| New Austin Flood Plain Maps |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|02:44 pm] |
New maps of the floodplains in Austin have been drawn and go into effect for insurance purposes on September 26. If you have a mortgage on a property in a floodplain, your mortgage company may require you to purchase flood insurance.
If you weren't in a floodplain according to the old maps but you are according to the new maps, you can save piles of money by buying flood insurance now if you don't have it already. I've heard your rates will be grandfathered. The newsletter from the utilities company says "Property owners will receive a better rate on flood insurance, both this year and in future years, if they purchase insurance by August 11, 2008, forty-five days before the new maps become effective."
You can see the new maps, only first you have to acknowledge that these new maps are only working maps and don't actually mean anything. (Those two libraries listed that hold hard copies of the old flood maps? One of them is mine. Suspense builds.)
I tried the interactive map first. There is a blue area on the map and an aqua area on the map which I assume are flood plains of some variety, but I can't find a key. If so, the map is showing that my house is still not in the floodplain but that the apartment complex on the other side of my back fence is still in the floodplain.
So if that's true, I still get the good rates on flood insurance, but the drainage improvements in my area have not pulled the apartments out of the floodplain--the apartments which are almost completely paved over and which seem very leaky from my side of the fence! Perhaps apartment buildings are absorbent, at least when occupied.
Then I tried the other map. It is not as easy to find a specific place on that map, and once you do, the detail is not as nice.
My utilities newsletter says you can also contact your insurance agent to see if your property is affected. I think I might just do that. And for more information you can call the Watershed Protection and Development Review Department Floodplain Office at 974-2843.
Flood insurance is not included in your homeowners insurance. It is a separate add-on policy which I think is offered by the federal government but which you buy through your regular insurance agent.
I first learned about flood insurance when I lived in a suburb of Houston and some of the folks who lived near the creek ended up with six feet of standing water in their house. This is not ordinary tap water, either. It's storm water. So it could have anything in it. The more fearful things people talked about were sewage and snakes.
At that time, my mom found out that flood insurance was extremely cheap and so she started getting it. And so when I got my house, I also got flood insurance, although it wasn't as cheap as I expected. And then when I saw a flood map, I decided it was definitely worth it. (Note to self: check for geologically stupid building before buying property next time.)
I just renewed my flood insurance today. For $296, I get $150,000 of coverage for the building (with a $500 deductible) and $60,000 of coverage for building contents (with another $500 deductible) for one year, so that's just under $27 per month. No damage to the land (trees, etc.) is covered. So that's an example of what flood insurance can cost someone outside the 100-year floodplain. |
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| Old Computer Broke for Good |
[Jun. 8th, 2008|03:32 pm] |
Yep, my computer is totaled. I should look up when I bought it. Robin thinks four years ago. I think a computer should last indefinitely except for the part where suddenly you want to do things that require more stuff, like new (bigger) software. Or like when I started wanting to see pictures on the web. But the only new thing I've wanted to do was watch YouTube, and I could do that just fine on my computer until it broke.
I once thought I wouldn't need my own computer at home until I quit working at a job with computer access. But now I do a lot more personal stuff with computers, so I really shouldn't be spending that much time at work. Since I got my own computer, I have definitely started using it quite a lot. So, I will be replacing it.
And I love having a notebook instead of a desktop. So I'll spend the extra bucks for that. And I love having an operating system that just works, so I'll spend the extra bucks for that.
Apple is making some kind of big announcements tomorrow, so I'll decide then what to do. Buy the black Macbook at a suddenly reduced price? Buy the suddenly available exciting new thing at a similar price to the current thing? Buy Robin's friend's "old" computer when he replaces it with one of the suddenly available new things? |
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| Opposing Ways To Save |
[May. 14th, 2008|08:07 pm] |
I've noticed two strategies for saving money that oppose each other.
On the one hand, you've got stockpiling. This is the one I'm more familiar with where you stock up on things when they are on sale or you buy in bulk to get a lower price. I swear I wrote about this before, but I can't find it.
Advantages to stocking up:
* Very high rate of return. For example, if your favorite cheese is on sale for 10% less than the usual price, then you are earning 10% (actually, more like 11%) on your investment. And if you would have bought that extra package of cheese two weeks later, you earned that 11% in only two weeks, for an annual rate of 286%. If you buy a six-month's supply of cheese, you're still earning a 22% annual rate for the package you eat six months from now.
* Diversification. If you have cash flow problems or transportation problems, some of your future needs are already taken care of.
Risks involved in stocking up:
* The items can go bad (get stale, get attacked by moths, get ruined when there's a flood or blackout, etc.)
* You can change your mind about wanting them (you develop an allergy, you want to support something greener, you want something healthier, etc.)
