Thoughts on living

1. If you are not happy with your mattress or if it is about time for a new one, you should seriously consider its replacement with one of the new "memory foam" brands. They are pricey, but should last longer than others and they are definitely worth the extra money if you like a good night's sleep.

2. If you haven't looked at or thought about your home owners insurance in a while, you should at least inquire about the level of coverage you have vis-a-vis your house's current market value. We just did that and found we were considerably under-insured even though our policy had some sort of automatic increase built in.

3. The day is coming, and it may already be here for some of us, where paying for a land-line telephone service is a waste of money. If you have a cell phone, that may be all you need. Companies such as Vonage offer internet calling plans which can save you as much as 50% on your phone expenses. Another alternative is internet calling. A leading provider of this service is Skype which lets you call free to others who use it. It also has a service which lets you place calls to others who do not have the service for a fee of about two cents per minute. The latest version can be used with a cordless phone so you don't have to sit at the computer to make your call. If you want to investigate various phone services and compare costs for your particular circumstances, you can go to http://www.ABTolls.com . The Skype-type phone service will be become much more widely used in the near future, I understand.

4. If you are not an old geezer like me, you should be carefully consider putting as much of your retirement savings into a Roth 401(K) account as you can. The difference is traditional 401 (k) contributions come before and Roth contributions come after taxation. The withdrawals, however, from a Roth at retirement are not taxed. I predict that this will be a significant factor when the government tries to fund the $45 trillion structural deficit in Medicare and Medicaid. They will want to tax the bejeezus out of what they will consider unearned money which has accumulated in retirement accounts.