What Would You Do with $260

How interesting. Ths past week, while I was working on today's Tax Watch column, I put out a request to all the aggressive hungry public relations people, authors, universities, and experts, asking, "What Your Best Use of $260 per Year?" (I didn't tell them that this was in lieu of spending $5 per week on the lottery.

The results were bleak, boring and uncreative. Though the article turned out very well.

I also asked about whole life insurance policies and annuities. Not a nibble. And it's impossible to get instant quotes online for life insurance. Though, I did find universal life policies worth $50,000, with costs of as little as $282 for a very healthy woman or $340 for similarly healthy man.

Hey, maybe you can come up with better ideas, yes?

I invite your ideas.

Looking up Stock Values at Specific Dates

Just a quick note - as much for me as for you.

I had to look up the 'date of death' values on a fairly diverse portfolio just now.

MarketWatch's Big Chart Historical Look-Up tool lets you enter the date you want to look up, and just change the ticker code, one after the other. It's fast, easy and when you print off just the one page, it has all the information you need right there. (Unlike some sites where you have ads all over the the top of the page do you have toprint out two or more pages to get what you need.

TaxMama's like tidy.

It was able to find values for stocks, mutual funds, REITs...

This will be great for you to use when working on your tax returns.