On the other hand, you can simplify to reduce your overhead. I've talked before about Apartment Therapy's Smallest, Coolest Apartment contest and probably Tumbleweed houses (at least my commenters have). Recently I read No Impact Man's Who Needs Appliances Anyway? He talks about all their appliances and how much they missed each one when they stopped using it during their year-long quest to make no impact on the earth. Some of them they barely missed at all.
For a more extreme perspective, see Sharon Astyk's What To Do with Your Appliances When You Get Over Them. She posits that her kitchen is old-fashioned because it was designed in the olden days of cheap energy, and then she tries to imagine what a kitchen designed in the modern era of expensive energy, might look like. And then she talks about ways to re-use broken appliances. (My favorites are to turn your dead microwave into a solar oven or into a large breadbox.)
My favorite appliance is the refrigerator. So, for me, No Refrigerator for 30 Years seems quite extreme. I read a detective book where one of the detectives has no fridge, so she buys a bag of ice on the way home from work every day and keeps her refrigerable things in a cooler. This article has additional strategies, such as buying fresh food daily and using a higher ratio of pantry goods in your cooking. You could use these techniques to get rid of your extra freezer or to use a smaller refrigerator, not just to get rid of your refrigerator.
Advantages to simplifying:
* You can make permanent reductions in overhead. For example, if you don't have a lot of stuff, you can live somewhere small paying less in rent, electricity, even repairs.
* When you spend less time accumulating stuff, you can have more time for getting a life.
Risks:
* You have to rely more on others and/or be more flexible. You want the store to have just what you need every time you're looking for it (because they are storing it for you). You have less wiggle room.
So, you can reduce your needs for space and other resources, like those folks living in tiny houses and riding their bikes everywhere. Or you can use your space and resources to stock up on things like Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette, who bought a large house with attached barn and stores all kinds of interesting things there. Or you can do some of both.
**
No blog buddy update: Yesterday after getting home from dance class, Robin asked if I would like to see a movie. Instead of saying no, I am writing in my journal, I said yes. |
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| The Incredible Shrinking Retirement Benefits |
[May. 7th, 2008|07:49 pm] |
Today I went to the meeting the local state employee union held to discuss the fact that a state legislative committee is discussing the possibility of switching our retirement plan from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan.
There were many things about this meeting to hate, such as spending way too much time at the beginning discussing why you should join the union and such as emphasizing that the solution to this discussion of pension changes is to join the union.
I had two questions, one of which I hoped would be answered at the meeting. (The other question, what the details of this new defined contribution plan would look like, are, I assume, not yet decided.) I wanted to know who would benefit from the proposed change.
They had one answer: the stock brokerages that are hoping to get our business. They hinted at another possible answer: people who are worried that the market will plummet as the boomers retire leaving the state without enough funds to make the promised payout. Supposedly twenty percent of people in my state are participating in this pension plan. I'm sure many of them accumulated just a few years of savings and don't expect the plan to cover their retirement, but it's still a shockingly huge number.
I also learned something much more concerning to me. Our retirement health coverage is not mandated by law or by any kind of promise at all and it is generally assumed that this will disappear soon. This is assumed not just by the union members, but also by other, less excitable folks I talked to. And I didn't even get any hint that joining the union would help with that.
Suddenly, my salary feels lower, my retirement savings feel minuscule, and I feel like a sucker.
**
In other news, my jewelry making supplies are now stored in Robin's old sewing kit (a small fishing tackle box). I'm not sure it's better than my old system (a big plastic bag). Certainly it's less malleable and takes more space. And most of my stuff is still in smaller plastic bags at the bottom of the box. Advantages are that I can now get to my pliers and tweezers more easily and that it's now easier to stack things on top of it. Which means I'm moving it from a drawer to a shelf. |
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| Property Value Weirdness |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|08:01 pm] |
Here are some random thoughts on the 2008 notice of appraised value I received today.
The city seems to think my house is worth $156,575. That sounds just crazy to me. If a small house like mine costs that much, we'll never be able to afford a regular sized house anywhere near the center of town. I was hoping there would be good houses for $200,000 or less. I guess not.
**
An odd annoyance I have is that I want my home equity to be only 1/3 of my net worth instead of the usual 1/2 it's been, because I should have more diversity. But I can't even keep up!
Oh well, normal homeowners what their property values to rise, for some reason. Even I agree that it's excellent that my property values haven't been changed by the discovery of toxin buried nearby or anything like that.
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The breakdown of the appraised value is: $101,575 for the house and $55,000 for the land. Last year the land was appraised at $40,000, so that's where the bulk of the increase came from. In 1997, the first year for which I have figures, this property was appraised at $43,354 for the house and $10,000 for the land. In another dozen years, the land may be worth more than the house (unless the house is better by then). Weird.
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Coincidentally, Robin did a search for the perfect fixer-upper. To do that, he narrowed the range to houses going for between $20,000 and $120,000. Guess how many houses he found and where they were located?
Have you guessed yet? There were zero houses in that price range. None. None at all. Even the most decrepit, disintegrating house on the market is going for over $120,000. Unbelievable.
