Queercents

If you are sending books or other media through the USPS, media mail can be an inexpensive shipping option, but there are restrictions on the service that aren’t always obvious. Jack at the WROX P.O. gave us the lowdown on Media Mail when we asked why it wasn’t available via the self-serve kiosk in the lobby (causing us to endure a 20 minute wait in line).

Media mail can be used to send *only* appropriate media (so don’t mix your packages…one book in a box of stuff doesn’t make the package media mail eligible) and what surprised me was that media that contains advertising is NOT eligible for media mail. This means you cannot send magazines via media mail (and if you add magazines to a package with books…no media mail!) which was news to me.

Sure enough the USPS website does state the no-advertising restriction:

[Content:] Generally used for books (at least eight pages), film (16 mm or narrower), printed music, printed test materials, video and sound recordings, playscripts, printed educational charts, loose-leaf pages and binders consisting of medical information, and computer-readable media. Sound recordings may include incidental announcements of recordings and guides or scripts prepared solely for use with such recordings. Books may contain no advertising other than incidental announcements of other books.

[emphasis mine]

The media mail stamp now contains a notice that media mail is subject to inspection so they can enforce these restrictions. Which makes a certain amount of sense, but the bears are really out of control lately.

Since we are on the “budget plan” my gas company reevaluates my usage every four months and fiddles with my monthly charge (some budget, huh?)

In October our gas bill went from around $130 to our new rate of $151. We tried to keep our heat off for all of October (almost made it) and we kept the thermostat lower than ever before.

Our efforts have paid off since our new amount, as of March, will be $103! I know that natural gas prices have decreased a bit, but we decreased our usage majorly this year. And we have the hat-head to prove it.

This will be a $48 savings per month for four months, but I will keep an eye on it. Now that we have some savings built up I’m not so sure I’m loving the “budget” plan since it really is never a set monthly amount for a full year. If the balance keeps tipping in our favor I will probably switch back to just paying what we owe each month. Or move to California.

A year ago today I made my first post (2005…The Year of Finances) so I guess that means this is my bloggiversary or blog birthday or some such thing. I haven’t accomplished everything I set out to last year (still closing in on that emergency fund and I haven’t checked my credit report yet) but I’ve made some decent progress since I had my “Aha!” moment at the very beginning of 2005.

I started blogging because I wanted a more emotional record of what I was attempting than Quicken could give me. I thought that by making my intentions somewhat public that I’d hold myself more accountable (it works for me). And I also wanted to break the silence that many women seem to have when it comes to talk about money.

A brief look back on the year…

Aha! (A prequel)
It was a few days into 2005 when my 2004 bonus check arrived with my paystub. As I looked at the after tax amount my heart sunk because it was nowhere near enough to pay off the $14,000 in credit card debt that we had incurred. I’ll spare you the gory details but what really sunk in was that I alone had the power to make sure I never received a windfall like that again…and felt disappointed. Things were gonna change and change fast.

Credit Card Debt
When I started “The Year of Finances” we had $14k in credit card debt. Shortly thereafter I started blogging and it was down to $11k. I had the credit cards paid off by March, but used a card to borrow money to fully fund my 2004 Roth and that took another few months to pay off. It’s been $0 since then because we pay the credit card off every month.

Savings
A year ago I had no non-retirement savings. Our emergency fund is now at $7800 (as of today) and we have about $700 set aside already earmarked for vacations, big ticket house items, and gifts. We are regularly saving tax-deferred retirement, tax-free retirement and regular taxable amounts and we continually strive to save a larger portion of our income.

Roth IRA
I had opened a Roth IRA with $2000 several years ago and had not contributed since because I was favoring the tax deductions of maximizing my 401(k) contribution. Last year I got “Roth Religion” in time and I was able to max out both the 2004 and (just recently) the 2005 investing $7000 total in my Roth over the last year.

I’m not out here blogging as some paragon of financial stability. I’m attempting to use this blog to share successes as well as missteps in a search for community. I want to learn from others, cheer on the struggles of those in debt, make some friends, and I hope that I have a few useful things to share now and then.

