Tag Archives: Finance - Page 5

Writing About Writing

Posted by on March 13, 2014 No comments

I’ve taken up a new project that I hope I can complete before burning out.  It’s a book.  Not a fiction or story book, it’s an instructional guide on using a financial application.  Holy snore.

I started the document with an outline of what I wanted to instruct on.  Then, because I hadn’t used the application before, I had to figure out how to use it and how to apply it to the specific business I was targeting.  So I started writing a story about a fictional user and performing the actions in the application as the user would have.  I did a story spanning a six-month period presenting different challenges each month and explaining how to address them in the application.  That turned out to be a pretty enjoyable part of the writing.  I guess it was a fiction book after all.

But then, I had to do “the rest”.  It’s a very well-known fault of mine that I am able to work on a project by either making big brush strokes or by focusing on the detail and finishing touches.  I can’t do both.  So in this case, as is most typical of me, I’m painting huge areas of text, and now I need to go over it again and touch up here and there.

Actually, it’s more like I’m putting on multiple coats.  At this point, I’m re-running through the story, capturing screen shots and making sure the instructions are explicit and accurate, so I’m trying to read it from a end-user’s perspective.  Then, I have to fill in the actually reference part of the book, explaining each task in greater detail, without the context of the story.

Then I want to incorporate other financial perspectives from other companies, in case I didn’t think of a certain scenario.  Then I need to get it technically reviewed by a finance person to make sure what I present is correct.  Then I need to create a website to promote it and provide updates and answer questions after the release.  Then I publish it.

I certainly don’t want to get overwhelmed by the amount of work that lies in front of me, even if I do realistically have to know everything that is still to do.

Going the Extra (Rewards) Mile

Posted by on November 1, 2013 No comments

Ya gotta be hustlin’, all the time.

In a previous post, I had talked about my Capital One rewards miles and buying gift cards vs. statement credit.  It was a couple years ago and in that round, I bought up some gift cards because they were a better value than statement credit.  This recent rewards shopping session has given me an interesting opportunity to take advantage of.

Normally, a $100 gift card is 15,500 points (miles, whatever).  However, they offer some $200 cards for 20,000 points, which is clearly a better deal, but sadly, they never have any cards I want, like restaurants.  In my regular browsing visit to see if they have added any $200 dining cards (nope), I saw a Neiman Marcus gift card for 16,000 points – a $200 card.  Wow, for 500 more points than a $100 card, you get a $200 card.  Too bad I don’t have an ounce of care for Neiman Marcus.  $200 might buy me a pack of handkerchiefs.

But, that is still an awesome value and I can’t get it out of my head.  I have enough points to get $600 in cards.  That same number of points equates to only $240 in statement credit.  Maybe I can sell the cards for cash.  After some quick research, I found a website (cardpool.com) that buys gift cards (at a discount, of course).  Their simple online calculator says I can get $510 in cash for those cards.  That’s over twice as much as I could get from statement credit.

Quick math time: Statement credit is about .5 cent per mile, gift cards at normal rate are about .65 cent a mile, these NM cards are 1.25 cents a mile.  Even with the premium for selling the cards, it’s still 1 cent a mile.

Now, to be clear, I am grateful for finding and being able to take advantage of this opportunity.  Part of my gratitude is that I just happened across it and part is that I don’t have to do this.  There’s a lot of people who have to do similar things like this just to get by.  Buy low/sell high/make it through tomorrow.

After signing up for an account on Cardpool, I got looking at the cards they sell.  They’re sold at varying discounts.  It got me thinking some more.  if I know i ‘m going to be spending the money somewhere, why not buy a gift card at a discount first?  Really, 10% off at Outback or Chilis is still 10% off.  And since gift cards are just like cash, you’re not restricted to coupon use.  I think I have a new source of savings.