We're just going to have to make this house work.
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My new estimated tax is $20/month more than for last year, so next year's mortgage payment will increase by about $40/month. If I save the $20 that I'm used to paying on the mortgage this year but that will not be due, I can use that money (and the accumulated interest: $4 more?) to pay for half of next year's increase. Ha! Like I'm that good!
**
Today I'm glad I bought a house. I'm not always convinced because rents for the kinds of places I used to live are still quite low. |
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| Slow Cleaning |
[Apr. 23rd, 2008|09:19 pm] |
Today I put away several things that are hard to put away properly such as:
* the gas and utilities bills (which I had to pay first)
* the extra battery I got for my pedometer (I had to find tape and find a place in the freezer--I'm taping it to the door behind the bag with the extra spices--because I heard these kinds of batteries run down just as fast whether they are in use or not if you leave them at room temperature)
* the free fluorescent bulb I got on Earth Day (remind me: I do not need any more light bulbs for the next five or fifty years and I do not have room to store more anyway)
* my pumpkin butter recipe (where does it go? Sides? Vegetables? Do I need to make a new Condiments section? If I did, should salad dressing go there, or can it stay in the Salads section?)
* my Annual Escrow Account Disclosure Statement (after analyzing it, see below)
I know some people can just go around cleaning up their house--whoosh, whoosh, whoosh--but if I have a pile of crap lying around, it's there for a reason.
**
I've heard you can get rid of escrow accounts, but I still have one. (This is where the bank collects a constant amount of money from you each month--in addition to your principal and interest--which it then uses to pay your taxes and insurance on time so they don't lose their collateral to Uncle Sam or Mother Nature.)
It seems all very straightforward, but escrow accounts are strange. For example, I think I've written before about the second-year weirdness. My payment increased much more than most rents increased because lenders have to predict that next year's taxes and insurance will be the same as this year's. But usually they're more. So at the end of the year, they are short by the difference.* So they can collect that difference from you in a single check at the end of the year or (at least sometimes) you can choose to pay it back over the next year in equal payments each month. The latter seems wiser.
* (minus the cushion they are allowed to add on)
But the new estimates are now higher, because now they are using the numbers for this year, not the first year. So your payment goes up to cover that, too. So your total payment goes up by twice the amount of the increase (or near to that, depending what the new allowable cushion is).
Last year my payment went down for the first time, which I also think I wrote about. And that's because my taxes and insurance went up by less that year than they had the year before, so the new shortage-catching-up part of my payment was lower than for the previous year: enough lower that my total payment ended up lower.
This year is even weirder. My taxes actually went down. Although the city estimated my property value to have increased over the year before, they reduced taxes per $1000 value by so much last year that my total taxes decreased. For some reason the city feels guilty charging people more taxes for increased property values even though we have a law that limits these increases to 10% a year for your own house (not houses you're renting out to others). Then they wonder why they don't have enough money to maintain services like they'd like.
Anyway, even though my insurance costs rose, they didn't rise as much as my taxes decreased. So I don't have to pay any catch-up money this year. Which means my monthly payment is going down again. Not only that, they are sending me a check for the overage. That is weird. I suspect that next year I will get another double-whammy increase like I did my second year.
(In case you're curious about the amounts involved, my catch-up amount last year was $10, down from $24 the previous year, and this year it's zero. This year my monthly payments will be $20 lower than last year. And the check I am getting is for $179. So these windfalls won't change my life, but they're mildly interesting.) |
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| Review: The Great American Bus Ride |
[Mar. 24th, 2008|05:26 pm] |
The title intrigued me. So I pulled the book off the library shelf and learned it's about how a woman traveled all around the US (it looks like she went through 45 of the 50 states) on a Greyhound bus.
The front cover promised "a raffish, vital, unpredictable world" "armed only with the bare necessities for life on the road."
So, the sociologist in me likes learning things the easy way, and I thought I might also get some hints on riding the bus.
I enjoy Irma Kurtz's writing. "My first idea had been to travel America by train. When I was a kid, sturdy old pufferbellies still chugged into the boondocks whistling in the night to small-town poets. These days, however, little more than the rails remain. Nailed fast to earth at untold expense of human life, silently they track the immense western spaces. I soon discovered American trains would not take me anywhere obscure, or anywhere much at it seemed, unless I kept going to Chicago first."
Read-aloud writing. The sort of writing to make my own seem a waste of time inspire me.
And I did learn a few things about riding a Greyhound bus. The front seats have the best view but are reserved for the elderly and disabled, otherwise it's first-come-first-served. The last seat, by the bathroom, is for the bad boys (just like in school buses). If you check your bag, it has a way of disappearing somehow. It's okay to eat on board, but most people don't.
It was fun to see what she'd say about the bus depot I know about. She said San Antonio is more like Old Spain than anyplace she's been, including Old Spain.