I still have a long road to travel to get where I want to be…I have far too much junk in the nether regions of my house, I have a backlog of posts that seems endless, and I still struggle with the feeling of “enough”.

But it’s still been a great year and I thank every one of you that drops by. And yes, I get like this on MY birthday too

[Coincidentally I seem to have picked an auspicious date to begin since this also happens to be Consumerism Commentary's bloggiversary...the 6th to be exact! Congratulations, Flexo!]

Jonathan put out the call for our financial mistakes and has built quite an interesting little “reverse carnival” showcasing our combined blunders. Whether you read them as a cautionary tale or just want to enjoy a little schadenfreude you’re bound to get something good out of it.

If you don’t then all our woe has been for naught

A few weeks ago I posted my price comparisons for tax preparing and filing options. This is primarily of interest to those with an AGI above $50k as there are plenty of free options for the rest of you folks

I was excited to find an option that would only cost me $9.95 total to prepare and e-file both my federal and state returns. The only requirement was that I completed my returns prior to February 15th.

The main problem with eSmartTax is that I could rarely move to the next page in my preparation process due to a server side timeout. What that indicates is that they do not have a powerful enough setup to handle the demand and the result is a service that is all but inaccessible. I tried the service before January 31st, I tried it in the middle of a weekday afternoon and I tried it late at night. I always had difficulties with pages timing out. I was able to get most of my information in on one lucky attempt but have been unable to fill in some gaps now that all my documents have arrived and after multiple attempts I am giving up and will choose another method.

Even if their servers were humming along I found other issues with eSmartTax that would prevent me from recommending it. The company that runs eSmartTax apparently got it’s start providing electronic versions of forms inside applications like Microsoft Word…and it shows! The interface struck me as such a mid-90’s approach and very dated. If I wanted to just fill out tax forms, I’d do it on paper….with a pencil! To me, the power of tax software is an ability to guide a lay person through the filling out of the forms through questions and a clean interface. If you are very comfortable with tax forms, eSMartTax’s forms may not be a problem but for the average person I thought this poor interface was not worth the few dollars potentially saved.

And finally, any tax-filing site that hides their customer service contact information under the site map is bozo-tastic in my book. That’s just a deal-breaker.

I have had the hardest time starting this post because I feel I have made so many mistakes along the way where do I begin? I decided to concentrate on the mistakes that I made because I was procrastinating, not paying attention and/or in denial (and I still had to narrow it down!). I follow up each blooper with the lessons I think I learned that apply to me personally. Each person is unique, so my version of the lesson may not be what you take away. Feel free to comment below!

Iomega Stock
A little over 10 years ago I spent $3000 to purchase 500 shares of IOM at $6. I knew nothing about investing and I probably didn’t have $3000 to spare either. But I loved their products at the time and I took a naive plunge. This wouldn’t have been so bad if I had actually watched the stock. It was my only investment and I really didn’t latch on to a good way of monitoring it. I just *ignored* it. Completely. For six years.

I suddenly “remembered” I had the stock when I was looking to buy a house. Luckily I was able to sell for just about $6 and get my money back out, but in the mean time the stock went way up. I have no idea when I would have chosen to sell had I been watching the stock, but I am SURE I would have sold at some point in there and made SOME money (Zip and Jaz quickly lost their lustre once CD burners started showing up). The worst part is I probably was carrying credit card debt during this time. Double Whammy!

Lessons Learned:

1. I should invest - outside of retirement funds - only after saving an emergency fund and having no other debt other than my mortgage. (Current target is Q4 this year)
2. I should learn how to evaluate stock based on company financials (not solely my enthusiasm for a company)
3. I should have a clear plan for each stock I buy (buy and hold for a year, long term, etc)
4. No matter what my plan for a certain stock, I should always be aware of it’s performance so I can be flexible

