All this talk about mortgages... Can you tell housing prices are slumping and people are finding themselves upside down? I hope you're not one of them. That's a hard lesson to learn.

I'm amazed at the number of conservative people I know who would never dream of buying stocks on margin, or buy calls or puts; but who think nothing at all of their struggle to make payments on their million dollar mortgages.

I'm a big believer in Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs. I like just about everything about them. They give me a way to invest in "the market" without buying a market's worth of different securities to achieve diversification. They're every bit as liquid as investing in stocks. They're efficient as long as you stay in the mainstream of ETF investments and don't get lured into any of the boutique, or sector, ETFs. And done right, they're inexpensive. Most ETFs have lower expense ratios than mutual funds.

Two of my favorite bond ETF investments are the iShares Lehman Aggregate Bond Fund and the iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond Fund. I like these funds for my own portfolio because they are both broad based, low expense and yield decent returns against the indexes they are set up to mimic.

From time to time I like to put on my geek hat and do some charts and graphs. This weekend was one of those Monte Carlo weekends.

You've probably seen those pretty Monte Carlo charts the financial planning sites are so fond of. You know the ones. You input the value of your retirement savings today and your risk tolerance. You tell it how old you are, how long you think you'll live and when you'd like to retire. Then you give it an estimate of your retirement expenses. When you click the submit button they show you a graph of how your portfolio will perform in the future.

Well, not exactly how it will perform. The charts I've seen usually have a bunch of lines, each roughly progressing up and to the right, but with fluctuating returns. You probably know the ones I'm talking about. If you don't, you're about to see some examples which will get you familiar with them.

So here you are a few years (decades?) out in the workforce and you have a decent, if not great, retirement fund saved up. It's not much, but it's a start. But somehow you get the feeling it's become unmanageable. This is especially true if you've changed jobs a time or three and each time you leave your retirement savings in your old employer's 401(k) plan. Or maybe you've rolled them into your own IRAs under the 401(k) manager's account structure.

Here are four reasons why it's generally better to consolidate those retirement accounts into as few accounts as possible. For many that will mean a single IRA account and a single 401(k).

1. More choices - Many 401(k) retirement savings plans only offer a few choices for mutual funds and other investment vehicles to chose from. Move your money into your own IRA, and you can invest in a much broader array of investments. Stocks, bonds, Exchange Traded Funds or even mutual funds.

Happy new year everyone. Well, tomorrow anyway. Today is new-IRA-year's eve. Today's the official close of the 2006 IRA year. Not that you care, right? You made your 2006 IRA contribution about a year ago, right? Excellent.

No, what's significant here is that tomorrow is the first day you can make your 2007 IRA contributions and not have to worry about any bookkeeping snafus causing them to be credited to the wrong year. Call me paranoid if you will. I've been around long enough to see stranger things than this happen and to know it will take way too much time and energy to work through the bureaucracy to take a chance on it.

Of course if you do have a 401(k) at work then you can't fund your IRA, right?

Not so! Amazing as it might seem to you (and me), lots of people don't know you can contribute both your IRA and your 401(k) in the same years.

Let's check the contribution limits for tax year 2007:

Apple is one of my favorite companies. I lust over Apple products which I don't own. I love the Apple products which I do own.

Not that I'm an Apple fanatic by any means. My lust/love for Apple's products is tempered by the availability of less expensive alternatives. I'm just too, uh, practical to spend that much of a premium for a PC or a laptop. I have trouble justifying the cool factor. That is, except with the iPod. I'm on my 4th iPod. I love the iPod.

But this isn't a post about iPods. It's about Apple, the company. It's about their stock. Do you think it's time to buy Apple stock?

To save you the suspense I'll give you my answer, my opinion, right now. I think you'll lose money buying Apple right now.

Forward: I apologize in advance if you don't see the relevance of the title of this post after reading it. That said, I sincerely hope you get it.

Maybe it's the stage of my life I'm in. Possibly it's my penchant for figuring out ways to get the best "deal". Then again, maybe I simply have too much on my plate.

Whatever the reason, more and more I find myself thinking of ways to get maximum benefit from my time. Call it time optimization if you will. Increasingly I see time as a finite commodity, each minute to be invested for the greatest gain.

Did you know the average American watches just over 4½ hours of TV each and every day? I'm proud to report this is one area in which I'm significantly below average. That's not to say I've sworn off television, not by any means. I like my down time as much as anyone; and I make it a point to take some time to enjoy a little mental recess at the end of the day.

Let's say on your way to work each morning you stop in at the local coffee establishment and purchase a cup of your favorite roast, ground and steamed and served up just like you like it. Let's say you shell out roughly $2.50 for that cup of bliss. Now let's say you do that every day for 10 years.

What's the cost of your morning ritual? It works out to about a thousand dollars a year. Your morning cup on the way to the office over a ten year period costs you about $10,000.

Now lots of people will tell you that's money spent foolishly. They'll tell you that money could have been invested rather than consumed. Had you done that your own personal net worth would be about $20,000 north of where it is now. (Starting 10 years ago you were at zero. Now you're out the $10k, but had you invested it you would have $10k. The difference works out to $20k.)

But would it? Would it really?

Is the coffee you prepare on your own as good as that which you buy at the coffee shop? The taste of a well-brewed cup is worth something; and that something might be greater than that which you brew at home. Factor taste into the analysis and the $20k shrinks a bit.

Corn's a booming commodity these days. Look for lots of stories about corn production as spring turns to summer and the near record corn crop starts to sprout.

The government's gone corn crazy. Why? Ethanol. It's added to gasoline. It's a home grown alternative to foreign oil.

Well, that and there's an election coming up next year and it's never too early to stake your position in front of major blocks of voting power. Coming out in favor of corn production puts you at the intersection of some pretty powerful interests:

I'm sure you've heard the common saw about home ownership: "Your home is probably your biggest investment." For our family, our home is a decent sized investment, but we've never considered it an investment. Our home has always been the place where we live.

We have taken good care of it. We've done what we can to ensure it retains or grows in value over the years. You might even say we've invested in it. After all, sinking thousands of dollars into a kitchen or bathroom remodel is an investment. It's money spent in the hopes of getting value in return, either in immediate satisfaction or in enhanced value of the underlying asset.