And it's fun to see how she wrote about the Florida Keys after I'd just done the same thing myself. "Highway 1 strings its Keys into a necklace of odd beads adrift between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. Key Largo, Marathon Key, No Name Key, Duck Key, and all the others: a seductive voice sings out from their weather-beaten holiday charms lining the highway, but it is also rather doomful on the sly [because you can't help thinking about all the hurricanes that have passed through]."
Mostly I was disappointed. The poor woman almost never got off the bus other than to get a good night's sleep. She amused herself by looking out the windows and listening to the other passengers. She likes the stories, but they're mostly just hints of stories. She likes being on the road, but it seems such a waste to be so near so many things, and then just ride right by them. She would even see opportunities for adventures presenting themselves, but then ignore them.
She describes why she liked it, though, like this: "Only in American do things occasionally pan out as we imagine they will when we are young. There really are still cowboys to be found in a wildish west, and resident philosophers in North Dakota bookstores. Hollywood is full of movie stars. On Middle American farmlands, religious sects endure as nowhere else and against all time and reason. ..."
Maybe I'm just too close to the subject matter. The author had been living in England for a long time before deciding to come over and explore her roots.
Well, she's written other things. I may check them out.
**
In other news, remember how I got annoyed with my online savings account for always lagging behind the others, so I opened a new account with one of the more profitable companies? Well, my old company jumped out in front of my new company. Actually, my new company plummeted faster than my old one until now it's worse. Dang. But today I found a way to link the accounts directly so that money can be transferred directly between them instead of to my checking account first.
Also, I mailed in my tax returns. It's one thing to basically finish them, but another to have checked everything, made copies, weighed the envelope, and gotten it mailed.
Finally, yesterday I got one of those scary offers in the mail that they send people with bad credit: This a real $500 check that you can actually cash! And then you can pay 87% interest until you pay it back! So today I requested copies of my credit reports. As soon as you could start getting one free one per year, I decided I probably should, just to make sure everything's in order. But after that first time I never got around to it again until today. Everything's still fine. |
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| Money Making Idea |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|08:28 pm] |
There's nothing like visiting Aunt M and Uncle D to get into the money-making mindset. They love thinking up ways to make money, just like I love thinking up ways to be frugal. And extra money can always come in handy, even for people like me. See, there actually are very expensive things I'd like to be able to have:
* a place in one of those retirement communities where you start out in the active part and then, if you need it, can move to an assisted-living part and finally total nursing care
* a good ballroom dance hall
* a good set of ultimate frisbee fields
* a castle/mansion with plenty of guest rooms, especially if I adopt some lifestyle where I want to host traveling ultimate players, ballroom dancers, SCAdians, or whatever.
Not to mention extreme early retirement.
Not that I think I'm going to be getting any of this, but my point is that having even a rather huge pile of money lying around would not be a problem for me.
Now, one of the things on my list of 100 things to do this year is to brainstorm about ways to make extra money without sinking to the level of accepting part-time work for unreasonably low wages (don't want to encourage those employers). And now, after hanging with M and D and brainstorming on the plane on the way back I have an idea I like. Not because it fulfills any kind of known need or economic empty hole or anything like that; just because it sounds fun and might be of interest to some people.
I am going to make a web site about interesting stuff I learn in the areas of ordinary school subjects and their applications. The main part of it will be a blog where I will regularly add entries on random topics--whatever interests me at the time. I will also list some interesting books, movies, and websites.
In order to do this the way I want to, I'm going to have to learn a lot more stuff.
Here's what I do know:
* ideas for topics
* working title: School Subject Tours (and I'll be known as the tour guide)--this should be something with good key words for searching, and "tour" is a bad key word, but overall this is better than any of the other garbage I've thought of! I could put something about fun learning in the tagline to help with this.
* HTML and CSS (except clickable maps)
* good examples of similar ideas (such as Questionable Content, The Simple Dollar)
* a few hints about where to start looking for an audience (home schoolers, teachers)
* how to find education-related carnivals to contribute to and blogs to comment on in order to gain traffic
* a few clues about relevant issues (posting, commenting, backtracks, spam blocking, feeds)
* ideas for income generation that don't disgust me (ads--probably Google adsense, merchandising, affinity links--probably Amazon)
* a guy who makes drawings I like
Here are some things I still need to figure out:
* how to get a domain name (this should be easy to learn)
* whether I will use blog software--probably WordPress--or a content management system--probably Moodle (I don't have the skills to code everything I want myself; I'll need to figure out what's possible in each, compared to what I want to do, and, if both would work, which is easiest to use, is the best maintained, has the best plug-ins, has the best documentation--both its own and from others, and that sort of thing)
* who will host it (I only know I don't want it to be me; preferably someone cheap, reliable, and with a smooth upgrade path; Robin has some ideas; both WordPress and Moodle have some suggestions)
* how to use the video-taking function of my camera (this should be easy to learn)
* how to turn my videos into something that can be played online (having a Mac as I do should be handy)
* how to make and upload podcasts
* maybe some sort of method for dynamic HTML--probably Javascript (but maybe that's not compatible with WordPress or Moodle--I really don't get any of this right now). I just think it would be cool for people to be able to use their cursors to move things across the screen and stuff.