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Rollover Procrastination
When I left my first tech job in 1999 I just left my money in their 401(k) plan. And once again I sort of “forgot” about it (you sense a theme, do you?). While I was ignoring my first portfolio, not only did I change addresses without notifying them, but my former employer changed 401(k) custodians to Putnam, making even more of a mess of which I remained blissfully(?) unaware. Due to those changes, I didn’t get statements, had no idea how to access my account online or otherwise…and I made no move to fix that.In 2002 I had another obvious opportunity to consolidate when my employer went out of business. I rolled my at-the-time-current 401(k) into a new rollover IRA at Calvert and I even went so far as to aquire the form I’d need to reclaim my first 401(k). I was unemployed for a year, it’s not like I didn’t have the time to fill out the paperwork. To this day I have no idea why I procrastinated that task.I finally snagged this money almost a year ago and opened up my new Fidelity rollover IRA. When I looked at my holdings I realized that when they moved my account to putnam they used an out of date allocation scheme…ugh. It’s hard to calculate what part of the loss was just the tech bubble and what part was neglect but I lost about a quarter of my portfolio. Ouch.

Lessons Learned:

1. I need to always stay in control and aware of my own money
2. Procrastination has potentially cost me significant money, I gotta stop!

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Not Living Below My Means and Saving
This is really the kicker. Though I have been saving at least some money for retirement since the mid-90’s other than that we have been living AT or slightly ABOVE our means…usually carrying balances on credit cards. I did this my entire adult life up until last year. Every time we would feel like we were about to get ahead financially something would happen to keep us in the hole.An example is that we had finally saved up about $10k in a very short time in order to buy a house. We were able to find a home that was in the popular neighborhood we liked. It needed a fair amount of work so it was affordably priced. Prices were rising fast so we felt a little pressured to buy quickly or be priced out of where we wanted to live (as had already happened with our current rental neighborhood). With our combined income of ~ $140k our mortgage payments and impending improvement costs were well within our reach. We used our meager savings and creative loans to set up the purchase of the house - a 2 month process. The week before our closing, LaLa was laid off from the company we both worked for and we found ourselves on the raw end of the tech bubble with a market glutted with web designers and our income slashed by more than 40%. Through our original loan we were able to complete the planned major work (the kitchen was not usable when we bought…literally) but without other significant savings to weather that economic downturn we’ve been struggling to dig ourselves out of a hole since. (It got even worse the following year, but I won’t go into that here!)Buying the house in and of itself was not a financial mistake (it was actually a decent investment) but an example of how I always thought I was making sound financial decisions (a mortgage we can afford on one salary! Highly appreciating area!) but without solid savings to fall back on, I only understood half the picture. Since I wasn’t really prepared financially for the unexpected I was always left feeling like I could never get ahead. This has been going on my entire adult life until about a year ago when I finally looked at our $14,000 credit card debt and had an “Aha!” moment.

Lessons Learned:

1. It is entirely within my power to stop the feeling of “never getting ahead”, I simply had to make a choice to do it
2. I now choose to have a liquid “emergency fund” to help us weather the unexpected
3. One of the fastest ways for us to accumulate savings is to reduce expenses and continually live below our means
4. Living below our means isn’t onerous, but it does take perseverance and it’s sort of fun
5. In order to live below our means, we must understand both inflows and outflows and make conscious choices with our mutual goals in mind. (And never again allow ignorance or denial to dictate our spending)

Anyway that’s a rambly bit of shadenfraude for you to enjoy…

Though I haven’t had much time to post this past week I have been keeping up with what the cool kids have been up to. Cap started it all by showing us his and he’s inspired several of us to join the fun by opening our wallets to show what’s inside.

Why is this “fun”? Because we are voyeuristic money geeks with an impish streak - oh wait…maybe that’s just me….

I carry my wallet in my left front pocket so I strive to keep it slim. I cleaned it out before the holidays (mostly to remove business travel related items). So here is what is currently in my wallet:

• Drivers license
• Citi Dividend MasterCard
• Discover Card (to take advantage of their periodic 5% reward promos)
• AAA Card (used more for discounts than roadside maintenance these days)
• ATM Card
• Health Insurance Card
• Auto Policy Wallet Card
• UnumProvident Employee Assistance Card
• LaLa’s Business Card (I always carry at least one)
• Business Card of my prom date whom I saw at reunion and is a great guy (I need to email him!)
• Fortune Cookie Fortune that reads: “You are about to receive a big compliment” [in bed...har har] a slightly humorous memento of good laughs (and yummy PF Chang’s food) on my last project — I totally forgot I had that in there.

