Everybody Loves Your Money

I finally blocked out a bit of time to take an early look at our taxes now that all of our W2’s and 1099’s have arrived. I haven’t bought the 2009 Turbotax software yet so I decided to just quickly punch all the numbers in to the Turbotax website with bogus personal information. With both my wife and I working and online income, it has pushed us up in to a higher tax bracket. As I entered just my income information, Turbotax was showing we’d be getting over $5K back with std deductions. Once I added my wife’s income and online income in, we went in to the negative territory. Luckily we both increased our withholding through the year to cover the online income that we have to report. We could have made the estimated tax payments every quarter but, frankly, I hate doing that so I opted to just crank up our withholding. In the end it appears to have worked out. After throwing in all of our mortgage interest deductions, property taxes, sales taxes etc, we are now looking at an estimated $400-600 refund. That’s the first year in a few that we’ll actually be getting money back. Of course it’s best to try to zero out on your taxes so that the government isn’t getting an interest free loan, but based on the amount of taxes we paid this year, I’d say a $600 margin of error was pretty good!

Of course, I won’t know for sure what the real number is until I shell out the cash for the latest Turbotax version. I won’t do that until I see a screaming deal on it!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year. It’s been quite a year on the economic front. I hope you have weathered the storms! If you haven’t, may 2010 bring you new prosperity and great opportunities!

Merry Christmas!!!

On a separate but related note. I just checked outside and, unfortunately, Santa did not leave a new BMW or Lexus in the driveway with a large bow on it. Oh well. Who gets those????

I have to admit I’m a bit of a Facebook junkie after signing up a couple months ago. I received an email today from a friend on Facebook that looked legit and told me to click on a link:

Here is what the email said:

Julie sent you a message.

Subject: Hello

“Visit http://www.facebook.com/l/0a60b;http://fbactin.net/”

I removed the “O” from the url so that no one gets hit. It’s amazing how fast this thing is spreading. Anyway, just a heads up that you should avoid this message if you are a Facebook user. The site that it loads looks exactly like Facebook but if you look at the address bar in your browser you’ll notice you aren’t at Facebook.com any more. I did a “whois” check on the domain name and was surprised it looks like the record was created TODAY and is already spreading like wildfire.

The domain to avoid at this point is: fbaction . net. I’m guessing that domain will change as it’s pretty easy to alter as many viruses do. If the domain was just registered today, it’s likely this domain will change as the phishing attempt evolves.

I didn’t mention it in January, but this marks the fourth year that I’ve been blogging on Everybody Loves Your Money. It’s amazing how far the personal finance blogging world has come since I started. I remember back when there was a much smaller number of personal finance blogs. Now, I have trouble keeping up with all of them.

While I haven’t been as active a blogger as many of my peers, I have enjoyed writing and hope that there have been a few stories or posts that people have connected with. I think this blog has been therapeutic for me as I work through the daily grind of managing our finances as well as life in general.

For all of you that have been reading ELYM over the last four years, I just want to say thank you. Thanks for your comments and thanks for your time!

Today was one of those days that you remember for the rest of your life and I didn’t spend a nickel all day.  Up here in the Pacific Northwest the weather has been a little abnormal.  By that I mean that it snowed.  It has been cold for a week and we even saw temperatures in the single digits overnight in a couple areas.  With all this cold it was only a matter of time before we got a decent snow storm.  Today was the day.  School was canceled for our daughter (in kindergarten) so she spent a few hours at a friends of ours while we worked.  I took off early today to help my wife get home from work (it continued to snow and driving was getting challenging).

To say that people freak out here when it snows is putting it very mildly.  You’d think it was nuclear fallout the way the news was covering it.  One of the local channels preempted all programming all day to cover the “Winter Blast”.  It’s always humorous to see how everyone responds to snow here.

Anyway, I went and picked up my daughter from our friends, came home and after we warmed up, we headed over to her elementary school where they have some nice big hills on the playground.  That ends up being the best place in the whole area to go sledding so we weren’t alone.  There were probably about 30 other kids there but there was plenty of room for everyone.  My daughter and I had a BLAST screaming down the hill over and over. She’s 5 and this was her first year of really getting crazy on a sled.  She’s fearless.  I was wiped out (tired) long before she was so I spent time talking to various other parents that were there.  All the while the snow kept coming down.  It was really amazing.  The time I spent with her today was priceless (no Mastercard required).  Just seeing her playing like a kid should, without a fear in the world, was something that you can’t even put a price on.

I was also fortunate to talk to a couple friends that have the same financial point of view as me.  The concepts of “living within your means” and “investing for your future” were the central themes of our conversations.  I can tell that we’ll have some great conversations in the future.

A bit about them:

I’d guess they’ve been married for about ten years

3 kids

1400 square foot house

Mid 90’s Dodge Caravan

86 Honda Accord

Stay at home mom who watches kids before and after school for extra income

He’s an engineer at a large company

Absolutely no debt and they live well within their means.

