Being a frugal Ferkin, one of my fav’s is jumping on craigslist and searching for any sweet deals– I would get caught up in it or in any other web browsing that i thought was interesting. Or, click on an email from Summit Racing or NewEgg. Although i found some good deals, learned plenty about market forecasts, got facebooked and you tubed, i found that my days were getting shorter with less work done. — so…as a resolution for the new year, i found this new add-on to FireFox that is called ProCon Latte. this program was designed to be a web browser filter for violence, profanity, pornography etc. which a great thing to have on your computer anyways. the program has a “whitelist” that allows the user have access to desired sites. So, what i did was block ALL websites except for the ones i use for work. Once i did this, i was impressed with the time savings and lack of distractions i have in my day. I was also impressed on how many times i would fall prey to a well designed email campaign. I had always felt that i was well focused at work (being self-employed requires staying on track to some degree) however, when i click to go check on a FFN post that i just got emailed, it recognizes the website as a “non-work” website, it automatically re-routes me to Hartfordinvestor.com and i get right back to work. After this scenario happened a few times, i realized the value of what i had just done. The program allows you to change settings when needed by use of a password, so if there is a website that i need for work that is not on my “whitelist” i can add it. I have seen great strides in production since i did this and i would venture that i would not be the only one that could use this help. If anyone needs the help of not knowing their password just let me know — so the next time you get an email from amazon/ebay you don’t lose ten min.s of your day.
money
Death & Taxes
I completed my 2009 tax return just this week. Pretty quick, right. The last couple of years I have done them as soon as I had my W-2 and my interest information from my bank. It is true that doing my taxes is VERY simple, which is part of the reason I do them so early. It has never made any sense to not take the standard deduction as we are not homeowners and have no mortgage interest to deduct. We have very few other deductions and they never even come close to the standard deduction. So this makes calculating our taxes relatively straightforward. I might as well get MY money back from the government as soon as possible, if there is any to get back.
Since 2004 I have used the same program to do my taxes: H&R Block’s Tax Cut. And the cool thing is that I have NEVER paid for it. The first couple of years H&R Block would let you file for free if you fit their restrictions and went through the IRS website’s Free File page. Their basic restriction was that you could not make too much. Depending on how you look at it, I either fortunately (or unfortunately) met their requirement. I think your adjusted gross income had to be less than $50,000.
Then a few years back they got rid of that restriction and now offer their software for free and just bombard you with offers to “soup up” the product for a fee. This year the program asked me about 5 times, at different points, if I would like to upgrade and give them some money. I just say no every time. To me its not even that much of annoyance. I pat myself on the back each time for how frugal I am to get a necessary service for free.
Also the last couple of years I really didn’t have to “load” any software onto my computer. I just use the H&R Block Website. It asks me all the relevant questions and works very smoothly in my opinion. It will also handle tax situations that are more complicated than mine. And it only takes me about ½ hour to do both my federal and state taxes 🙂 .
At the end of each session the program electronically files my taxes. I also save a copy of my return as a PDF on my computer. If it is one thing computers are great it is organizing and storing things like this. It is so easy for me to find financial information since it is all stored on my computer. When we were applying for a loan to make offers on houses the loan guy was so impressed that I was able to email him all of the documents he needed.
Now H&R Block will not to your state taxes for free. But the State of California lets you do that right on their own website and we have done that for the last couple of years.
One thing that did stand out this year as I did my taxes was the disparity between the tax policies of California versus the federal government. I guess I am a nerd, but I find it interesting to analyze my financial information. This year it seemed like my state tax bill was really high and that may federal tax bill was substantially lower than usual. So I decided to dig into my suspicion using the new version of Microsoft Excel on my new computer. I actually really like Excel and use it to record and compute my students’ grades rather than using a dedicated grading program. You should see some of the wild formulas I’ve created so that the program will give me exactly what I want in determining and presenting my students’ performance.
In any event I plugged in some information and even designed a chart to display it here is what I got. (If you click on the chart, you will see a bigger version.)
Parenthetically, I really like all the new options on Excel 2007 (the one with the ribbon). The version of Excel on my old computer was from 2000 and I can say they’ve come up with some good features in 7 years.
Anyway in interpreting the graph above, which shows the percentage of our income that we have paid to both federal and state taxes, it would be important to remember that there are quite a few variables that go into what one gets charged for taxes. There is how much you make (the more you make the higher the rate some of your income is taxed), changes to the tax code (tax cuts, tax increases, changes in deductions/credits), and the number of children you have (this one is big; you get a deduction and a credit) just to name a few. All of these things and more combine to determine just how much the government takes from you.
With that said, a lot of these variables are exactly the same for both federal AND state taxes. How much you made, how many children you have, etc. are all the same. So if you look at the graph, it does highlight that while federal taxes, in my case, went down substantially, they went up substantially for the state. More than doubled! Please note that my income was only $3000 higher than in 2009 compared to 2008. Pretty big deal.
By the way if there are any other nerds out there, I would be happy to share the simple Excel worksheet file I made with you via email. You can simply plug in your own numbers and everything will automatically be generated, even the chart 🙂 .
Wilshire??
While I was sitting in the dugout at my Thursday evening softball game I recalled that my teammate is an LAPD officer so I asked him, “Hey, is it dangerous to go to Koreatown at 10 o’clock at night?”
“Well, it’s in LA so the answer is yes. But it’s not as dangerous as where I patrol in Watts.”
