Yay!
Update (May 30): Some players have reported that their money and home locations have been lost. This was caused by a bug in Essentials. Basically before 1.8, Essentials would store a separate player data file for every username. This means that players who changed their name before the 1.8 update would end up having multiple data files for their usernames. After 1.8, Essentials then tried to convert and merge these player data files so that there would be only one file for every UUID, instead of username. However, Essentials would more likely than not, choose an old username that was no longer in use, and thus players who logged in after conversion would end up losing their money and home data.
27 players in total were affected by this bug, but I have restored all of the money and homes for these players. It’s possible that I may have missed some other players, so if you find that you are missing your money or homes, please e-mail me.
Thanks,
Frumple