As Jim and I were talking the subject drifted towards the current economic events.  We both discussed the overall state of things and both agreed that it isn’t the stock market that is causing the economic crisis but rather it’s the fear that everyone feels from seeing the events of the stock market and real estate market unfold (and not being very well prepared for it).  The reality is that people are scared and they aren’t spending like they were.  We both lamented about the fact that as people started saving some of their money instead of spending it, they were pulling us long term savers down with them.  Sarcastically we came to the conclusion that rather than try to get people to save their money like we both had done for years we now needed to tell everyone to treat themselves.  It’s time to tell everyone to go back to living beyond their means.  Maybe if they all get back to that state of denial, us long term savers can finally start seeing some improvements all around us.  </sarcasm>

Here’s a picture of our daughter playing in the snow:

Now that our daughter is in kindergarten we’ve discovered a whole new society.  Before we had a child that was in school, we never really saw the elementary school society that has been active all around us.  We haven’t really met a ton of people yet (mostly just chit chat), but the school and the PTA have all kinds of activities for us to attend.

Last night we attended a movie night in the gym.  The cost to attend the movie was $1 per person and they were also selling popcorn, candy and water.  Popcorn and candy was .50 each and the water was a dollar.  For a fun night (at least for our daughter) the total cost was $3 for the movie and $1.50 for refreshments.

Before being involved in the school, we would have gone to a movie and spent 5-10 times that amount.  Our daughter much preferred going to the school to watch the movie because she got to sit with her new friends and run around a bit.

So, as we try to spend less money, we’ll definitely be involved in most of the school activities.  The best part is that the money they raise goes directly to the classrooms to support further activities.  It really ends up being a “win/win” situation.

Don’t forget to VOTE!

Having someone show up and build a beautiful new home for you is a lot like winning the lottery.  Some people handle these  windfalls better than others.  In the case of this house, Dawne Kirkwood just couldn’t manage to keep it when she and her husband divorced.  In Washington state everything is split down the middle during a divorce so the house has to be sold so that each of the adults can get their share.  Dawne was right when she stated in the article, that they should have put the home in a trust for the children.  It’s a shame that the parent’s can’t both agree to do that now.

It sure seems to be that people who find themselves with a large windfall definitely have more trouble maintaining that level of wealth than someone who has worked for all of it.

The pull to spend money never ceases.  As concerned as I am about the overall economy, you’d think I’d be sitting in my home letting the cash pile up from cracking down on our spending.  It’s just not that easy.  I’ve been conditioned over a long period of time to crave things.  What kind of things?  The standard stuff.  I’d love to buy a new mini laptop to wander around the house with, as if being glued to the computer in my office for 12 hours a day isn’t enough.  I’d also love to upgrade my wife’s car.  We’ve owned it since 2000 (for the most part), and it is showing it’s age.  I’d also like to get the better gas mileage that a 4 cylinder Honda Accord would offer.  I bet I’ve looked at Craigslist about 20 times to see what’s out there.  The thing is, I’m not going to buy one.  It makes absolutely no sense to shell out $17-18K to buy a one year old Honda when we have a car that starts and runs just fine each day.  It’s really kind of pathetic that I’m still feeling the urge to upgrade.

Yesterday we had a new timing belt, water pump, fan belts, and front seals installed in the Honda.  It has 93,000 miles on it and it was overdue for the timing belt replacement.  Total cost for the repair work: $893.  Ouch.  Oh, we had the oil changed as well.  I also waxed both the cars last weekend so we should feel pretty good about driving these cars for the foreseeable future.  So, both our cars are running fine so why do I still feel the desire to drive a newer car?  Like I said, pathetic.

In general I’m starting to feel like a QVC addicted shopper except my addiction is the Internet.  (Gosh it’s easy to find stuff to "want" on the Internet)  I guess I should feel good that I’m at least recognizing the ridiculous thoughts I’m having.  The whole thing furthers my belief that, unchecked, we are all consumers and need to control what we consume for our own financial well being as well as for the good of the earth in general.  Anyway, just a bit of ranting for a Friday.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this or not previously, but our friends have decided to sell their house and buy a larger house that will accommodate their growing family.  When I first heard that they were going to sell I thought, "Those poor bastards.  In this market that’s going to be an ugly proposition."  Well, boy was I wrong.  They put a contingent offer in on a house and then immediately put their home on the market.  Incredibly they sold their house in one day and had to choose from two full price offers.  The amazing thing is that they got top dollar for it as well.  Apparently the neighborhood that they live in, in the north area of Seattle near the University of Washington is a very desirable place.  I had no idea.  So, if you are thinking about putting your house on the market and live in a high demand area, you just may be in luck.

Happy Friday!!

As I watch the meltdown of major financial firms I’m paying particularly close attention to WAMU.  They have a huge presence where I’m at and many thousands of people work for them around here.  At one point I considered being a customer of Washington Mutual before I discovered credit unions.

A few years ago, a friend of mine worked at my company and was concerned he could be facing a layoff.  He never actually got the layoff notice but the stress of knowing it might be around the corner finally drove him to look for another job.  He ended up taking a job at Washington Mutual.  Ironically, he was laid off from there after roughly one year.  He ended up taking a second job at WAMU but quickly found himself wondering if that had been the right choice.  In the end, he took a new job back at my company and is very happy here now.  I learned a valuable lesson from his experience.  Sometimes the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.  Unfortunately when you get over to the other side of the fence you find that it has been spray painted green and isn’t quite as green as you thought.

He is very glad he came back to our company.  If he had stayed there he most certainly would be facing a layoff or would have already been laid off.  While our company does have layoffs sometimes he is in a much more secure environment for now.