yup that is exactly one way that you can freeze them - throw them in a bag & toss them in the freezer. They sound like billiard balls clacking around in the bag when they are frozen. This method has the added benefit of helping you remove the skins - you just drop the frozen tomatoes in a bowl of hot water and you can rub the skins right off after a minute of soaking. The tomatoes will be of a softer texture, but not as bad as tomatoes from a storebought or home-preserved can. Canning salsa and tomato sauce is really very easy, you don't need a lot of space or equipment (you could get started for less than $20 if you have a big spaghetti pot and a normal equipped kitchen (spoons and bowls and such) and it is a lot more space and energy efficient way to store the tomatoes. Making salsa is easy and makes great gifts and saves a lot of money (I love salsa). Making sauce takes a lot of work, though, and saves fairly little money. But it tastes a LOT better than storebought, and you don't have to pay income tax on your savings. I just bought a dehydrator and I'm hoping that will be an interesting way to preserve the taste...

Tricia It was my understanding the opt out stops anyone from taking a look see at your credit to know how much credit they will offer when sending a credit card offer?? As far as anyone you already have a relationship with I just called the few we got and ask to be put on their opt out list. I even opted out of our own bank, credit union and savings institutions. The only thing I get is statements and notices when a CD is coming due. We didnt get any junk mail for years until a few months ago. I will be turning 65 this year and am now getting 8 to10 offers a week from every insurance company in the world. At first I was calling and asking them to please take me off the mailing list but now have just given up and shred everything. I would like to know how I got on these lists but havent found an answer yet. SS and Medicare both say they do not share any information. I am even getting this junk addressed to me at my dads address. Very frustrating for him. We dont have home mail delivery so even my post master if upset that he cant get all my mail in my P.O. Box. I told him to just send it back but of course he cant. As far a credit scores I will never understand how that works. About 12 or so years ago our accountant ask me how many credit card I had in my wallet. We got to figuring it out and came up with an obscene amount of available credit. I had cards for way to many department stores that I never used. I had had them for years so the limits were high. I closed everything but the one credit card that was tied to our checking account and the debit card for the same account. I had our bank set out credit limit at ten thousand so it never goes any higher. I pay it off every month. I also had them set the limit on our debit card higher so each of us has a thousand dollar a day limit. When DH ordered me a new car a few years ago he was told we have the highest credit score the dealership had ever seen and mine was 2 points higher that his. I havent worked in over 20 years so how does that happen? I check our accounts every morning as soon as I get on the computer and pay the credit card from the checking account as soon as the cycle ends. We have one of those very old gold accounts so we dont have any fees or pay for anything including cashiers check and travelers checks. The manager at the bank told me to never close it. I pay all our bills on line and never have had a problem. So my next question is should I keep the checking account statements or just shred them? Claudia

No, dividends are not tax-free in Canada. A Canadian investor owning Canadian stocks has a method of calculation that gives a substantial dividdend tax credit, increased substantially last year, meaning that s/he pays a low rate of tax on such dividends - but does not escape tax entirely. With one exception. If s/he is single and has *no other income*, regular tax credits added to the dividend tax credit team up to mean that s/he can earn about $49,000. annually before becoming tax-liable. Except ... in our province, the "taxpayer" would have to pay Ontario Health Levy of about $600. at that level of income. With a low-income spouse, charitable or political contributions, (and/or high rate of eligible medical costs, rather unusual in Canada, as we do not pay fees directly for most medical services), the tax-free level goes higher, due to additional credits. If s/he has other income, the rate of tax on Canadian dividends is lower - but s/he doesn't escape tax entirely. Which is why I much prefer to earn Canadian dividends over earning interest, which is taxed at top rate. The investment method that the guy whose 10-year record, back-checked for 20 years, I've followed uses a Canadian equivalent of the "Dogs of the Dow" system. Based originally on the Dow-Jones Industrial average, they picked the 10 stocks paying the highest rate of dividend with cheapest price and bought a position in each. Or, in the Canadian system, bought a position in each of the cheapest 5. A third system was to drop the cheapest priced one, as one possibly in trouble, maybe having suffered recent slide in stock price but dividend rate having been maintained till now, but possibly about to be cut. Then to buy a double-sized position in the second cheapest. That last, though more volatile, over a long term sometimes turned in the best rate of total return (if you don't mind riding roller-coasters). The investor re-balanced once per year, and it took about an hour or two to do the calculations. Leave everything alone through the rest of the year. In the Canadian system, usually about 70% of the holdings carried forward from one year to the next, so one had low levels of commissions to buy and sell. His system out-performed over 90% of mutual funds' managers records, and the market averages. Plus, very few mutual fund managers succeed in outperforming market averages over a number of years ... so in a number of cases it makes sense to buy Exchange Traded Funds, and pay under 1% fees. Actually, a substantial portion of the holdings of a number of fund managers is ETFs. In Canada, we pay higher rates of management expense to mutual fund managers than you do, especially the equity-based ones, which I prefer, so I haven't bought a mutual fund in the last 15 years. Learn to be my own manager, and stick the mutual fund manager's fee in my pocket. Something to be considered is that in a heavy correction, stocks paying dividends tend to slide less that the average. And a few stocks have had a record of growth in amount of dividend paid every year for the past 40 (I think J & J) and some others for almost that long. Now that the market is so much broader than in earlier years, it might be well to consider a wider-ranging system to use as base for one's evaluation than the Dow-Jones 30 Industials. But stay with large, quality companies. Learn how money works - an interesting hobby ... that pays well!! Very few objective, unbiased advisors around. ole joyful

I retired at age 55 and enjoyed a year of 'retirement' but decided to venture out to do several other things after that period. That year provided my wife and I some time to get reacquainted and enjoy some distant time together. Following that first year I felt that I needed to spend time in projects that I enjoyed. It wasn't long after that that I found myself back to work full-time in a couple other endeavors. Now that I am 63 years of age I retired again and this time working on projects that I truly love involving social activities. Retirement is an evolving process. Even though your husband may route retire at 55 it is very likely that you will find other things to do that will be more fulfilling than the job that he's doing now. This is a good time of life for both of you so take advantage of what it has to offer. Best of luck in whatever you choose to do. Here is a link that might be useful: Active Empty Nesters