Serving You More By Providing Less

Posted by on April 17, 2013 No comments

Long after I’ve stopped using Quicken, the emails still continue to amaze me.  Here’s the quote to start off this topic:

“Many of our customers ask why we discontinue certain services and the answer is simple—to better serve you.“

Today I got an email from Quicken stating that I had to upgrade to Quicken 2013 because they were shutting down services for Quicken 2010.  Which services? 

  • Transaction downloads
  • Online Bill-pay through Quicken (not sure if that’s different from banks’ EFT-style payments)
  • Stock quotes and portfolio management through Quicken
  • Technical Support (except online self-service)

Well, 3 of the 4 items are Quicken-provided services, so if they want to shut them down, I don’t have an issue with that.  It’s the first item that bugs me.  The transaction download portion has a server component and a client component.  The Quicken software is the client.  The banks run the server component. 

I know how banks operate: slowly.  There isn’t any way Quicken could force banks to update their software by their imposed deadline.  Many banks will have these libraries integrated with their own software, so there would need to be some rewriting involved and major amounts of testing and documentation.  Not going to happen.

What option does that leave?  Time-bombing the client so that it will become inoperable on a specific date.  Downloading transactions is what the majority of people would use.  The bill-pay, I’m not sure of.  But, in order to better serve you, we think it’s best to not let you do this any more.

I can’t remember if I still have Quicken installed somewhere or not, but I’m going to be testing this out.  First, if they did manage to get all the banks to upgrade their code and change the format of the QIF file, then it should fail to import into MS Money.  Otherwise, I’ll guess that you can manually download transaction files and import them.  This is a slight inconvenience, but it’s not rendering Quicken unusable.  However, at that point, you have the same level of functionality of MS Money Sunset, so why not use a better application?

Here’s the bottom line.  There’s nothing new in banking.  There’s no reason to upgrade banking software.  Quicken is milking this cash cow for as long as they can.  By practicing forced obsolescence, they are forcing their customer base to choose between paying forever or leaving them.  I made my choice.  Mint.com is certainly helping people make a choice. Hmmm.  I think I need to revisit mint.com and see what’s happened since the last time I gave them a try.

Married Bliss… with Taxes

Posted by on February 25, 2013 No comments

It’s time for the 2012 edition of Tax That Married Couple.  Let’s jump right in to the numbers.  For previous posts on this topic, check out the Taxes tag.  Here’s the tax charts for last year and this year:

2011 Taxes

Single Filer 2011

10% on the income between $0 and $8,500
15% on the income between $8,500 and $34,500
25% on the income between $34,500 and $83,600
28% on the income between $83,600 and $174,400
33% on the income between $174,400 and $379,150
35% on the income over $379,150; plus $110,016.50

Married Filer

10% on the income between $0 and $17,000
15% on the income between $17,000 and $69,000
25% on the income between $69,000 and $139,350
28% on the income between $139,350 and $212,300
33% on the income between $212,300 and $379,150
35% on the income over $379,150; plus $102,574

2012 Taxes (from page 105 of the 1040 instructions)

Single Filer 2012

10% on the income between $0 and $8,700
15% on the income between $8,700 and $35,350
25% on the income between $35,350 and $85,650
28% on the income between $85,650 and $178,650
33% on the income between $178,650 and $388,350
35% on the income over $388,350; plus $112,683.50

Married Filer

10% on the income between $0 and $17,400
15% on the income between $17,400 and $70,700
25% on the income between $70,700 and $142,700
28% on the income between $142,700 and $217,450
33% on the income between $217,450 and $388,350
35% on the income over $388,350; plus $105,062

Ok, as in all other years I’ve been doing this, the break happens between the 25% and 28% brackets.  When you’re married, you’d think you could stay in the 25% bracket until you collectively make $171,300 (which is double the upper bound of the 25% bracket), but no, you jump to 28% at $142,700.  That is $28,600 earlier.  Last year, the 28% bracket started $27,850 earlier.  It just keeps getting sooner and sooner.

The salary range for couples getting screwed this year is between $71,350 and $85,650, a range of $14,300.  That’s about the same as it was last year.  So if you and your new spouse are fairly successful and equal earners in that salary range, surprise and congratulations!  Why do gay people want this?