I rarely carry cash but when I do it’s in a silver money clip and goes in my right front pocket (chances are if you’ve been to a chiropractor you won’t ever carry your wallet in your back pocket again…) I carry my wallet in my pocket because I am not a “purse-carrying” kind of gal. And yes, that is probably a euphemism

When I go on business trips I will carry only one card for personal use (just in case) like the Citi Dividend and I will carry at least one card I only use for business expenses (typically American Express Delta Gold). During projects it’s also common for me to carry some sort of loyalty card for a yummy nearby eatery (like Slope’s!)

Other things that I have, that most people carry in their wallets and I don’t:

• Library Card - LaLa carries it in her wallet. I have the member number saved in firefox so I just request books, then we almost always go to pick them up together. Sometimes I just borrow it.
• Grocery/Pharmacy Cards - whatever you call those things with the bar codes that get you discounts…we have all the keychain versions on a small keychain in the car. When we are shopping it’s never farther away than the parking lot
• Finagle-a-Bagel loyalty card - also in the car. yum. and if you don’t have one, why must you hate freedom?
• Dental Insurance Card - the dentist has a copy on file so I don’t need to carry it

Now all we need to do is start “tagging” other bloggers (as in “you’re it!”) and we can be just like the 4 Things meme….

The Travelgnome let me know that Zillow.com, a new home valuation site, launched today. He saw the article on CNNMoney and passed it along. Apparently Zillow in it’s beta state was completely unprepared for the onslaught of traffic and was offline most of the day. This was frustrating just because I was dying to check them out. But I forgive them (been there…it’s not pleasant) and they do seem to be stable now.

Zillow aims to empower buyers, sellers and homeowners in the realm of real estate…and they are starting by providing a robust and flexible tool for home valuation. Aside from the implications for buying and selling real estate, if you are a homeowner trying to track your networth, this is sexy stuff.

No more wading through sites that solely treat you as a sales lead for real estate agents or mortgages…and no more huge meaningless range from HomeValueBot. Zillow formulates your initial “Zestimate” based on comps (comparable recent home sales) but they allow you to leverage your unique knowledge of your property to “tweak” the value. You can further qualify your results by adding certain home improvements and even noting things that would reduce the value of your home (say, if you needed a new roof). And you can even choose your own comps…since of course you know your neighborhood best.

According to the CNN article they also factor in variables that affect the entire market (such as current interest rates) so you have a pretty good shot at a decent valuation if your data is accurate and they have good data coverage for your area.

I am really excited that someone is finally attempting to do what Domania promised when they launched in 2000. I worked for Domania back then and we had built a promising valuation tool that was recently taken offline that I miss every time I have been forced to settle for HomeValueBot. I think Zillow is my new crush.

I love when My Money Blog gets all university on us and spells out what we need to do to put more money in our pockets. Whether it’s arbitrage with credit cards or playing chicken with the cable company, his step-by-step instructions are indispensable to a detail oriented control freak like me.

So ever since reading his post on using Credit Protector trial checks for generating free money I have been on the lookout for one of these offers to arrive on my doorstep. Yesterday I thought it had finally happened…and for FORTY dollars. The offer was through our main card, the Citibank Platinum Dividend card so my first thought was that I would have to make sure I cancelled within the trial period or I WOULD end up owing some money.

I went to look closer at this thing today. It’s not a check, like they used to do. It’s a rebate. Doh. You enroll, then they send you a $40 rebate certificate (I wonder if that takes more than 30 days to arrive?). You return the certificate along with receipts and they send you up to $40 as a rebate on those purchases. After 30 days you will be charged $0.85 per $100 of the new balance.

So it looks as if they are changing the way they incent people to try the service yet still appear to be dangling cash. It’s no longer as easy as depositing the check and remembering to cancel before 30 days are up. Counting on people to forget to cancel in time apparently wasn’t enough, now they are counting on people to blow the rebate so they don’t even have to give out the cash. And clearly you need to use the card to get the rebate, so safely enrolling on a card that you don’t use no longer works either.

