Now it s official. Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) will be the 44th president of the United States. So how will it affect your finances?

Some changes could come quickly. Obama is expected to choose his White House staff soon possibly today and begin charting a course for his early days in office. Clearly, Obama has many hurdles to confront: some 47 million uninsured Americans, record-high foreclosures, high energy costs and a shrinking middle-class.

The political calculus isn t just about the presidency, of course. The Democrats have widened their majority in Congress with 56 seats in the Senate and 253 in the House. Republicans won 41 and 173 seats, respectively. That Democratic majority may be just the boost Obama needs to pass many of his key initiatives, most notably health care, says Dean Baker, co-director at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

"He's very well situated and I bet a lot of his proposals will have popular support in Congress," says Baker. "He conceivably could have some of his proposals pass before he's in office during the lame duck session. I'm sure he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will jointly decide what they can work on that fits Obama s larger agenda that President Bush would be prepared to sign before he leaves office."

Here's an overview of Obama's proposals and their likely effects on consumers, should they unfold as he outlined during the campaign.

Health Care

Under Obama's health-care proposals, private insurance will still exist, and a public system, subsidized by the government, would emerge.

Under the plan, those who have health insurance can keep their existing coverage and those who want a new health-insurance plan or those who are uninsured will be able to purchase a health-care plan through a National Health Insurance Exchange. Those who can't afford to purchase the coverage will be given a tax credit. (The Tax Policy Center expects that families with income above 400% of poverty will not receive a subsidy.) The National Health Insurance Exchange will offer a range of private insurance policies as well as a new public health plan that offers benefits similar to what members of Congress get, including preventive, maternity and mental health care.

Of course, offering public coverage and tax credits will cost money. Obama has said he would fund his plan in two ways. First, he has said he won't renew the Bush tax cuts for people who make more than $250,000 a year. Also, companies (excluding small businesses) that don't contribute to the cost of their employees' health coverage will be required to allocate a percentage of their payroll toward this national health plan. Obama says he will offer a refundable tax credit to small businesses that cover up to 50% of the health-insurance premiums they pay for their employees.

Parents would also be required to obtain health insurance for their children. TPC projects that 95% of uninsured children will gain coverage from this plan. While Obama s plan would increase coverage, it would still leave about 6% of the elderly population uninsured, according to the Urban Institute Health Policy Center. In addition, Obama s plan can increase costs to some businesses, which could ultimately lead to lower wages or layoffs within some although few companies, said the Center for Economic and Policy Research s Baker.

Obama also says he plans to increase government regulation of the insurance industry and prohibit insurance companies from rejecting applicants because of their health status and discriminating against them with higher premiums.

Housing

In his housing proposal, Obama makes a big push for stricter regulation of the mortgage-lending industry by creating new criminal penalties for lenders and brokers who are found guilty of fraud. However, those new regulations are likely to help only future homeowners and only the most extreme offenders will actually be found guilty.

Obama says he also wants to empower bankruptcy court judges to modify mortgage payment terms so struggling homeowners can stay in their homes. But it's a controversial plan, says Sharon Price, director of policy at the National Housing Conference, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates affordable housing. It could incite a large number of people to file for bankruptcy if it's seen as an option to modify payments and hold onto a home they would otherwise lose, she says.

In October, the Department of Treasury established the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which among other things, allows companies to sell bad assets (including mortgages) to the government. In return, those businesses lose certain tax benefits and in some cases must limit executive pay. Obama says he wants financial institutions that participate in TARP to put a 90-day freeze on foreclosures in order to give the government enough time to work out a deal for struggling homeowners to keep their homes. Not all homeowners will be able to participate though, and some companies may be discouraged from participating because of the program's many restrictions, says Peter Tatian, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization in Washington, D.C.

Obama also plans to offer a 10% universal mortgage credit to homeowners who don't itemize tax relief. According to the Obama campaign, the credit will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year. "That will be of little help to most homeowners," said Bernard Wasow, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York-based liberal think tank.

Overall, Obama's plan to rebuild the housing market may be more extensive than McCain's proposals, but his plan consists primarily of future protections for homeowners and does little to help those currently struggling to keep their homes, says National Housing Conference's Price.

Energy

Perhaps the biggest and most contentious part of Obama's energy policy is his proposed "windfall profits tax" that he would charge large oil companies. That tax, he says, will be used to pay for a $1,000 "emergency energy rebate" that would be given to low- and middle-income families to help offset high energy prices.

To reduce prices at the pump, Obama has said he advocates tapping 70 million barrels of oil from the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Joseph Dukert, an energy analyst in Bethesda, Md., says such a measure could counter high energy price spikes, but only temporarily if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cuts production.

As part of his alternative-fuel policy, Obama has said he'll offer a $7,000 tax credit to consumers who buy fuel-efficient cars. Further, he plans to mandate that utilities get 25% of their energy from renewable resources by 2025. According to James K. Boyce, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, this move could result in higher electricity prices for people in states that rely more heavily on fossil fuels like Alaska and West Virginia.

Taxes

Obama's tax plan takes a bottom-up approach. The stated goal: to provide tax relief to middle-income families, as well as small businesses and other companies that are responsible for creating jobs. Obama has said he wants to get rid of the capital gains and dividend tax cuts for the wealthy and raise the payroll tax for those earning more than $250,000. He said those increases would affect the top 1% of households, who would see their average federal income and payroll tax rate increase from 21% to 24%. The Tax Policy Center estimates that the hike would pull in nearly $400 billion in new tax revenue from high-income workers over the next decade.

Among the slew of tax credits Obama has proposed is a refundable "Making Work Pay Credit," which would give individual workers a tax cut of $500 and working couples a $1,000 cut. Obama has also proposed a $4,000 refundable tax credit to put toward college tuition costs, and to eliminate income tax for those seniors making less than $50,000 per year.

Obama made no secret during the campaign that he s aiming tax cuts at low- and middle-income taxpayers. However, Roberton Williams, a principal research associate at the Tax Policy Center, points out that to qualify for these incentives people will have to file taxes. And, as it stands right now, some low-income earners aren t even required to file their taxes.

To pay for all of his proposed tax credits and cuts, Obama has said he will responsibly end the war in Iraq, limit payments to high-income farmers, cut subsidies for private Medicare, reform student loans and eliminate Congressional earmarks to 1994 levels. Additionally, Obama would install pay-as-you-go budget rules, which would require lawmakers to pay for new programs or tax cuts with cuts in other programs.