Coffee heat rising

Taxes! PeopleSoft! Garrrrhhhhh!

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Is there a way to express my hatred for my honored government’s tax system?

Just ran a Quicken report for my tax lawyer. Haven’t printed it out…I don’t even want to know how many pages it will generate. There’s probably not enough paper in the house to print the damn thing. I’ll have to hire an elephant and a mahout to deliver it across town.

Because of PeopleSoft’s proven unreliability—and because I’m pretty sure they got last year’s W-2 wrong—for the first time I’ve broken out all the details of my paycheck as a split entry under each salary deposit. I wanted a record that I could compare with the figures that appear on this year’s W-2. The result is a mosaic of new entries, some under income and some under expenses, an awe-inspiring mess. Many of these entries are directly deductible from my salary. Because my gross (instead of net, as in the past) salary appears under “income” and because Quicken categorizes refunds, reimbursements, the IRA withdrawals that immediately were reinvested (and so are a wash, tax-wise), and all sorts of other little bits of b.s. as “income,” this report makes it look like I earned almost $100,000 this year. Which, oohhhh believe me, I most decidedly did NOT.

To arrive at the real, piddling income, you have to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop after hoop. Nightmarish.

Why do we have to do this? Is there really some reason that every American, no matter how diddly his or her income, has to go through all the nonsense inflicted on our tax code to accommodate the very wealthy?

Maybe the Republicans had it right: just excuse rich people from paying taxes. If the wealthy few who could afford to hire lobbyists to instill these absurd complications in our tax law didn’t have to pay taxes, then the tax laws could be simplified and the rest of us would have a great deal easier time of it.

Let’s just give the obscenely wealthy a state—how about North Dakota? They can live there with no government and no taxes, they being, after all, wealthy enough to build their own private roads, airports, schools, and the like. Then the rest of us can go on about our business. Once you have a net worth of, say, $50 million, off you go to your mansion in North Dakota. And good-bye to all that.

Not bankrupt after all?

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Despite the extreme market volatility and the various grim economic prognoses, so far my December investment statements come bearing news nowhere near as hideous as expected.

My big IRA went up by $2,000 last month. The Vanguard funds rose $5,000 in December. TIAA-CREF, in the past highly sensitive to recession, went up $40 over the past quarter. I haven’t received the quarterly report for the Fidelity funds in my 403(b), but the same guys who run my IRA and advised me how to invest in Vanguard also told me what to do with my contributions to Fidelity, and so I’m hoping that statement will show about the same results.

Though I’m certainly not getting rich here (or even keeping up with inflation), at least I’m not losing money. Given the situation, that’s pretty good.

Interesting what these guys have invested in. Hmmm…they’ve stashed a fair amount in cash: 45 grand in the money market, another ten grand in cash reserves. But we remain invested in American Express, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Caterpillar (need lots of tractors, presumably, in Iraq and Afghanistan)…ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum (they like oil)…General Electric (they like energy overall). And get this: they like junk food: McDonald’s, Yum Brands.

Awww…lookit this photo: junk food is good for young love! Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your capitalist heart?

They’ve dumped some stuff…Seagate gone. Actually, they’ve dumped a lot of stuff: this statement is signficantly shorter than it has been in the past. Fewer stocks, more mutual funds. And I’ve never seen them move so much into cash holdings.

Well, my shirt may be slightly frayed, but at least I still have a shirt. This is not the time that I would like to retire, perforce by layoff. However, if it happens, apparently I won’t starve.

Flummoxed!

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bikeFor quite a long time, I’ve wanted to buy a three-speed or ten-speed bicycle. I have a coaster, but it’s no use for what I want to do: take long rides along the canal. Salt River Project has built a long, narrow park along the Arizona canal, with underpasses running under the main drags so people can go for mile after mile after mile safely. I live within walking distance of this convenient source of exercise and sightseeing entertainment. While I really do need the exercise, hauling my heavy coaster up from the bottom of those underpasses is not quite what I have in mind. I have to get off my bike and walk it out of the underground tunnels, a major pain in the tuchus. I love bicycling, though, and have thought that if I had a bike with gears, I could use it every day or two to get out of the house and also get some good exercise.

Wrong.

Yesterday I paid a visit to the bicycle store that, in years past, has sold me other bikes. Prices for multispeed bicycles range from $450 to $700!!! An ordinary cruiser with no gears and pedal brakes costs $350. Three-speed bikes cost more than 24-speed numbers. I don’t want 24 speeds—I’d never be able to figure out how to operate such an array.

