Every year about this time I try to remind you to make sure you have done a couple of things, especially if you have been through a divorce or lost a spouse.

Make sure your beneficiaries on your retirement accounts and life insurance are correct. Having life insurance proceeds, pension funds, or IRAs go to an ex-husband or wife is probably not something you want to happen.

I could tell you some horror stories.

Also now is a good time to get the old will out and review it. Do you still want that sister you don’t like to get some of your estate?

And worse still, if you don’t have a will, get one. You do not want the brother you don’t like or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania deciding who gets what out of your estate.

If you are young and have a family, this is really important. God forbid that you and the husband are out for dinner one night and get smacked by the big truck that runs a stoplight. What happens to your 5 year old and 3 year old children?

Get a will. Quit putting these things off.

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Even though it’s early, we’ll do the numbers. For the month of January we got off to a good start.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.7 percent which is the best January for the Dow since 1997. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 2.3 percent and the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.8 percent.

Small and midsized stocks performed differently as the S and P Midcap 400 index was up 1.9 percent, and the Russell 2000 index of small stocks was basically even. The Wilshire 5000, which measures most stocks traded, was up 2.15 percent.

Financial people like to annualize so if you multiplied 2.15 percent times 12 months the Wilshire 5000 would be up 25.8 percent for 2011. I don’t hear anybody talking those numbers.

Gold is down 6 percent and silver is down 8.6 percent in 2011.

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More of my specialty: Insignificant information,

According to my friends at the Bespoke Investment Group, over the past 50 years when January has been a positive month, as it was this year, the average change for the remainder of the year increases to 7.70 percent.

January has been a positive month 32 out of the past 50 years, and the index has continued higher for the remainder of the year 25 out of 32 times, or 78 percent.

I call this cocktail hour fodder. It means nothing, and certainly doesn’t guarantee any future result, but it makes you sound like you know something.

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I’ve been in the financial business for a long time. I know, hard to tell by looking at me. Anyway, in late 2010 I saw something that I do not remember seeing before. I saw companies selling bonds with coupons (interest rates) less than the dividend on their stock. I’m sure it’s happened somewhere along my career but I just don’t remember it.

On the face of it, that just doesn’t make sense and is a result of historically low interest rates.

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I would like to put something in perspective for you. No one, including yours truly, likes to see wars, uprisings and unrest anywhere. It does seem to happen more in the Mideast than anywhere else.

Egypt has been in one of those uproars. It is shaking the news media and politicians like a dog shakes his stuffed toy.

Unrest certainly could spread to other Mideastern countries so it is possible that problems could arise. I just want to point something out. The country of Egypt is just a little larger than Texas.

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My wife presented me with a camouflaged calculator for Christmas. I am a hunter and it is kind of cute, I thought.

She asked me the other day how it was working? I told her I didn’t know, I hadn’t been able to find it for three days. She doesn’t think I’m funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg client portfolio manager.