Social Security Opt Out
IRS form 4029 lets members of certain recognized religious groups opt out of Social Security and Medicare taxes, but the catch is forfeiting everything already paid in.
All posts tagged: finance
Sometimes I tag very loosely or obscurely so the link might not be obvious.
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Geeky Bookworm Frugality
To resist buying $50 O’Reilly books, I got a library card: the Bucks County Community College library gives access to the Safari collection.
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Iraqi Freedom?
With weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda ties discredited, the war’s justification has shrunk to freeing the Iraqi people, at a cost of thousands of civilian deaths and a power vacuum that religious factions are filling.
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Greenspan
Today Alan Greenspan stated, “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief.” He’s shocked? That’s surprising. He, himself, wrote about the result of government intervention in the economy, in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Maybe he should pick up a copy and try and understand his role in the destruction.
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AAPL & GOOG
man am I glad I bought some Apple stock earlier this year. Google too. Sorry nothing useful, just bragging I guess :)
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Unexpected Bills
There is nothing that makes me feel worse than unexpected bills. And I am not talking about jerks named William, or the Buffalo variety. I got jackasses crawling out of the woodwork to charge me for crap that happened many months ago. The IRS is trying to wing me for a nice chunk of change they claim that I didn’t claim correctly. And now apparently Aetna wanted to pay half for home phototherapy to treat Allison’s jaundice. Seriously that had to be quite cheaper than her being at the hospital for 3 days to get the same treatment. Would they have half-assed me on that too? And since all of this happened in December, and Aetna decided not to pay in January, how come I don’t hear about it until September. Good Grief.
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Buy my books
So I have been selling a bunch of my old books and some other stuff lately, all proceeds go to pay for me going to Mexico with my family next June to attend my Brother-in-law’s wedding. But I figure I have a few people who read my stuff this, so I might as well see if anyone is interested. If you want to buy it through ebay or amazon go right ahead, **but** if you want to just buy it from me directly I’m hapy to offer a discount. If you want to pay via PayPal, you can take 10% off the price listed, just make sure to tell me first, so I can de-list it from th other site. If you want to pay me directly, cash or whatever (as long as I know you), take a full 15% off, since I don’t have to pay the commission. And of course I’ll charge you exact cost for the shipping instead of the flat rate, or you can pick it up. If you want to buy my books check it out:
* half.com listings * amazon listings
Generally pretty slim pickings. But maybe there is something that tickles your fancy. Let me know.
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making the money work
Tom found $20 and is thinking of *investing* it. That reminds me of the $5000 challenge. Some dude is trying to turn an initial investment of $20 into $5000 in 6 months. I think he is a bit behind, but he has made about $500 in around 2 months now (I think he only has 300 liquid but the rest is working for him in inventory) Here’s his blog: $5000 challenge
Anyway I am trying to do something similar but my goals are a lot less aggressive, $2500 by May 1, 2006, from nothing I will miss, so I can go to Mexico for my brother-in-law’s wedding.
I haven’t been able to get much yet, I listed a bunch of stuff on half.com and amazon.com, but haven’t gotten any hits yet, and I have some plans to sell some stuff on ebay to get the process going. I am going to take an initial $20 which is my cash back bonus from my Discover card and apply that to the fund.
This also reminds me of some story from 1st grade about some eels that were given a pearl by their teacher for a summer project. Some of the more industrious eel’s invested theirs and created underwater lemonade stands or casino’s or some other glamorous cartoony venture. One eel buried his in the sand somewhere, and then dug it up for the next year, and not only was he the only jerk who didn’t make a ton of dough, he probably failed the project too. I think it was based on some biblical parable, but I can’t remember what one.
Here’s hoping some hidden marketable talent emerges from no-where so I don’ t have to be the dumb eel.
**Update**: I found the parable. Mathew 25:14-30
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Economy Boost
And if you didn’t notice in my previous post, I am doing my part to help the economy, to go along with the new desk I will need, I just got new rugs in the bedrooms. Living room is on backorder to be installed next week. All this goes along with Michelle’s new alternator, battery and Fan belts.
Anyone who wants me to continue to help the economy can feel free to aid in funding this spending spree via PayPal.
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Buyer Agent
Gonna Check out Peter Kullberg, today. To see if he can help me find a house to buy. I don’t know how anyone can pick a realtor without a personal referral, there are millions of these guys. Hopefully, this guy proves to be worthwhile.
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Buying a House
Apparently buying a house is the thing to do nowadays. But man there are some people that are out of their mind with their listings. They have houses that just a couple of years ago were worth maybe $125k. And now they are asking $225+. Obviously the astoundingly low interest rates offset that by increasing my buying power. But it makes it nearly impossible to put 20% down which means I either need to get Personal Mortgage Insurace or arrange a separate deal with my lender to get a second mortgage which just covers the difference between my downpayment and what it would take to get to 20%. Not to mention the effect it has on tax. And the other factor is that a house is an investment. Is there any possible way that the cost of a house will go up from what I purchase it at now? It looks to me like RHAT at $160/share or QCOM at $400/share or whatever their outrages all time highs were. If I settle for something I don’t really want but can afford, I may be stuck there for a long time unless I want to sell at a loss. (I wonder if there are any tax breaks for people who lose on property investments? And are they limited to some value like $2K a year such as securities investments on the Schedule D). Just more research I need to do.
Well I think the primary key here is patience. Houses are flying on and off the market, I just need to find the right one and negotiate the right deal. If anyone wants to give me 30 or 40 thousand dollars let me know.
BTW, if anyone out there wants to hire a teacher who is excellent yet underpaid and under appretiated by the rotten Philadelphia School district. Let me know.
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“Foolish” Message Boards
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was quite active in research of the financial sector. I did well in the market, a buy of Dell Computer corporation in 1996 proved to be quite lucrative. But that has since been liquidated, the money spent, I have closed my E*Trade account and actually did a smart thing in working on getting bad debt under control.
Well it is now 3 years since I went on a rampage destroying credit card debt and closing out my brokerage account, and I am in a position to begin research for investments again, among other things that I recently started thinking of, such as life insurance and home ownership. So I turned to an old friend from those days of yore, The Motley Fool. A great site full of wonderful advice and research tips, and places to get started on your research. But to my partial dismay, to make use of their discussion boards, they now are imposing a fee. Of course I understand that the Gardner’s would like to make money also, and I know all too well that running a web based service can be a costly endeavor. But I also am a big fan of only paying for things which I deem particularly desirable, probably quite a “Foolish” attitude. So of course I will do some research, and take advantage of their 30 day free trial, but I also wonder if anyone actually reads this and is willing to respond
So I ask anyone who reads this entry, do you make use of this service? Is it worthwhile? (it is generally inexpensive $75 for a 3 year subscription) Did all the great information that used to occur become less frequent when the Gardner’s started charging money? Are there any competing services that have built the requisite community and knowledge base for less (read zero) dollars? I guess while I am at it, are there any other great things I should be tapping for research, “The Investor’s Business Daily?” (Kind of pricey) or again to The Fool, the monthly, “The Motley Fool Stock Advisor?”
I plan to keep Logical Disconnect updated with my research and maybe even publish a portion of my portfolio so all my friends can marvel at my financial genius.