What do you get out of the financial rescue package that promises to inject up to $700 billion in an effort to get bad investments off the books for financial institutions? The bill was passed in the House of Representatives today, 263-171, and by the Senate Oct. 1, 74-25.

Over 400 pages long, the bill picked up support by the inclusion of unrelated benefits for both businesses and individuals. But most of the benefits will be indirect and long-term. And most of them come under the category of stopping the slide.

“This is mainly about stabilization. It doesn’t undo the basic weakness in the U.S. economy, but it buys the economy some time to stabilize,” said Dallas L. Salisbury, chief executive of the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Families will need time, too, to recover from the blow to their savings and investments, and workers may have to count on working longer in order to be able to retire.

“It will stop the 400- to 800-point gyrations in the stock market,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “People are still going to be dependent on the balance in their 401(k)s for retirement, and at its current level, the Dow Jones is where it was in 1998.”

One financial planning lesson for individuals in the current crisis is that “if you’re going to be in stocks, you don’t want to be forced to draw on those assets when there’s a serious downturn in the markets,” she said. “You do need cash to tide you through, so you can let things rebound.”

“One way to protect yourself from being buffeted by the fluctuations in the stock market and the inability to accumulate sufficient assets is to focus on how long you work, which is something you often do have control of,” said Munnell. “If you can postpone drawing Social Security from early withdrawal at age 62 to age 70, your monthly benefits will be 75 percent higher.”

Here’s how the bill may affect you:

* You may feel safer about your bank accounts, which are secured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The limit that is insured is expected to rise from $100,000 to $250,000 per individual per bank. The provision is designed to prevent massive bank withdrawals, which could lead to more bank failures. So far this year, 13 banks have been shut down.

* You may potentially pay higher taxes from the cost to the government of acquiring troubled securities from financial institutions. The ultimate price tag will depend on how much the government pays to acquire the assets and how much they can be sold for when markets recover.

* You could be among the more than 20 million Americans protected from the alternative minimum tax by a provision added to the financial rescue bill. The AMT was originally designed to cover only the very richest taxpayers but, because it wasn’t indexed for inflation, without a fix it would cover an increasing number of households. Congress has passed temporary fixes in previous years.

* If your mortgage winds up in government hands, you may have access to negotiated help for payment problems. Critics say the bill won’t offer as much mortgage help as needed.

* You may benefit from a new property tax deduction of up to $1,000 that will be available to taxpayers who don’t itemize.

* The bill also includes an expanded child tax credit, relief for taxpayers hit by flooding in the Midwest and by Hurricane Ike, and tax credits if you buy energy-efficient refrigerators and dishwashing machines. The bill also provides a tax credit of $2,500 to $7,500 for electric or plug-in hybrid cars.

One of the primary goals of the relief package is to stabilize the credit markets, which have tightened up in recent days. If this is successful, said Salisbury, it will make it easier for some individuals to borrow. “At least it gives individuals who are still employed, someone who has a house and an ugly old mortgage that he wants to clean up,” a chance to refinance with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, he said. “That gives you predictable mortgage payments, which makes it possible to budget.”

In the long run, according to Munnell, the crisis also may force people to recognize that the current retirement savings system needs change. “To me, it’s such a bad system that puts people at such risk,” she said. “People have been harmed, and not just financially, although things are down around 30 percent since last October.”

They have also been harmed emotionally, said Munnell. “It makes people feel impotent and humiliated that they can’t control their financial well-being.”

Martha M. Hamilton, formerly with the Washington Post, writes a regular column, Your Financial Future, for AARP Bulletin Today. If you have decided to delay retirement because of the current economic crisis and are willing to be quoted by name in a column, please e-mail Bulletinmoney@aarp.org and put Martha Hamilton in the subject line.