I am torn about whether to do it. We are pretty good about following through on rebates and I do believe we could easily remember to cancel within 30 days. But I fear there is some sort of “catch” that I might be missing. I guess worst case scenario if I follow the guidelines is that I get nothing, and best case I get $40 worth of everyday purchases paid for.

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Other bloggers on Credit Protector:
SavvySaver has also made some money using the trial checks
Nickel couldn’t say no to another chunk of free change
MyMoneyBlogU on getting the money without getting screwed

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For several years I have been a faithful Taxcut user. Last year, after purchasing an iMac I was pleased to see that they offered a version that ran on Mac OSX and happily plunked down my $96.80 ($40.94 of which I received back in rebates) for what was becoming an annual ritual of spending $55+ on filing my taxes (yes, I know it’s tax deductible).

Imagine my surprise when I realized TaxCut didn’t even release a Mac OSX version this year. I suppose from a business standpoint it did make sense because the online version is operating system independent, but then why bother to brew a whole Windows version only to give it away for free anyway? But I digress.

My point is that I had to shop around for a new, Mac OSX compatible, option for calculating and e-filing my taxes. And with all this “free” software floating around I was determined to do it for far less than $55 this year.

The first thing I noticed is that if you have an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of less than $50,000 there are MANY options that are completely free. If you don’t know what your AGI is, you can probably create an account at one of the services and use them to calculate your AGI (ex. I started my taxes at Turbotax.com - input my W-2 and 1099’s but have not been charged because I have not printed or e-filed my return). Once you know your AGI, you can use the IRS e-file wizard to guide you toward free filing options for your circumstances (AGI and State). If you do not qualify based on AGI, read on…

I thought the big names were being quite affordable until I started calculating the cost to e-file a state return in addition to my federal, even though several offered a “combo” deal on e-filing both. I have not catalogued every pricing option but I have focused on an AGI greater than $50,000 who needs to submit a 1040 (I’m a homeowner claiming itemized deductions) along with a Massachusetts state return while using Mac OSX to calculate and e-file both returns. All Windows-only options have been discarded (TaxCut and TaxAct downloadable software basically).

Your mileage may vary, due to your needs, I just urge everyone to shop around before plunking down any money. Here’s what I found:

Product	Fed Only	State Only	Both
Taxcut Online Premium	$19.95	N/A	$44.90
TurboTax Online Essentials/1040EZ1	$9.95	N/A	$34.90
TaxEngine	$19.95	$19.95	$29.95
TaxAct Online Standard	FREE	$20.90	$12.952
TaxSlayer Web	$9.95	$9.95	$9.95
eSmartTax Standard (before 2/15)	FREE	$9.95	$9.95

Notes:

1. When I started gathering this information, TurboTax was calling this product “Essentials” and they have since changed the name to “1040EZ” — this implies that only the 1040EZ form is available with this option, but I can find no indication that the 1040EZ cannot be used to submit a 1040. This seems like a marketing attempt to steer 1040 submitters at the next tier up which is $10 additional for the federal return. If anyone can clarify this please leave a comment…thanks!
2. This pricing was pretty unclear. They have an “ultimate bundle” for $15.95 that definitely includes both federal and state and both e-filings and apparently a whole other host of things you probably don’t need.

Obviously there are more products out there, since this is a mini-roundup it’s just what I deemed interesting. Feel free to comment below and point us all at competitive offers.

So far, I have only started to try TurboTax Online. Since you only pay when you file or print, I have entered the information I have so far to estimate my taxes. Once I have all my information (should be by 1/31…right?) I intend to actually file with eSmartTax before 2/15 and take advantage of their early bird special. I’m expecting a bit of a federal refund, so I want to file as soon as possible using direct deposit so we can all see that purple bar inch to the right!

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Resources:

• IRS list of e-file partners
• Mass list of commercial software options
• Jane Dough’s TaxCut software deal at Staples
• SavvySaver chose TaxCut online
• Jim’s got a tip on the Free TaxCut Federal and Deduction Pro download
• pfadvice points to the IRS’s free file and warns against RALs
• MSN’s article on fastest way to get your refund [via FMF]
• [did I miss your post about tax filing products? let me know!]

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