Remodeling Won't Help You Unload Your Crummy Home

What do Americans do best? Why, shop and spend lots of money fixing up our homes, of course! If a new survey is correct, we the people are about to do both during the rest of this year. That is, provided we have jobs and an income.

American Express says 62 percent of homeowners it recently surveyed intend to spend more than $6,000 each on home improvements in 2010.

That's probably because, according to the survey, 85 percent of homeowners think of their homes as their most valuable assets.

If there's an angle, perhaps it's this: A lot of home-improvers might be fixing up the old abode because they think they will be able to unload (sorry, I mean sell) it soon.