Coffee heat rising

Get (re)organized: A better way to store current paperwork

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The other day it occurred to me that I was constantly digging through my file drawers to pull out the same folders full of material I’m wrestling with on a regular basis. The stuff falls into two major categories: the Layoff/Retirement hassle (phone numbers; the 403(b) rollover; COBRA; RASL; back vacation pay; relevant official policies; unemployment insurance) and the upcoming Social Security/Medicare hassle (estimated benefits; tax & earnings information and ancient W-2’s proving SSA’s errors; identifying documents). I hate dorking with pieces of paper—just hate it. Consequently, I try to be as organized as possible. That urge has led me to create altogether too many files stored in altogether too many places. Time to reorganize this stuff and make it a lot more accessible.

Some time back I’d realized that printing out my online Rolodex and storing it in a three-ring binder simplified life significantly: no more waiting for the Mac to grind away at the speed of a galloping snail to open the online file, and no more having to reboot if the machine was off.

So…why not organize the mounds of paper associated with the two current projects into loose-leaf binders, too? These can be stashed with the reference works atop the desk and grabbed whenever they’re needed. No more pawing through one, two, three, four file drawers in search of that one elusive sheet of paper!

This afternoon I dug out all those files and organized them into two binders. Original, official documents that I didn’t want to submit to the three-hole punch got photocopied; on the photocopy I noted where the original is stored.

I made dividers by sticking one edge of a mailing label to the edge of a piece of notebook paper, then folding the label over and sticking the back side to the paper sheet’s verso side. I’d bought some cheapie dividers at Target, but because the labels were supposedly erasable, ink smeared on them—covering the slick labels with pieces of mailing label fixed that problem.

Keeping paper and electronic records organized is a key process in frugal financial management. You can’t manage your money easily unless you know where your information is. Searching through drawers and boxes of files is a pain in the tuchus, and so is trying to find a single file or datum hidden deep inside a computer.

Yah, I know; Spotlight. Very nice: it brings up 87 gerjillion files for you to rifle through. Argh! Not to say $#%@&@*@*#$D!!!!! Eventually you’ll probably find what you’re looking for in a computer search, but it may be a long eventually.

Lots easier to organize this stuff efficiently at the outset than to do searches every time you turn around. Though there may be a better way, I’m fond of folders and subfolders:

Every now and again you should go through your files, toss or shred the junk, and tidy up the organization. This means more paper-pushing, virtual and real, a hateful process. However, sometimes it can be instructive. Today, for example, I discovered that the ancient piece of cardboard I thought was my original Social Security card is not; it was a “stub” that came with the card, issued in 1967. So now I’ll have to go in person to the Social Security office and order a new SS card—good thing I found that out before I went in to get SS benefits started! I also reviewed some old W-2’s my ex- sent a couple of years ago and realized that they show earnings for several of the years Social Security claims I had no earnings. That may jack up my benefits!

As exercises go, today’s project was less than fun. But the result, I expect, will make life a lot easier. And if that little revelation above increases my retirement benefits, the past two hours of ditzy work will pay for themselves many times over!

w00t! More good stuff!

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Yay! Funny is back on MSN Smart Spending with the piece on the charms of older houses. Thanks, Karen!

If you haven’t come upon Smart Spending yet, you should check it out. It’s a rich compendium of tips, leads, articles, and opinion about personal finance and frugality. Some of the articles are guest posts by PF bloggers and some are written by the blog’s administrators, both experienced journalists. It’s very high in quality, with interesting posts appearing daily.

Good for another two weeks

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Out at the Great Desert University, our business manager says our July 2 paychecks have already been processed, and so they should be issued on Thursday, come what may. So that shoos the wolf away from the door for another two weeks.

What will happen over the next fortnight remains to be seen. BizMan says she hasn’t heard anything about the university shutting down. Second summer session begins on July 6 and runs five weeks, so presumably they will at least try to keep the classrooms open. By far the majority of the university’s employees, however, are not in the classrooms. So I suppose we can expect to see bathrooms go uncleaned, landscaping go unwatered, trash go uncollected, computers and computer network go untended, perps and derelicts go unmolested by the campus cops, funding go untended, journals go unedited, paperwork go unpushed. Perhaps, we might say, business go unmanaged.