So all these years, I’ve been complaining about this marriage penalty, but there is a common belief that you pay less taxes when you are married.  The tax charts in the 1040 instructions stop at $100,000, so there is no easy way to visually compare a single person earning $50k or more against a married couple who each earn $50k or more.  So I wrote a quick program to calculate taxes using the single and married tax charts and ran a bunch of numbers through it.  Here’s the results:

image

Single Income is just what it sounds like.  Married Income is double that value, assuming both people making the same amount.  Single tax calculates the Single income against the single tax chart.  Married tax calculates the Married income against the married tax chart.  Married Tax as Single simply divides the total married tax in half, showing each person’s share of the married tax burden.  Premium per Person  shows how much more each person is paying for being married.

My plan was to find out at what point your taxes become lower when being married.  I wanted to make the point that it happens at an unreasonably high income level.  It turns out that the savings never happen.  After the tax rate split at about $71k, you pay more being married.  It’s not as much as I originally calculated, but still more.

In all my previous posts on taxes, I definitely exaggerated the impact of this marriage penalty, and because of the graduated tax chart, I was miscalculating its financial effect.  I regret that a little.  But with more in-depth research, I found that the actual situation isn’t all that much better.  The more income you make when married, the better off you are being single, starting at $71k.

I think I’ve now beaten this topic into the ground and I won’t bother doing these in future years unless something interesting happens with the tax code.

The Benjamins. Yeah… About Them

Posted by on February 18, 2013 No comments

Jobs are like a second life.  In this second life, you have work to do, you can have relationships, you can have good and bad “existences”.  I’ve seen co-workers come and go in all different manners.  Some people are squeezed out and their departure is no surprise, some leave suddenly, voluntarily or not.  Some people you want to go and some you want to keep.  And in every case of departure, as with a departure in the first life, there is some soul-searching and some situational evaluation.  Very recently, some news was broken that one of our work family members was leaving.  My reaction to the details of the departure  was unlike others I had previously.

This person had come to us less than 6 months ago.  He came from a job he disliked and he fit in with us very well.  Moreover, he was a hard worker and had excellent skills.  In my opinion, he was going to go far in our company.  This all ended when he put in his two weeks notice.  In IT, there’s always new opportunities and new challenges to take on.  Developers are eager to apply their skills in a new environment, and many cases, fellow workers wish them well, because they understand the excitement of going off to tackle new problems and come up with great new solutions.

But not this time.  This developer was going back to his old job.  Why?  Because they offered him a boatload of money.  That’s the only reason, and it’s the only reason I need to write him off completely.  He knows he’s going to have to work harder, because the dev team at his old job has mostly quit.  He knows he’s going to have to sacrifice his personal time to be on call.  He knows he’s going to be working with the same management he didn’t get along with before.  For what?  Money.

I can forgive job hopping for money when you’re in your 20’s and 30’s, because there’s lots more time to find the company that’s right for you and you should get good and bad experiences so you know what to look for. But this guy should be old enough (my age) to know a good thing when he sees it. But he sees nothing but money.  He’s a whore.  That designation fits very well since he’s commented about putting in a year and getting $x more.  Giving up an incredible job at an incredible company to plan to leave another company in the lurch after a year after pocketing their generous offer.  Don’t come back knocking when you’re done with that one.

I’m taking his decision very personally.  In a sense, I feel like I’ve been used.  Like I’ve been the best boyfriend/girlfriend ever, and six months in, was told, “You’ve been great, but I’m going back to my old boyfriend/girlfriend because they make more money.”  “But they beat you!”  “Yeah, but it’s not that bad, and I can buy nicer things.” 

Money won’t buy you happiness, and I’m looking forward to the day he realizes that.  I’ll give him about three months for the reality to settle in.