The set-up will be the worst thing for me. But if I do it right the first time, it will be done and then I can just do the fun stuff.
Any recommendations or advice? |
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| When to Sell at Half-Price |
[Mar. 1st, 2008|06:30 pm] |
So today I sold some more books to Half-Price. In addition to a few bucks, I got a coupon for 10% off my next purchase, or rather any purchase I choose before the November expiration date.
Apparently they like to give little incentives for people to sell their books throughout the year. I asked when they were most likely to sell them. Before the holidays and after the holidays. I'm guessing before the holidays so they can get money for presents. And after the holidays because they have New Years resolutions about cleaning up the house.
So, March 1 is not too early.
That also implies that the best selection would be a just after "just after the holidays." I didn't notice an especially awesome selection today, but then I forgot my list of things I want.
I wonder if similar trends hold at other similarly stocked stores such as consignment shops. |
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| Early Adopter |
[Feb. 25th, 2008|11:30 pm] |
We tried to watch a Blue-Ray movie yesterday. Turns out that those put out by Lion's Gate have a known issue which keeps us from being able to play it with any of the stuff we have. There's some paid version of one of the things that's supposed to work, but we have only the free version.
That's yet another reason I'll never be an early adopter. The other obvious reasons are 1) I'm a cheapskate and 2) I don't like change. However, I also hang around cool people and I'm not an idiot so this trait of mine is not as extreme as it could be.
I do think there might be one area in which I do want to become more of an early adopter, and that's finance. For example, I wish I'd gotten an ING Direct online savings account a bit sooner. And the first I-bonds had really good interest rates (3% or more above inflation). I think new financial instruments have better deals to entice people to try something new. So the trick is to figure out which new things are as good as they look and which are rip-offs or untrustworthy.
Now that I read a bunch of personal finance blogs, I'm in a good position to find these things out the easy way. If I'm good, I'll let you in on all these things.
I don't know of anything that new right now, but I can recommend rewards credit cards (check out a good summary of the best current deals). If you don't buy a lot of stuff, it's not as exciting as if you do, but even I earned $125 in cash back last year. (Yea for putting charitable contributions on your credit card!) This only works if you pay off your whole card on time each month or the interest rates and/or fees will more than devour your rewards.
There's a whole other class of financial stuff I'm just starting to toy with that is attractive to coupon queens and people who put their names on thousands of mailing lists just in order to get free samples of things. So far I'm having a little luck with mypoints.com, which works so long as you don't get sucked into spending your money on the thousands of offers you see. Even I have been sucked in twice: buying a DVD I'd already planned to buy and buying an Entertainment Book, which we sometimes get.
The other similar thing I'm looking into is working the drug store ads. See, for example, CVS 101 for a tutorial on working CVS specials. I don't like enough of the stuff at CVS to have benefited much from this, but it's looks promising, and since Money Saving Mom does all the work, I do keep up with her blog in case one week the perfect things are on special.
Like this month there's a really good deal on Sambucol. Has anyone tried this? And this week there's a sale on the CVS brand of Airborn, too. I've heard some of you talking about Airborn, but what does it do for you?
Today I also asked my credit union about the penalty for early withdrawal from their CDs (actually "certificates"). That has changed since last time I got one--now the penalty is six months interest for CDs with a duration of over six months; in the past that big penalty was only for CDs with a duration of over one year. Shorter-duration CDs have a penalty of three months of interest. And if you haven't yet earned that much interest, you only have to pay all the interest you've earned so far. So, one-year CDs are not as attractive as they once were, although the web CDs do have a significantly higher interest rate than my online savings accounts. I'll have to think about what to do next.
Enough rambling. I'm fluffy-headed again. I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning because it seems like people shouldn't be sick for over two weeks from the flu. Maybe they'll know what's up and magically fix it and then my journal entries will magically become good.
Hey, it's good to think positively. Hush.
P.S. I keep typing "early adapter." Guess that's what it feels like. |
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| How To Make Not Much Money Seem Like Something |
[Feb. 9th, 2008|04:09 pm] |
I've been trying out MyPoints.com lately, one of these marketing companies that give out points, sort of like rewards credit cards, for doing stuff through their website. And they lure you to their website by sending you e-mails about companies and offers, and if you click through to their offer page, you get 5 points just for looking.
If you're poor and can keep from buying things you're looking at, then eventually you can "earn" a gift card. Five points are equivalent to about three cents. So, your hourly salary isn't that great, especially if you spend any time looking around.
