Entries from March 2009 ↓

Some readers have said that I should write more about personal finance, and less about the politics of the United States, but I think the two topics are inherently related because the government is a very large part of our everyday lives and it affects financial decisions we make in so many ways.  Some commenters have said that they were surprised I am so much of a “conservative” considering that I am from such a liberal part of the country and seem to be fairly intelligent.  I thought about this, and I realized that most frugal personal finance writers would be politically conservatives whether they realize it or not.

First of all, being frugal is all about being fiscally conservative with your own finances.   So if you are pinching pennies by using coupons and sales, then why would you want your government to spend your tax dollars without any concern to the pricetag of things?  I imagine that most frugal people want a frugal government that looks for the best price in every purchase.  Unfortunately, this is not happening at all under the current regime, and that is disconcerting.

Second, being frugal is about being responsible for what you have been given in terms of income.  Nearly every personal finance blog I have read do not support the housing bailout and other bailouts that have been happening lately because these bloggers including myself think of the bailouts as rewarding the irresponsible.  So logically, these frugal bloggers would have voted with the Republicans against the new stimulus bills and bailouts and be labeled as “conservatives”.

Next, a lot of frugal bloggers write about getting rid of debt.  This is once again another fiscally conservative ideal.  Right now the United States is in $11 trillion dollars of debt, and the new administration wants to increase it by 27%.  Granted, the 8 years of Bush was not very conservative, either, and many people believe that George Bush is not a true conservative.   For the most part I think most frugal people want the government to get rid of its mounting debt, and again, being frugal is the same as being conservative.

I think it is sad that people think of conservatism as a bad word, but I guess just a few years ago frugality was not very popular, either.   Hopefully as frugality and fiscal responsibility becomes more accepted Americans will realize that they cannot afford to have big spenders in their government.  After all, more taxes means less savings, and letting the government take more of your own ability to be financially independent is equivalent to giving up your life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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A reader of Wise Bread named Vlatro left the best comment I have ever read in two years of blogging on my article about the AIG bonuses.  Here is how it begins:

People seem to be missing the bigger issue. The tax code is now being used to punish people without giving them the benefit of a fair trial. The bonuses may be considered by some as unethical, I’m not going to waste time debating that. Has the law, as it is currently written, been broken? I don’t see indictments, trials or convictions. We just skipped the whole process and went straight to punishment. There are AIG employees receiving death threats and having their homes swarmed by angry protesters. Many of them were not the recipients of any bonuses. A Federally funded organization (i.e. supported by YOUR tax money) is providing tour buses to these people’s homes, doing every thing it can to throw more fuel into this fire. Not to mention that it was CONGRESS who authorized these bonuses, as a provision of the bail-out funds for the company.

Where is the public outrage against congress? Why aren’t their homes being stormed by angry mobs? We didn’t vote for any AIG members, but the elected officials who continue to be the beneficiaries of your tax money have betrayed to you. If you’re against the bonuses, they have played an equal part in robbing you. We’re throwing away the constitution to squelch an emotional need to act, even when the full facts aren’t available to the public.

I really suggest that you read the whole comment at Wise Bread because I don’t want to copy the whole thing.  It ends with this:

I would spend the money to mail out millions of copies of the US constitution. The government will make their end on the deal in the form of postage, and a few people might actually wake up and realize what’s happening here.

Awesome comment or manifesto if you will.

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Last week was a pretty exciting week for us.  On Thursday we saw our baby’s heartbeat, and on Friday we were robbed.  We did not find out that we were victims of a crime until Saturday, though.  Basically, some thieves went to the carports behind our condo complex on Friday night and smashed my husband’s car window and ripped out his mounted GPS unit.

Here is the really stupid part, the thief or thieves apparently were in such a hurry that they ripped out the adapter and broke the cord.  The GPS usually does not have a charge so the unit is basically useless without the adapter.  I bet they felt stupid after running to their getaway car and finding out they broke the adapter.  Then again, adapters aren’t very expensive so maybe they have a pile of spare parts.   It seems that they did not enter the car at all because nothing else was stolen.  My hubby had at least a dozen CDs in the car that are worth more than the GPS.

The GPS was a Christmas gift to us from my hubby’s parents and we do not really expect that we will get it back.  We reported the incident to the police and an officer swung by.  He said that unless we had a serial number of the unit then it is pretty much impossible to identify the unit was ours even if they seized it from the criminals.  This makes complete sense, but my husband threw away the box a long time ago so there is no way we can track it.  The most annoying thing about this incident is really the broken car window because it left glass all over the floor and inside the car.  It took my husband and I an hour just to clean the seats and the floor, and we both got cuts from the glass.  My husband said that if he saw the thieves at his car he would have just given them two hundred dollars cash not to break his window because it is a big inconvenience for us.