Given the legislators’ vendetta against education and in specific against higher education, if state departments are, in their words, “ratcheted down,” I’m sure GDU will bear the brunt of the ratcheting. And since our office serves the institution’s teaching mission only undirectly (through vocational training and mentoring of graduate students), we’ll likely be among the first to shut down.

So, even though I’m mighty happy to get this week’s paycheck (assuming it really does materialize), my expectations for the future remain low.

Borrowing Trouble: Planning for a government shutdown

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I know it’s borrowing trouble and there’s no point in thinking about this, but being a little funny about  money I can’t help laying out some plans in the face of the possible shutdown of my employer, the Arizona state government. It will happen this week if our craven legislature can’t quit playing political games by tomorrow.

After going through the credit union accounts, I see I have a substantial amount of unused cash laying around, enough to stave off having to raid retirement savings for a little over five months.  Monthly savings, which doubles as an emergency fund and a source of cash for indulgences, currently has $10,578. Of that, $2,500 is set aside to cover COBRA between the Canning Date and my 65th birthday, when I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and another $1,200 is earmarked for my car’s 90,000 mile service, which needs to be done very soon.

There are cushions of $663 in the account that holds money budgeted for charge card expenses, $1,635 for regular monthly expenses (such as utilities), and $4,891 in the “pool” from which funds are drawn for the savings, charge card, and recurring expense piggybanks. All told, available savings plus the cushions come to $14,067. My regular expenses, especially at this time of year when utility bills are astronomical, run about $2471. Assuming I’ll have to go onto COBRA, adding another $170 a month to costs if Arizona employees can get the stimulus discount, that’s enough to sustain me for 5.32 months.

Problem is, this is all money I figured I would fall back on when the university cans me in December. Every extra dollar I have to use now is a dollar I won’t have when I’m permanently unemployed retired. Because I won’t have enough to make ends meet during the months when I’m not teaching part-time at the community college (that will be about four months out of every twelve), I will need that money to survive. The suffering may be deferred, but it will come.

Every unpaid day is $82.36 I’ll have to raid from savings to live on now instead of after I’m unemployed—assuming no major expenses arise. It’s $97.86 of take-home pay that disappears from my wallet.

(Kind of shocking to realize how little I earn, isn’t it?)

Clearly, even with my minimalist income I can get by for a few days. But they’re talking about closing down state government for as long as 30 days. If this absurdity continues for a week or more, my boat is going to start to take on water.

If our august leaders don’t get their act together by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll need to take the following steps:

• Cancel all automatic transfers and electronic payments to creditors
• Stop charging day-to-day expenses
• Obtain enough cash to get by for a week or so, and pay expenses in cash only
• Pay off the amount I’ve charged on AMEX so far in this billing cycle

Two of these—canceling EFTs and withdrawing cash for living expenses—will need to be done quickly, because the credit union branches within driving distance occupy buildings on the university campuses. If the university closes its buildings, obviously the credit union will have to close those branches. From what I can gather, if the budget isn’t passed on Tuesday, most government entities will close on Thursday. So that gives one day to fly to the credit union, where the lines no doubt will go out the door.

How much longer, Lord, before we can vote these clowns out of office? Can an entire legislature be impeached?

Image: Staplegunther, Arizona State Flag
Public domain; Wikipedia Commons

Economy Is Politics: Arizona’s politico-economic disaster

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Bet you thought I was exaggerating when I described the shenanigans going on down at the state house. Truth to tell, though, that post was barely the half of it: a lazy job of reporting, indeed.

To date, budget shortfalls have gutted higher education in Arizona, trashed K-12 education, closed down state parks, and shut down important segments of the state government. Tens of thousands of state workers and employees of companies that contract to the state have been thrown out of work. Far from showing any concern about these disasters, our legislators persist in a demented campaign to balance the budget on the backs of our children, of our most vulnerable citizens, and of every other resident.

