So I did our taxes a few weeks ago but couldn’t file it because Nicole noticed that I had missed one of the accounts that was in her name. I finally got around to redoing the taxes for the $22 in interest from this one account. Thanks to the magic of the ‘tax tables’ we owe $21 more in state and federal taxes. WTF! No wonder people hate their taxes. Thanks to those tax tables we got a net $1 from that account. Had I not missed the account I wouldn’t have realized that the the increase of $22 of income cost me $21 in taxes making me annoyed at our tax system.
Posts Tagged ‘money’
Taxes
March 5th, 2009Bonus Day
February 26th, 2009So today we found out about our bonus’s for the year. It came in a little less than last year but I’m very happy with it especially when you look at in the context of the economy. I feel very lucky that I have a job and that the company did well enough last year to still pay us a bonus this year. Now i just have to figure out how I want to spend it? Last year we spent it on a cruise but since nicole is writting her theis we can’t take a vacation. Any ideas?
Comcast and Streaming TV
February 26th, 2009For the past year we’ve been on a deal that had our cable bill at about $50 a month. I knew that the deal we had was gonna expire soon but couldn’t remember when. Last week our latest bill came in the mail and low and behold it was now $70 a month for cable. My immediate reaction was that that was a ton of money and we needed to think about if we should continue to have cable. I think nicole had the same reaction at the higher sticker shock and we agreed that at $70 continuing to keep cable was a waste of money considering how much we really used it. Yes we watch TV every night but honestly almost all of what we really want to watch is on the broadcast stations which we could just be getting for free. Also a big factor is that I no longer see cable as a necessity that I once saw it 5-10 years ago. Internet is a necessity but cable isn’t anymore since right now the content on tv isn’t all that great and you can get a lot of it legally for free off the internet.
On tuesday Nicole called Comcast (since it’s in her name) to go ahead and cancel our service. In the process of canceling they offered to cut our bill to $40 in order to keep us as customers. Nicole said yes since we would still be able to cancel later on if we wanted to. Since we were considering canceling at $70 a month for cable we have the same delema but with a $40 price point.
Our options if we dropped cable would be to switch to OTA and buy a DTV box so our tivo can get the digital signal or go with the internet streaming approach and turn off the tivo too. The streaming approach for me sounds very appealing since now days you can pretty much get any mainstream show you want legally. You can either go to the website of the broadcast company or places like hulu.com. The quality is pretty good and in my opinion is about comparable to the analog signal we’re watching now. The major flaw with this is that you need a computer setup that connects to the tv. Which we already have and I can use pretty easily but Nicole isn’t familiar with it and I don’t think she’s all that comfortable with the hoops you have to go through to access the online content.
So we’re either gonna keep cable at our now discounted $40 a month, buy a DTV box for ~$100 and go OTA, or just use our internet connection and stream tv shows over the internet. I’ve left it up to nicole to choose since she is writting her theis and really is the main one using the tv/cable right now.
Rice
May 27th, 2008So on the news there has been plenty of coverage over rising food prices. Specifically they talk about how rice, wheat, beans and other staples are rising very rapidly in developing countries. However for all that talk I honestly hadn’t been able to notice the increase in food prices. I don’t really pay attention to the price of food that often and the few things that we do buy that I pay attention to the price of such as meat hasn’t really shifted.
Last week at costco we went to buy a bag of rice. I was surprised to find that the bag of rice was now costing $18 instead of the usual $15 for the 25 lb bag which we had bought maybe 3 weeks ago. $3 is a pretty big price increase and although it really won’t have an impact on us I’m sure will be hurting people. They say we are in for some unpleasnt price increases in the coming year.
So far the only other thing we’ve noticed that had a price increase was the ice cream. Although they didn’t actually increase the price for the carton of ice cream they did shrink the size of the carton by 1/2 pint. It’s really obivious when they first did it since they still stack the ice cream up on the same sheleves where it used to go to the top and now there is this large gap at the top since the cartons are so much smaller.
118,000 – .5 miles
January 31st, 2008So driving home today I noticed that I’m about to roll 118K miles on my camry. It made me realize that I’ve actually put the bulk of the miles on the car now and not the previous owner. With us purchasing the new civic in September for Nicole it means my car needs to make it for awhile longer. I’ve started to try to take better care of my car by making sure I get my oil changed at a reasonable interval considering I put on around 400 miles a week. This year I even managed to replace my door handle on the drives side so i don’t have to open the door with my little finger.
Thinking that I had been doing a good job I finally decided to go through all my maintenance receipts and put it in a spreadsheet so I can see when I did what and to give me an idea when I might need to do it again. Unfortunately when I did this I realized that I might be in for a rough couple of months as a lot of maintenance is coming due. It’s been about 30K miles since I’ve had the brakes pads changed. I need to look into maybe having that checked sooner rather than later since i need those to stop. Also it looks like its been a long time since I’ve had most of the fluids in my car changed and those should probably be done to. The big ugly thing is it’s been almost 60K miles since the timing belt has been changed and according to some guides I should look into changing that in the next few thousand miles.
It’s not the end of the world and I should get these things done since I want to keep my car going for at least a few more years. One of my concerns is with Brentwood Auto the place that we normally send our cars to get repaired. It bugged me the last time I had the car sent there in April of last year they told Nicole that I needed to get my timing belt replaced already. I refused to do this since I felt like I had just gotten it replaced recently and there was no way it should be up. Based on my records they were telling me I should have the timing belt replaced at least 10K miles before the minimum that any other place recommends. This seems kinda scamy to me in recommending that I get work done on the car that doesn’t need to be done. Overall I’ve felt when my car goes in they often suggest things that it doesn’t really need. On the other hand when nicole has taken her car in over the years we’ve been here they haven’t always charged her to fix stuff and they’ve also told her no it doesn’t need to be changed yet. I’ll have to think about it more. My car may end up going back there anyway even if it costs me more in the long term since at least I’ve always felt that the quality of their work has been good.