Unclear On The Concept

Posted by on July 3, 2010 No comments

From a Yahoo Finance article:

“Bottom line: If you don’t have the discipline to list your credit cards in interest-rate order from highest to lowest and pay them off that way, try an online tool such as DebtGoals.com (about $15/month) that literally tells you what to pay off first to minimize your overall debt.”

If you have balances on multiple cards, maybe another recurring bill is exactly what you need.  I’ll remember this.

Great Observations

Posted by on February 27, 2010 No comments

Following up a previous post on financial voyeurism, here’s the headlines for stocks for a period of time:

  • Monday: Stocks close lower on caution about economy
  • Tuesday: Stocks retreat after disappointing consumer report
  • Wednesday: Dow slips on Greece, domestic concerns
  • Thursday: Stocks backtrack but still fall on economic fears
  • Friday: Dow Rises 4 on Good GDP Data, Bad Housing News

The lesson here is: the stock market reacts to bad news in a bad way and good news in a good way.  Who would have thought such a thing?

The Quickening II

Posted by on December 18, 2009 No comments

Like a bad sequel, I get to continue a story that should have ended.  As I discover some things in Quicken I don’t like, I check the opinions of blogs and Quicken’s own support forums and I am saddened by what I learn.  I guess none of my gripes are new, but they are mine.

I’m sure I’m going to have lots of fun matching transactions as time goes on.  I’m convincing myself that the real numbers matter starting next month – a fresh month of a fresh year.  But right now things are off.  One of my accounts had to have an adjustment posted to make it match with the last bank statement.  That worries me.  As I cleaned up the categories for my transactions, I found that when I would categorize a transaction as a transfer, it would helpfully create the other side of the transfer for me, duplicating a previously-downloaded transaction in another account.  So with all the credit card payments I categorized, I suddenly had a massively negative balance in my checking account.  More cleanup…

As I worked through these various screens I found myself missing a Microsoft standard: the Back button.  I remember years ago when I tried out the Zune at Staples, I thought to myself, “MS loves the Back button.”  The Zune has one.  And you know, it is the easiest concept for anyone to understand.  I also was a little weirded out at how some screens are windows of their own and some are in the main window.

And continuing with UI issues, I found the little things to be the most annoying.  Like being unable to resize columns.  The text in a column is truncated, but you can’t expand the column to see it.  You have to mouse over each row to see the tooltip.  I’m slowly getting used to Quicken’s way of doing subcategories – using a colon.  Money had that format as an option, but I turned it off.  The UI, overall, is definitely from another line of thinking – and not very much in line with Microsoft’s design recommendations.  I’ve had the argument before about how being consistent with Microsoft design helps a user understand your application quicker.  The additional time it is taking me to understand how Quicken works is a fine example of this.  Holy crap, I just discovered that some (4) popup windows I thought had closed actually didn’t.  They’re in a pseudo-taskbar at the bottom of the main window.  Good god.

Now the bigger issues.  The biggest being that the filtered view in the register does not maintain the proper running balance.  It shows a running balance of the transactions shown.  This makes the filtered view useless, but Quicken users have been living with it since the feature was introduced.  That’s nearly a deal-breaker, but I’m going to stick it out.  The other big one is there is no transaction entry form (that I can find).  You have to enter all your info directly in the register.  This brought back a very distant memory of when I first used Quicken and I didn’t like that method of entry.  Money provided a more presentable form for entry and it was a significant selling point.  Money also allowed the option to enter transactions Quicken-style.  Funny how Money tried to implement a more Quicken-esqe experience and ended up being the one that failed.

I feel a bit sad that Quicken is now the only major player in this software category.  Mostly because I know they can never make the changes needed to satisfy the MS Money crowd without ruining the experience of legacy Quicken users.

The Quickening

Posted by on December 17, 2009 No comments

So I’m at the 7th and final stage of grieving: acceptance.  I have accepted that Microsoft Money is gone and will not be coming back, so I must move to Quicken.  It’s not without trepidation that I purchase Quicken and try to recapture the enjoyment of tracking my finances with a new program.  I had used Quicken a long time ago and was not as pleased as I was with MS Money, which is probably why I’ve used Money for over 10 years.