What they are proposing to do is cut state income tax revenues by a half-billion dollars, repeal the $250 million state equalization tax, and inflict a further 5.2 percent cut on our already devastated education system. Health care for low-income children would be cut. Child Protective Services, never the nation’s finest agency of its kind, will be further reduced. Food banks will be cut.

To silence opponents, the legislature’s plan proposes to put the governor’s desired temporary 1 percent sales tax increase to the voters; in the unlikely event that they approve it, the 5 percent education cut will be erased.

The 3 percent flat tax legislators are straining to push through in this budget proposal will cut state revenues by $450 million just as a three-year sales tax hike phases out.

As a clue about what kind of people these are, Arizona Senator Jack Harper has described teachers as “feeding at the public trough,” and he made himself the subject of an ethics complaint when, acting as chairman of the committee of the whole, he “accidentally” shut off all the microphones in the room and then cut off an ongoing debate.

Meanwhile, these nut cases are legalizing dangerous fireworks, banned in Arizona for years because of the horrific risk they pose to the children to whom they are marketed (good idea: the more of the little darlings we can maim and kill, the less we’ll have to pay to educate them!), ending the hard-won domestic partner benefits for state employees, and planning to allow Arizonans to carry concealed weapons without a permit and to carry guns into public buildings and schools. They want to close the Arizona Historical Society (shutting a half-dozen museums and effectively discarding their holdings) and they have withheld $18 million in research funding promised to the Science Foundation Arizona. However, overcoming their distaste for “socialism,” these worthies are applying for $1 million in federal funding to save the state’s debunked, intellectually bankrupt abstinence-only program.

A  million bucks for abstinence-only…these are the same folks who tell us that if you’re poor and your sick child needs expensive medical care, you’re out of luck. See? If you had just abstained, you wouldn’t have had that weakling brat!

Jon Talton, an observer who calls the gang in power the Kookocracy, suggests we allow the fools to have their way. The disastrous result, he thinks, will demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt what extreme right-wing dogma means to the individual citizen’s pocketbook, jobs, and quality of life. That’s what it will take—the collapse of the state’s government and economy—to persuade Arizona voters to put the wackos out of office, once and for all.

Maybe so. In the interim, the disaster that will ensue—that is ensuing—will make this state a terrible place to live for a long time to come. Friends are talking about retiring to northern New Mexico. Not a bad idea: once I’m out of work this winter, thanks to the dismantling of higher education, I won’t really have to stay here. I may follow them to Los Alamos, joining the brain drain that’s already under way.

Identity Theft: Three ways to fight it

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A few years ago, SDXB and I learned separately that each of our credit reports said we had lived at an address neither of us had ever heard of, in Tempe, Arizona. Although neither of us was harmed financially, it indicated a type of identity theft known as “application fraud” or “true name fraud.”

It took about a year to get the fake address off my credit records. Once it was expunged, I pretty much forgot about it…until a couple of weeks ago. That was when Costco announced it didn’t have my current address and my membership renewal was overdue. When I went to customer service to pay up, the CSR happened to show me her computer monitor, and what should I discover but that my home address was listed as SDXB’s former address and my business address is now at that same fake address in Tempe!

The appearance of an unfamiliar address on your credit report is one of many possible signs of identity theft. Other warning signs are missing bills, unexplained charges to your accounts, the existence of accounts you didn’t open, denial of credit for no apparent reason, and dunning calls from bill collectors for items you didn’t purchase.

Undoing a mess some crook has made is very difficult. It can take years to persuade creditors and credit reporting agencies that you’ve been a victim of identity theft, and the crime can haunt you for a long time. Thieves have so many ways to steal your private information, many of which you have no control over, that you really can’t prevent it. But you can take a few steps to reduce your risk. I think of them in terms of three strategies:

1. Monitor

You’re entitled to free annual credit reports from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. Rather than having to go through the hassle of contacting each of these agencies separately, it’s now possible to order credit reports through a single source, annualcreditreport.com. Instead of ordering all three reports at once, take advantage of the federal law by revisiting annualcreditreport.com once every four months, so that you can spread out reports from the three agencies over the course of a year. This will allow you to monitor your credit reports steadily. Watch for any unexplained activity or accounts you don’t recognize.

