This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance has been dubbed The Homeless Edition. The hostess this week, The Bag Lady, has selected more than 80 blog posts from across the Internet to list in this week’s carnival as she discusses the myths and facts regarding the homeless in America.

Spinning off her concept, I’ll pull some of the details I have collected in a sidebar about low-income and middle-class families in Monroe County, Mich., to mix in with some of the posts from the carnival. (You’ll find many of those facts at the Monroe County Network on Homeless site.)

Amateur Asset Allocator presents Calculate Your Personal Inflation Rate: “The statistic is set by consumers themselves. The problem, of course, is that nobody is average.”

Monroe County’s median income in 2005 was $55,823. I did some number crunching and analysis on a recent post to show what that median income would mean for household and family expenses for a local family.

The Butler Project presents Funding Your Life Part 1: “Your budget is not about what other people, even experts tell you “should” do with your money. Your budget is about how you want to use your money for your life.”

Attendance at the free community dinners that are hosted by churches, civic groups and volunteers every night in the Monroe area rose in 2007 to an average 140 people a night, many of them families. This compares to about 70 a night in 2006.

Cheap as Chips presents Would You Miss a Meal to Pay Your Rent?”: “Currently, we have a pretty good idea of where our money are going but we don’t have a precise knowledge of where they are.”

About 10 percent of Monroe County residents are living in the poverty level. That income range in 2007 benchmarks is $10,210 for a single person; $13,690 for a family of two; $17,170 for a family of three; and $20,650 for a family of four.

Not the Jet Set presents How to Lose the Farm: “Do wealthy people really have it that easy financially? In a word: No. The lesson here: No amount of money will out pace your own financial stupidity.”

On a national level, more than one in four people in homeless situations are employed.

Smart Money Daily presents Top 5 Factors Affecting Your Credit Score: “Credit statistics show that people with the highest ratings for example, have not missed a payment even when they have lost their job or been ill for extended periods.”