But you also get points for actually responding to these offers, and yesterday they were offering two points per dollar spent at Best Buy. And I had just seen that the movie "The Holiday" was on sale (really this time) for $7.49, and so I decided to buy it through their site. Best Buy lets you buy things online and then pick them up at the store. There's all this rigmarole where you have to print out a receipt to bring to the store and retrieve the item(s) you have put on hold. Normally, I'd rather just go to the store. And the extra points were worth maybe a dime, so this was arguably a waste of my time.
Well, today I went to the store, and they had a copy of the movie held for me and I bought it. And I also looked on the shelves to see if there were any other movies I wanted. There weren't. However, the space for "The Holiday" was empty, so if I had not gone through all the silliness, I might not have actually been able to get the movie today. And being able to get the movie feels like something.
And that's true even though I may have done something wrong because there is still no sign that I'm getting 14 extra points at MyPoints. |
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| How To Make a Lot of Money Seem Like Almost Nothing |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|07:14 pm] |
If I think about ways to get more money and then calculate how much that could improve my retirement income, it seems pathetic.
For example, a $600 economic-stimulus check from the IRS can be turned into an increase in retirement income of $2 per month if I retired immediately afterwards.
Mmm. Retiring immediately. (Eats cookie.)
Quote of the Day - "That meeting that you've titled 'Challenges or Opportunities'? Not interested. Unfortunately, I spelled 'no' A-C-C-E-P-T." Since he's my boss. |
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| Done Putting Off Improving My Investments for this Year |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|09:42 pm] |
This year I have already increased my investments in several ways.
1) I have used my newly rolled over Roth IRA money to invest in a nice S&P 500 index fund with no load and very low fees. Sadly, so far my "increase" has been negative. But long-term, this should be good.
2) I have opened a new checking account at my credit union which has an account number that is not the same as my social security number. I have even memorized the new number. I am now less likely to suffer from identity theft. That's a good investment of my time. (I am also using every last one of my old checks before closing my old account, because I am sick that way.)
3) I've sent in the paperwork to change all four automatic deposits and withdrawals that involve my old checking account. (I still have to wait for these and my checks to go through before closing the old account, but that doesn't bother me.)
4) I have opened a new online savings account to earn more interest. I have an account with ING Direct, which I like, but they are getting cocky about their great service and no longer trying so hard to have super high rates. Cocky, snooty, superior, so sure we won't switch that I simply must. So I have opened an account with Emigrant Direct. My new APY was 4.55% compared to 4.10% with ING when I did this (now 4.3 vs. 3.65%), which gains me just over $1 per month with my current $3000, but it's the principle of the thing. If I miss ING Direct's service or they increase their relative rates again, I can come back. I've even linked my new checking account to them and will remove the link to my old account when I close it.
5) I have increased the automatic withdrawal to my old Roth IRA to take advantage of the new maximum.
6) I have found the paperwork for when I replaced my furnace and AC last January and filled in the numbers on the appropriate IRS forms so I can get a tax credit.
7) I have bought a "Hot Fuzz" DVD, season 2 of "My Name Is Earl," and a copy of The New Central Texas Gardener as investments in my future happiness.
Except for #7, these are all annoying little tasks that are easy to put off. I have finished putting them off and have actually done them and checked them off my list and that feels good. |
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| It Is My Duty to Buy Pizza |
[Jan. 26th, 2008|08:15 pm] |
There's a tax rebate proposed to help boost our economy. Although I think this is a stupid idea, of all the stupid things for people to do with money they don't have, handing it over to me has a certain appeal.
I find myself trying to imagine what, in the minds of those who thought up this idea, the most patriotic thing for me to do with this money would be. I know some of the answers.
Spend or save? Spend. Immediately.
Domestic or foreign? Domestic.
I don't know some of the others.
Spend it all in one place or spread it around?
Goods or services?
I guess it would help if it went to someone who would then spend patriotically themselves. I could double my impact this way! So maybe certain kinds of donations would be good. I bet a woman's shelter would use it right away to pay rent and buy things like toiletries. Oh, and clothing and energy (probably foreign).
According to Snow Crash, what Americans do best is deliver pizza. And pizza delivery guys don't make an awful lot of money, though they they tend to make above minimum wage. Still, relatively low salaries plus getting paid in cash makes it more likely that they will spend their money again fairly quickly.
But it could take a long time to buy $600 worth of pizza, even with really big tips. I could speed that up by having pizza parties. And treating everyone at work to pizza a few times. I could also buy some for those abused women and for homeless shelters.
Yes, that is my final answer.
**
In real life, if this really happens, I will spend the money, but not any time soon. I'm thinking of either applying it all to retirement funds or adding some or all of it to my renovation fund. |
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| Preliminary Income Tax Calculations |
[Jan. 21st, 2008|07:25 pm] |
Today I did the hardest part of my taxes which was to find my receipt for my new AC that was installed a year ago and figure out how to get the tax credits. While doing that, I discovered that if the new doors we installed are Energy Star, and I can find the receipt, I can claim even more.