Also, before you pay a credit card bill, remember to review the statement carefully. Check financial accounts and billing statements each month, looking for charges you didn’t make.

2. Prevent

Limit the number of credit cards you carry around. Keep no more than one or two cards in your wallet.

Pay in cash at restaurants and other establishments where you can’t watch what an employee does with your card after you present it for payment. This eliminates the use of a skimmer, a handheld device thieves use to swipe cards for later download into their own computers.

Don’t use debit cards. If you must, memorize your PIN; don’t carry a note with your PIN in your wallet or purse. Avoid using your birthdate, numbers of your address, sequential numbers, or four digits of your Social Security number as PINs. Never use a debit card for online shopping.

Photocopy your credit and debit cards, front and back, and keep the photocopies in a safe place. This makes it easy to contact issuers if cards are stolen.

Don’t allow anyone to write your credit card number on a check.

Always take credit card receipts with you. Carry them in your wallet or purse, and shred them before discarding.

Carry outgoing snail mail to a USPS post box or postal station. Don’t leave it in your mailbox to be picked up by the postal carrier. To protect financial information sent to you through the mails, install a locking mailbox.

Avoid giving out your Social Security number. Don’t carry a Social Security card or Medicare card on your person. You (or your parents) can photocopy a Medicare card, trim it down to wallet size, and cut out the last four digits of the SSN that appears on it. Take the original the first time you see a doctor; otherwise, store it in a safe place at home.

Opt out of marketing lists for the three credit bureaus, limiting the number of free credit offers sent to you in the mail. When you do get such offers, always shred them or scissor them into tiny pieces before throwing them in the trash. Also register your telephone number with the National Do Not Call List, to further reduce offers from hustlers.

And of course, never respond to phishing e-mails. Remember, a legitimate bank or creditor will not ask you for your account number or Social Security number.

3. Fight back

At the first sign of identity fraud, notifiy all three credit bureaus and place a fraud alert on your account. This is good for 90 days. This step entitles you to a free credit report; get one from each agency and review all three reports carefully.

Report the theft or fraudulent activity to the police in writing, using an identity theft report.

Once you have filed an identity theft report with law enforcement agencies, use that and your evidence of identity theft to extend the credit bureaus’ fraud alert for seven years.

Report the crime to the Federal Trade Commission, using the police report number you got when you filed a police report.

Learn what your rights as an identity theft victim are.

If an identity thief has opened new accounts in your name, contact these creditors immediately. Federal law allows you to block businesses from reporting fraudulent activity to credit reporting agencies; the sample dispute letter available here will come in handy for that purpose.

If the thief has used existing accounts that belong to you, report the fraudulent activity to the creditors. Arrange to close the accounts and have new accounts with new account numbers issused to you.

So…what am I going to do about the Costco situation?

Well, we have a fair idea where this came from: only one person could connect SDXB and me in quite that way (the phony entry showed my legal first name, which I don’t use socially; few people who knew the two of us as a couple know my real name). At the time the spurious address popped up in our credit reports, this person was engaged in an extramarital affair. We figured she and the boyfriend had forged driver’s licenses in our names so they could rent themselves a love nest.

More recently, the same someone, who has been in deep financial trouble for quite some time, likely ran out of cash about the time her Costco membership lapsed. So she dug out the fake ID, presented herself as me, and said she’d lost her card. If she went in and asked for a new card in my name, she might have been asked for an address. SDXB’s old street address was at the same number as my new street address; the only difference is that one house is on Erewhon Road and the other is on Erewhon Place. So if she gave his old address as “hers”/mine, it would be credible.

I guess what I will do is cancel my Costco membership. Then we’ll have M’hijito buy a new membership in his name, with me on his account as a secondary card holder. This will be a hassle, because they’ll have to issue a new Costco American Express card with a new account number.

But since she hasn’t done anything (so far) that’s cost me any money or damaged my credit rating, maybe I’ll just let it ride and keep a close eye on the credit reports. Who cares if she gets into Costco for free?