Welcome back and Happy New Year! It has been a while since we visited but I am sure you all have been as busy as I have over the past couple of weeks and didn’t have much time to read anyway.

      So, did you get everything you wanted for Christmas and have you kept all of your New Year’s resolutions so far? I hope so in both cases.

     My wife and I got a lawn mower for Christmas. No kidding! It was a mutual decision, sort of. Actually, I wanted a riding lawn mower but we got a self-propelled version instead. It would be good for me, she reasoned, because I needed the exercise. We got the lawn mower because I don’t have a job right now and we decided that I could do the lawn rather than pay a company big bucks to do it for us. That made sense to me. Hey, I wouldn’t lie to you, would I?

      I didn’t make any real resolutions this year, just the same old same old that I haven’t followed in the past anyway. You know, lose weight, exercise more, get organized, yada yada yada. Oh, I will still try do to those things like I always try to, but I have chosen this year year just to have them as objectives, rather than goals. Not sure there is a big difference, but it makes sense to me anyway.

      One of the things I do vow to do this year is cut our household expenses as much as possible and I am making good headway at it. First, I cut our telephone, cable and car insurance bills. Now we are refinancing our house, which will cut our monthly obligations on the mortgage nearly in half. If anyone has any ideas on how to cut other things, like electric and water bills, I would appreciate a heads up. I do practice conservation measures as much as I can, by the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Amid all the economic turmoil, there was good news on Tuesday, Dec. 16. The Federal Reserve reduced its top interest to near zero, or .25 percent, for its biggest customers. That news boosted the stock market by 360 points to 8924.

Will that good news translate into good news for consumers? Only time will tell. If you are looking to refinance your mortgage, this might be a good time to do that. Financial planners have said that interest rates on annuities are going to be reduced in mid-January, so now might be the time to lock in some of those higher rates if you have some maneuverability in your investment portfolio. Read the rest of this entry »

      It has only been a month, but I am already getting tired of this thing called “retirement.” I don’t know if I want to do it for the rest of my life.
     Of course, it is not exactly my idea of how retirement was supposed to work. I envisioned picking a day a few years in the future and saying, “That will be the date when I want to retire.” And it would be in conjunction with my wife’s retirement.
       I was planning on paying off the two cars my wife and I drive, putting a few more bucks safely away in our IRAs and doing some of the home repairs that are starting to surface around the old homestead. It is 15 years old, after all. Read the rest of this entry »