Is it a mortgage bailout or home maintenance?

Rick Santelli's rant notwithstanding, bailing maybe 9 million homeowners out of a mortgage jam doesn't seem that costly if you compare it to do-it-yourself projects around the house.

Financial planners and budget counselors I know generally recommend budgeting about 1 percent of your home's value for maintenance and repairs, plus about 2 percent more if you plan significant remodeling. That's between $1,970 and $5,910 for a national median $197,000 home, or $1,440 to $4,320 at Kansas City median prices.

Spending $75 million to clean up those 9 million shaky mortgages works out to a bit less than $1,140 apiece if you divide it among the rest of the nation's total 75 million homeowners who don't have troubled loans. It goes way lower if the nation's 36 million renters kick in too.

Now look at what the money potentially buys. Reuters reportsRick that a record 64 percent of recently surveyed homeowners report that nearby defaults have eroded their own homes' values.

Realty Trac found that 3 in 10 potential buyers of foreclosed homes expect to pay about half price for the property. Avoiding that has got to be at least as profitable as recouping maybe 85 to 90 percent of what you spend remodeling a kitchen or bath.

What if the economy doesn't recover?

I think my wife and I are dropping out of the middle class this year.

Or so it seems after reading a recent Parade magazine piece about some wildly differing estimates of where middle class begins. No way our household income will hit even the bottom rungs of some of the definitions that relief efforts use.

We aren't alone, of course. Retail maven Howard Davidovitz predicts things will get worse before they get better and he sees a sea change ahead for a long range foreseeable future as we realize we can't have it all.

If he's right, anyone lucky enough to have money may find tough going too. One new challenge of financial planning may be dealing with changed relations with your less fortunate friends and acquaintances, Business Week suggests.

But there is always hope. And, according to contributors to Forbes, there are always ways to make a buck investing in downsizing too.

All sales are final...remorse lasts longer

Trade publications reported recently that Circuit City's estimated $450 million close-out sale is going so well that liquidators may wrap it up before the original Mar. 31 deadline.

Good riddance, say some consumers in different parts of the country who apparently found bargains they could resist. The fact is, going-out-of-business sales can present tricky challenges to consumers trying to stretch a dollar to the snapping point. Organizers use some of the same tricks as sharp garage-sale operators to part us with our cash, but with more zeros on the price tags.

There are some good reasons to avoid such sales entirely, suggests Jeffrey Strain at TheStreet.com. We tend to buy things we don't need just because we get a heck of a price. The deals may not really be that good, if promoters jacked up original list prices in order to make a profit selling at a purported 75 percent off. And all-sales-final, cash-or-check-only rules often wipe out many of the usual consumer safeguards we might depend on.

Even so, you can find real bargains, if you work at it, reports Fivecentnickel.com. Do your homework before you go. Don't put much faith in extended warranties - you are basically buying from guys with pushcarts. Pay with plastic rather than cash if possible, because your credit card company offers some safeguards if you get a lemon.

I can see the reasoning, but don't entirely agree with that last recommendation. If I'm that worried about buying a possible lemon, I'm going to be tempted to save the money and spend a few bucks more someplace else to get something that works or that the seller stands behind. I've already got bargain-price doorstops.