His answer was not as comforting as I had hoped.
I had received a call earlier that day from a man in Koreatown who said he would buy Grandpa Darrell’s couch that I was advertising on Craigslist but that I would need to deliver it.
I reminded him that he would have to pay extra for delivery.
He tried to talk me down $5 on my delivery price and it worked since I had been trying to sell the couch for over a month. I asked him if I could deliver it that night around 10pm and he said that would be fine. Because he was Korean (go figure) our phone conversation was a little tricky. For example while he was giving me his address I thought his street was Wilshire. But then he spelled it for me I realized it was Virgil. This part of the post will be funnier if you try to say Virgil with a Korean accent out loud.
Dad helped me make the delivery since that red work truck he bought from Flint has a long, flat bed. We arrived in the neighborhood that night and discovered that Koreatown isn’t that scary at all. About a block from the apartment building where the man lives, in fact, is a street with big, beautiful houses that you might see in the old part of Whittier.
Thanks to GoogleMaps we reached our destination in one straight shot. We pulled the couch down and the man with his teenage son and granddaughter gave the couch a try. He got a big smile on his face that showed he was very happy with his purchase.
On the way home Dad drove me past the Disney Concert Hall. On our way there we discovered that some of the other neighborhoods around Koreatown ARE scary. There was one corner where about 60 people where just squatting on the sidewalk. It was pretty weird to see so many people out in one spot so late at night.
Downtown Los Angeles with all its big buildings and hilly roads is actually quite attractive. The city must patrol it pretty strictly because it looked really nice even though it is only a few blocks from places that look bad.
Dad had served jury duty just recently and they had all the jurors park in the Disney parking lot that is below the concert hall. The concert hall has curvy, metal walls and is a site to see.
Having sold the couch I’m just about to the end of my sale of used stuff. I sure have sold a lot, not solely on Craigslist, but mostly. And a lot of the stuff I’ve sold belonged to Grandpa who gives me a good commission for my efforts.
How much have I sold since our move last spring? $1875! (I’ve been keeping meticulous records.)
Everything I’ve ever listed on Craigslist has sold! I have had to lower a price a few times but I have definitely gained an appreciation for that website’s usefulness.
The Dilemma
We arrived at the beach a couple of weeks ago and before we had even got settled Noah was already heading for the water. I snatched him up and waded into the water with him for a while. Walking back up to where we had set up camp I discovered I had done my wading with my phone in my pocket. It was kaput!
If you don’t know, I was late to the cell phone thing. At my wife’s request I finally got one when she was pregnant with Noah. He was due in the month of April and my wife didn’t want to go into labor while I was out coaching a baseball game incommunicado.
I guess the idea of always being at somebody’s finger tips made the idea of having a phone unappealing. Now that I have had a cell phone it is apparent that the convenience of the device makes up for the few negatives in my book.
For more than the last two years I have been using a Motorola Razr but now that it had met a salty death I had to get a new phone. So here was my dilemma: I really wanted a phone that I could load contact information onto easily at the same time I was very leery of getting a phone that would make texting easy. That’s right. I’m afraid of texting.
It turns out that I have some pretty strong feelings about the new trend in our society where people are physically in one location but mentally they are somewhere else. I think it is a pretty big deal. I think it is sad when someone is with you but they’re not really with you because they are carrying on all these great conversations with all their friends.
I was talking about the magnitude of the change texting has brought to the world we live in with my mother the other day. I think the change texting is effecting is underestimated. For example back in high school I like just about everyone else would pass a note in class to a friend now and then. During lunch I would hang out with my friends. But then I would go home and see my friends the next day.
Now people seem to stay in constant contact with their friends at any and all moments. In fact the novelty of sending notes back and forth becomes a focus of their lives consuming substantial amounts of time and energy. Whether the notes are harmless or distracting or positive is debatable but not the debate I am even talking about here. I am talking solely about the amount of attention texting requires. And when attention is devoted to texting it has been taken from other things like the people who are actually physically in one’s presence.
So why would I be afraid of texting. Well I am a person who likes technology and I know a lot of pretty neat people who text a lot. I worry that if I got into texting I would get addicted to it and turn into something that I rather not be.
This was never much of a worry because I had sent a few text messages with my Razr and it had taken me FOREVER. But now all the phones that were advanced enough to make contact management easy came with the dreaded QWERTY keyboard. What was I to do?
Well I ended up with a great deal. If you are ever in the market for a new phone may I suggest you take a look at Walmart. I had heard that Costco and Sam’s Club had the best deals on cell phones and I even went so far as to buy one from Sam’s Club after I had checked both places. It was a bottom of the line free phone (except for the tax I had to pay on the price of the phone before the rebate which made it free.) I think I walked out of the store with a basic phone for about $15 and another 2 year contract commitment.
I had to pick something up at Walmart that same day and while I was there I noticed they sold phones too. Lo and behold, instead of 2 free phone offerings like the other places, Walmart had 5 free choices and WAY better prices on all of the phones. Eventually I took back the other phone and bought a Blackberry Pearl Flip phone for free–real free, no tax, no nothing. (I did have to sign back up for a 2 year contract to get the upgrade price.)
It is a big upgrade over my previous phone and has way more features. Now I can actually compose a message. Don’t worry I won’t be turning into a texting zombie but my phone does have sudoku.
Ferkin Family News 
