the company that provides the nation's leading credit score, reveals how many points a consumer's credit rating will drop as a result of specific events. LIz Pulliam Weston sheds light on the impact of maxing out a card or making a late payment. [MSN Money]

• Will the McMansion buyers of the future want to live without theater roooms and butler's pantries? Luxury home builders think so. [The Wall Street Journal]

• '"I want to be rich" is not real a goal. And good financial planning requires clear, measurable goals. [The Boston Globe]

• Buffett: Investment opportunity is greater in the United States than abroad. The Oracle thinks the worst of the financial panic is behind us. [Reuters]

• Temporary conforming loan limits won't expire this year. The Federal Housing Finance Authority will extend the limit of $417,000 (up to $729,750 in high-cost areas) through 2010. [Washington Business Journal]

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This fall, your children can watch Warren Buffett, America's greatest investor, imparting his wisdom online from AOL. But the Oracle of Omaha might look a little different that you remember him — he'll be appearing as a cartoon.

The online animated series, called "Secret Millionaire's Club," will feature Buffett mentoring a group of children as they try to turn the Omaha Candy Company into a successful business. In an interview with CNNMoney.com's Poppy Harlow, Buffett talked about how everyone's financial habits are learned early, and how he wanted to teach kids good habits early. "It's just as easy to pick up good habits as bad habits, but you have to be exposed to them," said Buffett. "And what better way than to tell them through stories that entertain them at the same time?"

He has enough nuggets from his letters and speeches to fill at least ten episodes: "Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction." "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." "Our favorite holding period is forever." "When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

You can watch a sneak peek of the AOL program online. (AOL is majority-owned by Money's parent, Time Warner.)

While Buffett definitely is sending the right message, the title of the series, unfortunately, sends the wrong one. "Secret Millionaire's Club" sounds as greed-driven as a sequel to "Liar's Poker." Selling success as a exclusive club conjures up memories of bankers speaking in an arcane language of credit-default swaps and mortgage-backed securities that the rest of us didn't understand. Why does Buffett's approach to good money habits have to be presented as a secret? Although Buffett is a master at investing, he's the antithesis of the Wall Street Master of the Universe with a secret formula — you know, the kind that blows up the economy in the end.

Buffett's always been noted as a champion of philanthropy, and I'm curious to see how much that aspect of his life will be present in the show. (His $37 billion donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is still thought to be the largest charitable contribution ever.) For those who do make it to the top, he has this advice: "If you're in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent."

Wouldn't it be more fitting with Mr. Buffett's philosophy and the current needs of this country if the show were named "The Not-Secret Long-Term, Patient, Slow-But-Steady-Growing, Don't-Buy-It-Unless-You-Can-Afford-It, Common-Sense Club?"

Doesn't really have the same ring to it, does it?

On Thursday morning, Warren Buffett said that a second stimulus package to help the economy might be called for. I'm not going to go into all the pros and cons of a second stimulus (you can read all about that here). But the metaphor that he used to break down the idea on Good Morning America was a little…how should we say it…odd. Buffett said, "Our first stimulus bill, it seemed to me, was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra and having also a bunch of candy mixed in as everybody was putting it into their own constituencies. It doesn’t have quite the wallop." (Credit to The Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog for picking this up.)

Viva Buffett!

In addition to Buffett's Viagra analogy, President Obama has fumbled over the definition of price/earnings ratios (fast-forward to about 1:50 into this clip):

And Treasury Secretary Geithner dumbed down his response to questions about the safety of the U.S. dollar and Treasury investments so much, that his audience of Chinese students broke out laughing:

I don't envy these guys. Trying to boil down an extremely complicated situation into a TV news bite is impossible. But I wonder what the Cialis folks think about Viagra getting all the attention?

A nugget of wisdom that Warren Buffett has passed along more than once to Berkshire Hathaway investors is this: "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. " What the oracular Omahan seems to have meant by this is that you don't really know or appreciate the risks that companies are taking until they are tested by adverse conditions–a corollary to the saying that everyone looks like a genius in a bull market. Buffett  used the line a year ago, for example, in reference to the follies of large financial institutions exposed by falling home prices.

While the tide-going-out phenomenon clearly applies to companies, it is relevant to personal finances as well. In a booming market and a booming economy, we don't have to worry so much about our debt, our obligations and our expenses and our safety net. We don't have to worry so much about where that last penny goes, because there are a lot more pennies and dollars on the way. But when times get tough, we discover out that we are the ones swimming naked: Gosh, I guess I shouldn't have tilted my portfolio so much toward stocks. You know, I'm spending a lot of money each month on my health club membership, and I hardly ever go. And, hmm, is that all the cash I have on hand? I guess I'm living closer to the edge than I thought.

So, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, what have you learned about your own bathing suit,  or lack thereof? What were the major risks you were taking with your personal finances, and did you even realize it at the time?  I'm curious to know what you've discovered as the tide has fallen.