Now my husband’s car is in the shop waiting for an inspection and repair and he is borrowing my car to go to work.  We will probably have to pay an auto insurance deductible for the window repair even though it was a theft and we are not at fault.  It really makes me wonder how much money these thieves make from these used devices because the GPS unit that was stolen from us costs $80 new, and it is about 1.5 years old so I estimate it to be worth $15 to $40 dollars just from gadgetry depreciation.  Additionally, since the thieves ripped out the adpater they probably need to replace the adapter just to get a buyer.   I looked online and the adapter costs around $15 to $20, so if they do buy a new adapter the profit they would get is around $-5 to $20.  Is that really worth smashing our car window?  I guess I just don’t understand criminals.

Anyway, I’m thankful that my hubby’s car wasn’t stolen and other things weren’t stolen. On a completely unrelated note we found a hummingbird nest on the flower vines on our fence, and there is a super cute baby hummingbird in it.  That kind of made the weekend a little brighter.

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Well, my hubby has finally done it.  We are officially pregnant.  He actually banned me from telling anyone until he made sure he saw the little amorphous blob’s heartbeat yesterday.  After he got home from the hospital he was super excited and wrote a post himself.  He called it a nooblet, which is a term taken from this nerdy gamer show called  Pure Pwnage.

The doctor told us that the due date is 10/31, and my hubby said, “Nooo!  I don’t want a Halloween baby!”  However, very few women actually deliver on their calculated due dates, so he may not be getting a Halloween baby.  Personally, I think that would be kind of neat, because our kid could invite other kids over for costumed birthday parties.

My husband and I are already talking about what leave we could take when the baby arrives.  Personally I will have about a month of paid vacation saved up, and then we both can get 6 weeks of California Paid Family Leave.  The paid family leave is paid at 55% of our salary from the SDI program which we pay into.  There is no California income tax on that money and we could spread out the leave between the two of us so it would not be a very big financial strain.  I do not think I would qualify for the pregnancy disability leave because my job mostly consists of thinking and typing and I am allowed to work at home.  Unless I am ordered by the doctor to bedrest I would not be considered disabled. Anyway, we will both talk to our HR departments soon.  All things considered, November is actually a good month to have the baby because there are already many paid holidays in November and December during the holiday season, and it would be more relaxing to take time off then because most other people will be taking time off.  Also, we can claim the baby as a tax exemption for the entire year and save some money on taxes.

Another thing we have to consider is which health insurance plan to add our baby to.  My husband currently has a PPO plan and I have Kaiser HMO.    Right now both of us pay very little for our health insurance because our employers pretty much covered everything.  Kaiser is really convenient for us because the hospital is about a mile away and they have everything there.  It is likely that we will just add the child to my insurance, and this will cost about $100 more a month.

Anyway, before all of that happens, I have to actually get through this pregnancy.  So far my hubby is thankful that I am not puking my guts out.  I am actually feeling pretty good and I am eating more than usual.  I am also sleeping a lot, so I am blogging quite a bit less.  I guess after the baby is born I would also be a “mommy blogger”, but I promise I will not be chronicling every diaper rash.

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The last two weeks have been incredibly busy for me because the entire engineering team was working on an important major release of our software. We all worked multiple weekends and nights and finally the software is out! As a reward we got to have five days floating holidays for the extra time we worked. I am taking one of those days off today just to unwind a bit, and also work on our dreaded taxes.

I already entered our W-2s and 1099s into the tax software and it looks like we owe quite a bit of money. The reason is that we adjusted our W-4 from single to married at the end of 2007. Strangely enough, this made our paychecks bigger for the duration of 2008, but we actually owe more taxes than when we were single because of the marriage tax penalty. Basically, we withheld less, and we owe more. So we may owe $4000 to $6000 for last year. This is not that bad because we actually needed the cash during the year to complete the home purchase. We also have the cash to pay for the taxes so it is not a dire situation. From my calculations we should be fine with the same W-4 status this year because our mortgage interest deduction will be around $6000 for the year and it will basically be a wash. Last year we only made two mortgage payments and a couple months of property taxes so the deductions are not very large.  I think the optimal thing to do is to owe a little bit of money every year in case the government needs to give out an IOU.

Nevertheless, paying taxes is always pretty depressing. I did a bit of math yesterday and our biggest monthly expense is actually our taxes and that is pretty sad. In fact, the amount we are required to spend on taxes every month is more than our rent and food money. Ironically, all of this money is mostly wasted by the government on bailouts upon bailouts.

Additionally, I am not a citizen, but a  permanent resident of this country, but the IRS states that I should be taxed like any other citizen working here.  I am fine with that since I have the same work opportunities as citizens, but for me it is truly taxation without representation.

Anyway, I should pull out all my various tax statements now and start working.  This is quite depressing indeed.

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