For my first outing since snowflakes started on Tuesday, I went to Starbucks with my spouse yesterday to go get coffees and then to the post office to mail some bill payments. I wore my mink hat and coat: nobody blinked. We all probably felt like we had been teleported to Juneau. I don't like the money tsunami flooding out of our chequing account at January's end, yet it's a relief to know that some money still remains, and not all of the payments due are monthly or even bimonthly. I only wish more of the payments could be scheduled for after January 27. It'll be a flood going out and a flood coming in.

With the rise of gold and silver prices, I am now past $15000 for our car fund. This is a milestone. I am caught up with my HELOC, next week we get pay stuff.

Wondering if I should buy some Walgreen Co stock. Standard & Poor's Reports plus Value Line say yes. My list of replacement items suggests otherwise. I could buy two shares of WAG, and have some $ left over for DonorsChoose.org. On the forums someone said he'd bought TC and FCX, and the fundamentals and buy prices on those appeal to me: I like 17%+ Return on Equity, some dividends, low price/sales ratios, and natural resources. Now that you know my strategy you also know how not to invest.

Our refinanced mortgage has seen us leapfrog past other recent refi'ers I am tracking. We haven't even made our six months payment yet and already we have paid 6.27% of the mortgage, and by our first year we will have paid over 10%. It took us eight years to get to 33% payoff with our prior mortgage, and now if we don't sell the house we'll be at 33% before 2015 comes around.