I can now enter all the big numbers for this year and pencil in estimates for the other numbers. It looks like I will be getting a refund of hundreds of dollars this year. I'm used to having to pay a little, but I guess catching up on two years of donations in one year plus getting the tax breaks on the AC plus still getting to deduct a portion of sales taxes all adds up. Nice.
The tax credits will go back into my housing upkeep budget. The extra part, hmm. Housing renovations? Or retirement? Or some of each? |
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| Building Biceps |
[Dec. 30th, 2007|07:08 pm] |
Today I walked to Target as an excuse to walk, to get "The Holiday" for $10, and to check out the Christmas cards on clearance.
I did walk, though the whole trip turned out to be only 4,000 steps.
"The Holiday" is on sale for $13+, so I must have been remembering the wrong sale flyer.
I got 25 big red envelopes for $1.25, telling myself that I can make my own cards next year and slide them into these. I also got a bag of miniature peanut butter cups for less than $0.70. And I also found a container of scent-free liquid laundry detergent that will do 38 loads of laundry for $4. So I got four of them.
They were kind of heavy. I thought to myself "I'm building character" as I walked home.
Then, written as if to help me put that into perspective, I found Moving By Bus. 'Maybe "Buy Nothing Day' should be changed to "Move everything you own one block without the use of a motor vehicle, and then see if you really need any more so-called 'bargains'" day.'
Man, that's good.
And I probably don't need the bag of candies, even though it's such an exciting bargain, eh? |
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| Rolling Over Retirement Money |
[Dec. 27th, 2007|04:14 pm] |
A very good thing to do when you leave an employer where you had a retirement account is to roll that account over into an IRA. This gives you a lot more control over your money and gives you a lot more options.
There are some exceptions, of course, but none of those apply to me. I finally rolled my pension money from when I worked for the state into an IRA. That money was earning 5% with no fees, which is actually pretty good, relatively speaking. Still, surely I can do better, right?
Now if I ever went back to work for the state, I could have used that money to increase my pension and retire more quickly. However, credit from my current job could be converted and the fine print of the rules means I currently have double credit for the short time I was at that state job, so I may as well cash out that extra money from the state and, if I get a job with them in the future, start over.
After rolling the pension funds into an IRA, I thought I'd like to convert the IRA to a Roth IRA. That means I pay income taxes on the money now but then I'm done paying income taxes on that money forever (according to current rules). The amount of money is low, so it's easy for me to pay all the taxes now (you can convert just part of it each year if you can't afford to convert the whole thing). I don't see income taxes as going anywhere but up the future (both tax rates and my income), so I may as well pay them now while they're cheap.
However, I waited rather late to even begin the process. Will I finish by the end of the year?
12/7-turned in form to state, requesting the rollover
12/12-received letter stating that my request had been approved
12/13-received another letter stating that I would be receiving a check
12/19-received check (to my broker for the benefit of me)
12/20-went to my broker with form to make sure I was doing everything right. I had the wrong form and learned I need the SSN of my beneficiary before I can fill out the form.
12/21-I had the number but forgot to bring it with me to work. That was the last of work this year.
12/27-went to broker again to turn in the completed form. He said I could fill out the conversion form online. I called my broker from home when I couldn't find it and he led me to it. Turns out you can't fill it out online, you can only find it online, print it out, and send it in, just like the other form. So I get to go back tomorrow. Wiener head.
If I do finish in time, I'm going to catch up on all my charitable contributions before the end of the year so that my deductions cancel out this pension income. If not, I'll catch up on all but this year's, and make those next month, again so that my deductions can cancel out the income from the conversion.
**
I had a lovely time riding the buses today. I got out in time to catch the 12:08 #37 Windsor Park to my broker downtown. Then I caught the first bus heading back north, the #1L Lamar, which let me off right at Wheatsville Food Coop. I bought too much stuff to fit into the backpack I brought and had to get an extra bag.
The walk from there to the #7 Duval was a lot longer than I thought it would be once I was carrying 30 pounds of stuff, but at least it was pretty. And of course the walk from where it dropped me off back home was longish and less pretty, but I was prepared for that.
And now I have macaroni and cheese and chocolate chips and sugar and paper goods and milk and yogurt and cheese. |
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| Sub-Prime Philanthropy |
[Dec. 20th, 2007|07:21 pm] |
I got the most hilarious request for donations today from the Rude Mechanicals, a local theatre group.
The front is a full-color page titled "Sub-Prime Philanthropy." It compares this concept to sub-prime lending in three ways.
1. "In sub-prime lending, a lender offers an enormous amount of money for an initially low monthly payment." [Picture of smiling young guy in a suit with a big wad of cash, a cigar, and one raised eyebrow.] "In sub-prime philanthropy, a charity offers a vision of enormous impact for an initially modest donation." [Graph of vision (in tera-wows) compared to units of generosity.]