I looked on Craig’s List and found the prices comparable for anything that appeared to be in decent condition. The rate of bicycle theft around here is phenomenal—at one point, a ring used to go onto college campuses in trucks and take bolt-cutters to the locks and just load the things up. So I’m kind of afraid to buy one second-hand, for fear of getting stolen property. Besides, the newer bikes are so involved and complicated, I would have no way of knowing what I was getting or if anything was wrong with it.

How disappointing. I guess I won’t be losing any weight that way. {sigh} It was probably a bad idea, anyway. What on earth would I do if I blew a tire ten miles from home? I wouldn’t have a clue how to fix it, and I sure don’t want to have to push a bike eight or ten miles.
🙁

Space heater works to save on power bills

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This winter I decided to heat the room I’m occupying with a space heater, rather than use the central HVAC system (a heat pump) to warm the entire house. At night, I’m turning the heat off altogether.

The electric bill just arrived: $90.99. Last January it was $128.14. That’s a $37.15 savings. More, in reality: the power company raised its bills by 6 percent this year.

It’s up from last month’s bill of $63.52, probably because this January was cooler than December and I did turn the central heating on a few times to take the chill off the morning. This winter has been warmer than usual—only a couple of nights in the low 30s, though the neighbors’ roofs are white with frost every at every sunrise. January was rainy and gray. In December, the sun shone most every day, warming the house through the south-facing windows by 10:00 a.m. Still, if you believe the graph included in the power company’s bill, I used a little more than half the kWh I expended last January…and last winter was pretty cold.

So, now we have two months’ worth of data suggesting that the use of space heaters, sweaters, and warm blankets works to beat ever-expanding power bills.

Was I cold? A few times. But never unbearably so. When I felt cold I put on some more clothes. You are, after all, supposed to be cold in the winter.

Snookered!

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January 9, 2009

Michael Florek
General Manager
Scientific American
415 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10017
Dear Mr. Florek:
I believe your circulation department finally succeeded in snookering me with its flurry of hysterical “your-subscription-is-expired” mailings sent months before the real expiration date.
Because this dishonest tactic has become the custom in magazine fulfillment, I started using an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of when I actually pay for subscriptions. However, your flurry started before December, and in the holiday rush I neglected to look up the last date I paid.
Note the enclosed, stating that my subscription has “officially expired,” which arrived last month. Don’t think so. A belated look at the spreadsheet (also enclosed) reveals that I paid for a year’s subscription on 2/20/08. This means that at the time I sent you another check, on 12/9/08, my subscription still had almost two and a half months to run!
This is a rip-off, and I highly resent it. I work for a university, and believe me, my friend, I am not paid what some publishing executive on Madison Avenue earns. I cannot afford to be gouged two or three months in advance for a bill I do not owe.
If you want to keep me as a subscriber, you need to credit me for the extra two months and 11 days I’ve paid for. I will resubscribe (maybe) in February of 2010, which is when the two subscriptions I now own will expire.
You and your fulfillment contractors should be ashamed.
Sincerely, (etc.)

Attached: Letter from Mr. Florek exclaiming the subscription expired, received in December
Excel spreadsheet showing payments on 2/20/07, 2/20/08, and 12/9/08

Well, here’s one of the problems of senility: if your notes to yourself are to work, you have to readthe notes! You can’t read notes to help you remember things unless you remember to read the notes.

Related post: Stay on Top of Magazine Renewals

Trade Made: Discount scored

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sanitasYesterday afternoon I took the Sanitas back to the Shoe Mill in lovely downtown Tempe (for those of you who haven’t been following along, these pain-free shoes are made by the original makers of the formerly glorious Danskos, which are now manufactured in China thanks to a corporate change of hands). This put $129.72 back on the AMEX card. Then I ordered an identical pair from Footprints.com for a total of $79.95.

Tax on the local purchase was $9.72. Shipping for the online purchase was $10. So even though the tax was on a larger amount, I see that as kind of a wash.

My savings on this transaction: fifty bucks.

One thing I’ve discovered over the years is that you can return most things to most stores. If you find a better deal somewhere else before you’ve put any wear on an item, take the thing back to the higher-charging merchant and buy it where you can save some cash. Ditto if you realize you don’t need something after you’ve made an impulse buy. Obviously, you shouldn’t abuse this—buying a dress or a jacket to wear to a wedding and then returning it to the vendor is exploitive and dishonest. But if you haven’t used it at all, there’s no reason not to return it.