So I’ve gotten Quicken Deluxe 2010 installed and the first thing that pisses me off is that it has put icons on my desktop.  Not just one icon, which is tolerable, but 4.  One for the application and three sales pitches.  This is a terrible first impression.  One shortcut is to a co-branded version of FreeCreditReport dot COM – one of the biggest scams out there.  One is for their BillPay service, at $10/mo.  Even Wachovia, a premier bank, only charges $6/mo for integrated BillPay.  Unless Quicken doesn’t have 2-way integration with Wachovia, which is practically a dealbreaker for me.  MS Money had it. (Turns out, yes, Quicken does support online payments through Wachovia)  The final offer is for a typical rewards credit card provided by Chase.

First Launch: I am prompted to “Get Started”.  I have to enter my banks and their login info so Quicken can download transactions and whatnot.  I’m mildly impressed.  In MS Money, this was a separate step after setting up accounts.  It picks up my Wachovia account without a problem.  Then I do my Chase account.  Oops, there was a problem.  It says to try again later.  So I think, “Maybe it should be entered as a WaMu account, since that’s where it was originally opened.”  Nope.  Not found there.  It’s later now, so I try again under Chase.  Quicken crashes.  Ok, my impression of this program is sinking fast.

Second Launch: I get all of my accounts set up.  And I am quite impressed with how well it handled ALL of my accounts.  If I had a login for it, Quicken handled it.  I got my loans entered and the wizard was pretty easy to work through.  I browse through the preferences and set a few things to my liking, like two-line registers.  Now, I am downloading transactions for an account that doesn’t have real-time transaction updates.  And it’s frozen.  However, I was able to close the window (X) and it seemed to be a successful update.  We’ll see how that turns out on the others… ok, three of the four I had to close the window, but they seem current.  Not sure of this is going to be an annoyance or it’s just a fluke.

I’m going to give it an honest try, since I have no other choice, really.  I’ve tried GnuCash and that was definitely a step down.  So we’ll see how quick things get.

The “have it” habit

Posted by on December 1, 2009 No comments

At dinner tonight, I had the opportunity to train a new employee.  Not directly, but because nothing I ever do is simple, they got to experience exceptions to the order-taking routine.  At the close of the transaction, I was going to say something to the effect of “Enjoy your employment, lucky person” but decided against it.

As I ate, I considered this a little further.  I’m (still) employed.  I’m doing ok.  But at the same time, I’m a responsible employee and a quick learner.  I could have that job!  And since I’m still employed, I’m more desirable to employers because it shows I can keep a job.  I should have that job.

But what kind of flack would I take for doing something like that?  I’d be taking jobs away from someone who really needs one.  “You already have a good job.  Stop hoarding the jobs, jerk.”  This transitioned my thinking into class warfare: the “have’s” and the “have not’s”.  I think this needs revision.  It’s the “have not’s”, the “have enough’s” and the “have more’s”.  See, I want to advance from “have enough” to “have more”.  And I could, because I’m not currently in the “have not” crowd.

But like I said, that’s not really fair.  The rich get richer, as they derisively say.  I would be suppressing the “have not’s” – the class below me – from advancing to the “have enough’s”.  So, in order to spread some of the wealth, I will take that job.  And another.  And maybe another.  Then I will outsource my jobs to another person who could not get the job on their own.  Wait, it’s not really outsourcing, is it.  Insourcing?  No, not that either.  No, it’s reverse subletting.  I am going to sublet my jobs at a lower wage and take the difference as a “convenience fee”.  It works for property, why not jobs?

But as usual, I’m so far behind the times.  Of course, this is already done with day laborers, contract positions, and other temporary positions.  But those are all handled by businesses.  Businesses run by rich people.  The “have more’s”. Once again, I’m getting held back by the man.  It’s so hard to get ahead anymore.  Woe is me.