2. "In sub-prime lending, the borrower's initially low monthly payments quickly balloon, due to any number of factors: changes in the APR, hidden penalties, or automatic refinancing. In sub-prime philanthropy, the patron's initially modest gift is met with ever-increasing demands due to cost overruns, the failure of the U.S. government to support the arts, legacy fixation, or megalomania."
That is so true! So many charities say you can make a really big difference for only, say $25, but once you donate they keep asking for more and more, and they beg you more and more often. It's to the point where I mostly only donate anonymously through JustGive just so those guys won't get my contact information.
I'm afraid I'm not going to donate anything to the Rude Mechanicals as a result of this mail. But I may start throwing around the term "sub-prime philanthropy."
(Note: the next piece of mail I opened was an offer for a credit card which is fee-free for the first year, "a savings of $95," and which offers 5 points for every dollar you spend at various places until 5/31/08. It's a sub-prime credit card!)
I'm not happy with the term sub-prime for these types of things though. It's more like what drug dealers do (first try is free!). Is there a name for that sort of marketing? If so, I'd rather use that term. |
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| The Past and Future of a Five-Dollar Bill |
[Nov. 1st, 2007|05:09 pm] |
Today I found a wadded up five-dollar bill on one of the landings of one of the sets of stairs heading up to where I work this morning.
How did it get there?
I am a terrible detective (I never properly deduce endings of mysteries), but it's good to practice.
Since it was wadded up, I'm going to guess it was stuffed into a tight pocket, perhaps someone's front pants pocket. Guys are more likely to have pants pockets than gals, so there's another guess. It might have been stuffed there because he was in a hurry. Since it was right out in plain sight, I'll guess it wasn't there long, so it was dropped earlier this morning than I found it, not the night before.
So, he paid $10 for a bagel or fancy coffee and got $5 plus change and stuffed it in his pocket. (No ones were wadded up with the five.)
Then, on the stair landing, he suddenly decided to pull something else out of his pocket which he had put in there before he'd stuffed the five in there, and so the money fell out. I'm going to guess a cell phone. Someone called, he pulled out out the phone to talk and kept walking, still in a hurry.
By the time I arrived, no one was around.
So now I'm thinking it would be fun to get myself something special with this. What special things can you get for five dollars?
My first thought is that I don't want anything. Yeah, right. I buy stuff all month long because I don't want anything?
Then I thought I could buy a book. A used book for cheap plus $3 for media shipping, and there's the five bucks. I can't think of a book I'm dying to have just now, though (that I or Robin don't already have).
Then I thought of fancy ribbon. I could get that wide ribbon with wire in the edges to wrap presents with, in some colors that go with grocery-bag brown.
I'm going to think a little longer and see if I can come up with something even more special. |
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| Review: The Feminine Mistake |
[Oct. 29th, 2007|09:09 pm] |
I just finished reading Leslie Bennetts' The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? It's about how women who are thinking of staying home with the kids should be sure to take into account the financial ramifications of that decision - it's hard to get back into the workforce after you've been out for a while.
I picked it up because I thought it might have some interesting tips on getting back into the workforce. Wrong.
I did learn a few things, though. One survey showed that only 74% of off-ramped women who want to go back to work do so, and among those, only 40% return to full-time professional jobs. (p. 78)
The author argues that although it is difficult to work and raise children at the same time, it's very rewarding, and it gets easier as time goes by.
She also talks about the problems of being economically dependent. If something happens to your spouse, such as death or divorce or turning into a jerk, you are in trouble.
Another study showed that employed moms have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, lower weights and less depression than stay-at-home moms. (p. 195) That definitely surprises me.
She concludes by saying that the reality of women jumping out of the workforce whenever things get the least bit hard is going to set back the gains made in women's rights. And instead, we should all be fighting for changing the workplace to make working and parenting less incompatible for everyone. Men aren't doing it because when things get rough for them, they can ask their wives to stay home.
I don't like her ideas, mostly making the government let people take leave more often and making someone subsidize child care.
One could say that just like stay-at-home moms, I have let down the feminists of the 'sixties by not making use of my full potential, by instead taking the easy route of a nice, cushy state job instead of powering my way into a job that can make a real difference. This could be the kind of book that changes my life. Sadly, I doubt it.
This author is too biased for my tastes but makes good points. I recommend it to people who are thinking of sitting out of the job force for a while. If you're a man thinking of sitting out of the job force, this will be harder to read but still valuable.
One more thing, she mentioned an article I really like the title of: Nora "Ephron's "Twenty-Five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to be Surprised By Over and Over Again."
Before I read it, here are some things I thought of that might fit in that category.
* Things break.
* Traffic can be bad. People can cut you off!
* Morning comes early.
* Everybody dies.
* Things wear out.
* Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches taste good.
Okay, maybe those are just me. |
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