Home Sweet Home: it's part of your resume.

I was eating dinner in a local restaurant with my wife one evening when I happened to overhear a conversation at another table. Two men were discussing the never-ending stock market, impressing each other with their investing acumen. At the same time, their wives were chatting about the kids, schools and more mundane subjects such as the price of nannies and clothes. Two affluent couples in their late thirties out for a sociable evening.

Eventually, the conversation of the two men wandered from Wall Street to real estate. Prices were climbing astronomically. They were proud that they had invested in the place at the right time. In fact, they were almost self-congratulating that fewer and fewer people could afford their homes. Between financing and property taxes, a family had to earn quite a bit to live in this community. The last comment, though said as a lament, was really meant as a boast.

A week later, I was having dinner in a friend's house. I had known the couple since junior high school. They were childhood sweethearts that actually tied the knot and are still married. They own a Cape Cod tract house on Long Island they bought 25 years ago. It is a solid blue-collar neighborhood.

Talk turned to the value of real estate and how it was hard to keep up with everything. This fellow is a contractor, while his wife works in an office processing loan applications. Instead of talking about stock prices as my neighbors did, my friend discusses the cost of the new Buicks, although Mercedes and BMW's are never mentioned.

The next day, I spoke to a kid I gave a job as a porter. By the way, you know you are getting old when your employees are younger than some of your children. He is just two years in the U.S. from Poland. He is married and has a newborn. The fellow was saying how hard it was to pay his bills and that he couldn't believe what rents were in Brooklyn.

He hoped someday to buy a house for his family and become a superintendent. In the interim, he would supplement his pay by doing some painting. Stocks, cars and annuities are not discussed. He had to meet more basic needs, like providing food and clothing.

As our unscientific sampling shows, each person - regardless of income - worries about their economic well being, with one of their prime focuses being their housing needs. Each worries about how they will be able to maintain their present homes, and in some cases, worry about trading up to that next larger place. It would seem that where we live and in what we live to some extent dictates how we live.

Our address defines who we are. Our zip code tells marketers what catalogues to send. Politicians count our likely votes by our election districts. Census tracts speak volumes on our education, income and marital status. Because of the name of our hometown, we can be thought to be something other than ourselves.

Several months ago, I was telling a contractor that I was going to Florida for a couple of days. He immediately said, "Florida, that's where all the rich people go." I had to remind him that not more than a month had passed since he had returned from trekking through the Andes and taking a cruise to the Galapagos. Further, I had to remind him that he had spent six weeks driving through Italy and Poland the year before.

Apparently to him that didn't count, since his home was in Ozone Park and mine was in Greenwich. Therefore I was rich and he knew he wasn't. My address had given me away. All of a sudden, because of it, I am perceived as something I may not be. What people don't realize is that along with the mansions is the subsidized housing of each town.

Only in America is the first question asked when meeting someone for the first time about his or her occupation. "What do you do?" is more important than who you are. Taste in books or art or music may take people months to ascertain. While one's occupation will tell us the "real" truth about this new person. Where she lives is the key to her balance sheet.

We all have insecurities about how much money we have accumulated and how we want to keep it. At the same time, we want people to know we have it, so we must devise ways to show them without telling them. How we do that is by our address. However, be aware that where we live is not always indicative of how much we have accumulated. Where the real estate is only goes so far.