Thankfully our taxes are done. I love having a CPA. He costs a bunch of money, but he saves us way more money and stress than what he costs!
It turns out that we are going to get a refund from the IRS for about $800, but on the other hand we will owe New York State about $200. So overall we were pretty close! We still need to sign the forms and get them back to the CPA. Also we have to send off check to NYS and CPA.
I have a friend who had the accountant do his taxes one year, then once they knew the deductions, they did their own taxes after that.
But our tax situation changes so much from year to year. My websites earn more or less money. My wife just started school last year. She is working part time instead of full time. All these things change.
Last time I tried to do our taxes using the software, it said we owed $5000 Federal and I hadn’t even gotten to state yet. I freaked out. We ended up owing only abut $2000. $2000 is alot, but it is alot less than $5000. A lot of that savings was due to deductions related to my home business of creating websites and making money online.
Speaking of websites, I create a new blog website titled Relearning Guitar. I am also considering creating one for rock hounding which is something my wife and I have recently gotten into. Each of my blog sites brings in a little money, but it all adds up. I am currently making between $1000-$1500/month in extra income! Nice!
* 4/22/08 - I went ahead and created the rock hounding site I mentioned. It is titled Rocks & Gemstones
I am not sure what mailing list my wife got on. I get a lot of investing come-ons myself. But then my wife got a “magazine” thing in the mail titled “Intelligent Investor Report” The subtitle is Your Guide To Investing In An Age Of Terrorism. The copy we got is the Summer 2007 edition, and there is a cover price of $9.95. It’s only 16 pages including the front and back covers.
I started looking through the magazine, and start laughing. The cover is touting some over the counter stock for some sort of healthcare company I have never heard of. I look further inside the magazine, and found that nearly every page was touting this same OTCBB stock! It’s basically a 16 page advertisement to buy a specific over the counter stock! I guess we are lucky enough to be in the inner circle to get this stock tip! LOL!
This reminds me of those emails I get telling me about some penny stock that is going to soar. Those are scams. The people have bought up quantities of some penny stock, the send out a bunch of spam emails saying the stock will rise. Then a bunch of greedy rubes buy the stock, and sure enough, the price of the stock does rise. Then the people who sent the emails cash out making a large profit on a stock. It’s market manipulation.
But this Intelligent Investor Report thing reminds me of those emails. And it’s funny! In the back, I can subscribe to this “magazine” for $189 for 24 issues, or $97 for 12 issues. Of course they throw in some FREE stuff. LOL!
I may send the thing to the FTC or the SEC or someone and let them decide if it is a scam.
Of course, the joke will be on me if the company they are promoting turns our to be the next Microsoft. BTW, I have purposely not mentioned the company here.
I hate selling stocks, but basically I am trading one investment for another. My wife goes back to school next month for post graduate stuff to get her teaching credentials. She was unhappy in her previous job for years. Now she will become a teacher. But the college tuition will cost about $30,000! Ouch! I had over $17,000 in my regular brokerage account. I also have over $4,000 in company stock, and some stock options which will need to be exercised in the next year or two. I don’t want to borrow money to pay for the school. So I sold some stocks. I had been considering selling some of the stocks, and buying more of the ETFs. So I will keep the ETFs for last, and sell the stocks first. I sold my shares of Cabela’s, Carnival, Lowes, and Target. Each of these is a good company, but they also have strong competitors such as Bass Pro Shops, Royal Caribbean, Home Depot, and Walmart. I still need to sell something else to cover her first semester’s tuition.
But once she becomes a teacher, she will be getting good benefits, and a fairly good salary. Hopefully she will be happier. And then we can start building up our savings again. I am still contributing the max to my 401k, and she still has a couple 401ks with some good money in them.
My wife is going back to school in the fal to get her teaching credentials. I am guessing it will cost us about $30,000 over the year or longer that she is going to school. The holdings I have in my regular brokerage account are worth a little over $17,000. I also own about $4000 worth of my company stock. I will probably sell much of these to pay for her school. Then when she is done with school and gets a job as a teacher, we can start building our portfolio again. I am still stuffing money into my 401k (which passed $320,000 the other day). And my Roth IRA is worth over $15,000, and she has a small IRA, and a couple 401k plans with money in them.
I will probably sell some of the indivdual company stocks in my portfolio first.
I don’t want to borrow money. I gotta get my credit card balance back down again. Thankfully, I only owe about 4-5 more months worth of payments on my car till it’s paid off!
My wife and I stopped for lunch at a drive in restaurant in Seattle. As we were eating our lunch, my wife was reading the bag about the employee benefits that the resturant offered. The benefits seemed very good for a fast food restaurant. But one thing that caught my eye was that employees could contribute to a 401k after they had worked there for one year (pretty common), and were of the age 21 or older. Now this made me scratch my head. Why limit the 401k plans based on age? My wife said that when she managed fast food restaurants that had 401k plans, they also had the age limit. Why restrict to 401k plans to people 21 and older? I can see limiting things like alcohol to people under the age of 21 since mosy of them haven’t learned to be responsible yet. But contributing to a 401k is being responsible, so why not allow 18 years olds to contribute to a retirement plan if they want to? Or a 16 year old? With drinking, a 16 year old might drink and hurt themselves or somebody else. But what harm would contributing to a 401k plan cause?
I am trying to find out if this is a legal requirement, or decided by the individual companies. To me, it just doesn’t make sense.