Sometimes the company itself can tell you. Try giving its investor-relations department a call. 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 are online, click over to http://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.

You might consider skipping it - for now. 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.

Still, take some time to read up on the topic - at www.insweb.com/learningcenter and www.fool.com/insurance . One upside to buying life insurance while you're young is that it should be relatively inexpensive.

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 is largely because there is a high chance you will use it.

Thanksgiving is 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.

Even if you're 60 years old, you may well have 20 to 30 years ahead of you, so don't write off investing. And if you are a teen, it is not too early. (Visit www.Fool.com/teens for some guidance.) 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 are 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 coworker can recommend a terrific financial adviser. (Learn more about advisers at 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.better-investing.org .

I am 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. Who am I?

Another quarter is in the books, and energy behemoth Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) continues to generate - and share - copious amounts of cash flow. Much like rival BP (NYSE: BP), Exxon Mobil continues to do right by its shareholders even though energy production levels are not anything to crow about.

For the third quarter, the company saw revenue grow 32 percent to $101 billion. Leaving out some "extraordinary" items, Exxon Mobil saw net income rise 33 percent in the quarter and earnings per share grow 38 percent.

Operating cash flow totaled $15.7 billion in the period, up 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 more than 30 percent from last year on an average realized basis.

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