Another good resource is your public library, where librarians should be able to help you look up the price in newspaper archives or elsewhere. If you're online, click over to quote.fool.com and type in the company's ticker symbol. Once you get its quote, click on the "Historical" link to access its price history.

Think of insurance as protection against the consequences of a loss, not as an investment. (After all, there are more effective ways to invest.) If you had young children, you'd want to carry insurance to protect against income loss, should something happen to you. But if you don't need to protect any income stream, you might be better off parking your money elsewhere.

It's also worth looking into disability insurance, which provides an income if you become disabled. We often worry about and plan for death, but give little thought to the possibility of an extended period of disability. According to some reports, nearly half of all mortgage foreclosures are due to disability. Disability insurance can seem expensive, but that's largely because there's a high chance you'll use it.

My dumbest investment: During the great tech-stock bubble, I bought 300 shares of Gene Logic at $6, an $1,800 investment. Some few months later it soared past $150 - a $45,000 jackpot for me. But I didn't sell. I held it as it fell and fell, selling half at $30 and the other half at $16.

The Fool responds: Your error wasn't in failing to sell at the stock's peak. After all, exactly when a stock hits its peak is never clear except in hindsight. But when a stock surges, it's good to examine it closely, to see whether it has gotten ahead of itself and is trading at values well above its actual worth.

That's what happened to the stock of many good companies during the heyday of the late 1990s and early 2000. At least you got out with a profit. Many others lost their shirts.

Foolish trivia: I'm the nation's largest turkey processor, founded in Minnesota in 1891. I debuted the world's first canned ham in 1926 and a year later had salesmen selling from "sausage trucks." The new Monty Python musical might remind you of the famous luncheon meat made of spiced ham that I introduced in 1937.

My other brands include Dinty Moore, Homeland, Little Sizzlers, Old Smokehouse, Patak's, Rosa Grande and House of Tsang. In 1986, I bought Jennie-O, the premier turkey product maker. I rake in nearly $5 billion annually and recently paid my 309th consecutive quarterly dividend.

Answer to last week's trivia: Think of luxury, and you should think of me. The brands I've amassed include wine and spirit names such as Dom Perignon, Hennessy, Château d'Yquem and Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin; fashion names such as Kenzo, Givenchy, Fendi, Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs and Berluti; perfume and cosmetic names such as Christian Dior, Guerlain, Loewe, BeneFit Cosmetics, Acqua di Parma and Fresh; and watch and jewelry names such as TAG Heuer and Chaumet.

I'm based in Paris and have a partnership with diamond titan DeBeers. Some of my companies date back to the 1700s, and one to 1593. Who am I? LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

The Motley Fool take: Another quarter is in the books, and energy behemoth ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) continues to generate - and share - copious amounts of cash flow. Much like rival BP (NYSE: BP), ExxonMobil continues to do right by its shareholders even though energy production levels aren't anything to crow about.

Leaving out some so-called "extraordinary" items, ExxonMobil saw net income rise 33 percent in the quarter and earnings per share grow by 38 percent.

Operating cash flow totaled $15.7 billion in the period, up by two-thirds from last year's figure. While the company continues to pour a lot of that money into exploration and other capital expenditures - to the tune of $4.4 billion this quarter - it also spent $6.8 billion on share repurchases and dividends.

With the big oil and gas players, production is something of an issue. Production was down 4.7 percent, much of that tied to hurricanes and divestments. The decline was offset by higher realized prices, with oil and natural gas climbing in price by more than 30 percent from last year on an average realized basis.

The holiday season is here, and it's a good time to reflect on all we have. Even those of us of modest means are still exponentially better off than billions of others on this planet.

Take a little time to reflect on your financial condition. Don't think it's hopeless. You're probably not too young, too old, too poor, too risk-averse or too ignorant to invest in stocks.

You have brains. Managing your finances takes brains, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist. The brothers explain how we often use things like credit cards and mutual funds without stopping to see how much they're charging us. A little education and comparison could save us thousands.

You have time. Even if you're 60 years old, you might well have 20 to 30 years ahead of you, so don't write off investing. And if you're a teen, it's not too early. If you plunk $3,000 in an index fund that advances at the market's historical average of about 10 percent per year, in 25 years it will grow to $32,500.

You have other people. You're not alone when grappling with financial decisions. The taboo against talking about money is silly. Strike up conversations with friends and family. Your uncle might be a savvy, experienced investor. Your mother-in-law might know a lot about buying homes. Perhaps a co-worker can recommend a terrific financial adviser.

Learn more: For information about advisers, go to www.sec.gov/ investor/brokers.htm and www.fool.com/fa . Learn from others through financial books. Another nifty way to take advantage of several heads being better than one is to form an investment club. Learn more about this at www.betterinvesting.org .

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