The good news is that I'm 10% up over 2006's year-end. I lost the December 2007 data when my iPod was accidentally reformatted. More good news: I have a positive net worth.

My pessimistic estimate is that my net worth will go down by 7.9%, even though I will do my best to save 25% of our gross income in retirement funds, HELOC repayment, mortgage prepayment, and something my inner doomsayer is calling "Seattle Skedaddle." Gash and gollars.

I've identified six charities and non-profits, two non-profit advocacy groups and four publicly funded radio stations to fund in 2009.

Happy New Year to you, dear reader. Be well, do good work, stay positive.

I'm reading Mary McCarthy's The Group and Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. This weekend I rented from the library "Adam's Rib," a 1949 film adaptation from a play by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.

In The Group, a minor character tells a fellow alumna how she and her husband keep the books as an evening ritual. Lady Metroland in Scoop tends to her books with the help of an assistant while she has a facial, in bed. (This would be my preferred housekeeping modus operandi.)

I should do this. I absolutely should. Along with making a lunch for the next day, evening prayers, a ritual for sorting the books and accounts. Right now I keep a weekly record of goal allotments, and a monthly tally on the net worth, but with so much going on, I need to do some money juggling.

In "Adam's Rib" the two lawyers beam with pride after paying off their Connecticut farm after SIX WHOLE YEARS. The last cheque was for something like eight thousand dollars (in 1949 money). Wow. I bet they had to cut back the maid's hours to weekday mornings.

When I read short stories or novels about the Twenties or the Thirties I wonder how people afforded maids. My grandmother worked part-time as a maid. I also wonder how bad the Depression was: I had read The Grapes of Wrath and assumed it was like that--starvation, violence, riots, homelessness--for most people, especially after learning that stock traders in New York had jumped out of windows. Ah, the good old days. Now they bottle up their rage and shame and unleash their demons in churches or at their families, with assault rifles. And stories of people licking wallpaper paste for vitamins.

And yet my grandparents survived. They had a house in what is now a prime real estate area and four children, after moving from their Dust Ice Bowl home province which was hit hard by the economic slowdown -- my very own ancestors, the Joad family of the North! (J/K: nobody in my family got into scraps or got killed or picked fruit) I think they moved to the West Coast during the early 1930s. Not everyone lost their houses. Some people make money in a recession.

I might name my scooter after someone largely blamed for the rise in gas prices, except I think it really is 'peak oil' and I don't have the time to get 2.5 billion names for the bike.

Obligatory 'Murkin' content: Depression photos of St. Louis, Missouri

Gosh!

Back then I had a scooter loan. It was paid off three months later. Income was $5220/net. Now it's larger. The windows are installed. Some goals were neglected, others were replaced. Back then my mortgage payoff-date was 07/2023, now it's 02/2023. I had $1000 in savings for an emergency fund, now I'm nearing $19000.

Back then our outgo was $4957.75, excluding savings, investments, pet expenses, gifts and extra mortgage payments.

Now it is $4943. So the childcare payments get absorbed into smaller childcare expenses, house maintenance, food out, gifts, auto expenses, and taxes. Utilities actually went DOWN 10% from two years ago.

I encourage people, if they're starting their journey from a point of lack, or a disadvantage, perhaps paying off debt or building an emergency fund, to reflect on their progress each year. Granted the gold, housing and equity markets take most of the credit for this, but we're up 25% from two years ago, for the time being.