Percentage by which our net worth has increased over a twelve-month period, including the rapid rise of the stock market up until July 2007 and our too-late-to-the-party home equity rise, which is now falling because some combination of reality and winter caught up with it.

I'm mollified to read that our windows replacement netted us a $4K in additional value to our home.

% increase from August 2006 to August 2007: 22%
% "" September 2006 to September 2007: 28%
% "" October 2006 to October 2007: 35%
% "" November 2006 to November 2007: 27%

Looking at these double-digit improvements I can see how people get tempted to buy Lexus vehicles and granite countertops.

Demos released a paper about the vulnerability of the middle-class. For optimal financial security, a middle-class household should be able to live for nine months at 75 percent of current living expenses using net financial assets (no home equity loans or lines of credit, no retirement savings).

Also, there should be more than $25,000 left at the end of the year (about $480/week). Ugh. Unless I sell my gold, my family is not secure. I guess it's good to have an honest and challenging reappraisal, so I can prepare appropriately for 2008 and not be caught unaware.

Just so you know this morning I had that legendary dream of arriving at school for my first class only to learn that finals are three weeks away. I had a half-hour to get myself to the campus, to a building I'd never been in, and oh yeah, to get a textbook: The Anatomy Coloring Book. Then I get waylaid advising a hungry woman where she should go nearby for food, and then lost in the library... this dream can be interpreted to mean I'm facing a challenge I'm not sure I'm up to.

I am told by my spouse we are doing okay, but that only means that in our 13-year marriage haven't yet had a crisis we haven't weathered capably upon our collected reserves. The windows were not a crisis, they were a tax-credit opportunity for short-term (under 90 days) leveraging. Until I have enough reserves to manage huge purchases in cash, I'm going to rationalize short-term (12 months for vehicles, 90 days for home improvement) borrowing.

Yes, the paper did come from a partisan think tank. I wonder what middle-class people as defined by Demos in terms of net assets (read the footnotes) and income and size of household of a differing political bent consider adequate reserves for optimal financial security, and if they would share them here. I invite them to. A plurality of perspectives would help us all see the truth.