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Tweaked cash-flow spreadsheet format
For over 2 years now, I’ve been using spreadsheets to track our month-to-month household cash flow. In general, it’s been a huge success. It helps immensely with short- and intermediate-term financial planning. It lets us know when we’re running short on cash and need to be budget-conscious, and it allows us to earmark money ahead…
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The hidden cost of bill payment services
I signed up for a bill payment service yesterday. While I was reading through all the legalese in the “bill payment agreement,” it occurred to me that although the service is advertised as being free, it’s really not. There’s a very sneaky cost to it built in, which must be weighed when determining whether using…
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Lots of fun stuff
A smorgasbord of various topics today. I biked in for the first time since 6/21 today. A week of bad weather at the end of June, followed by a 5-day Independence Day weekend, then more unsettled weather the following week, all combined to keep me off the bike for awhile. Our boiler job starts tomorrow,…
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Howard County, MD property tax installments
Background: My home county bills my property tax in two semiannual installments. The first installment is always larger than the second installment. But I’ve never been able to ascertain the formula they use for figuring the amount of the first installment vs. the second installment. The other day I spent a half hour or so…
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Not-So-Flexible Spending Accounts
Between my wife’s broken foot and my son’s infection, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in doctors’ offices this past week. This week, we have doctor’s appointments every day except Friday. Next week, we have appointments Monday and Tuesday. Every visit means another co-pay. We’ve got a pre-tax health care spending account (HCSA), but…
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Maryland’s 529 Plan
I’m getting ready to open a new college savings account for our new son, Andrew. This time around, I’ve decided to go with a 529, the Maryland College Savings Plan. For our older son, I have a Coverdell Education Savings Account. I’ve always been partial to the Coverdell accounts, mainly because I like freedom —…
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Amended returns..
I filled out amended 2005 tax returns yesterday, to report income from my wife’s investment club. I’m not terribly impressed with how TaxCut handles amended returns.. For federal, you basically save your existing return under a new filename, then update the return to include the changes, and then tell it you want to fill out…
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mp3act
Totally OT… I got my Maryland state tax refund today — 48 hours after I filed with iFile. Can’t beat that turnaround time. And, I’ve found a promising app for cataloguing and streaming my MP3 collection: mp3act. It’s a web based app that uses PHP, MySQL and Ajax. Setup was pretty straightforward. When I started…
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Maryland’s iFile
Well, I filed the taxes this morning, and for the second year I filed the fed taxes electronically with TaxCut, and for the Maryland state taxes I used TaxCut to prepare the return and then filed online with Maryland’s free iFile system. Net cost: $15.95 fed eFile fee – $15.95 H&R Block eFile rebate, +…
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Demystifying your U of M Paycheck
Until recently, there’s been something I’ve always wondered about the paycheck I get from UMBC. We’re paid biweekly, which translates to 26 paychecks per year. Now, the University gives me a certain dollar amount as my annual salary. But if I add up the gross pay from each of those 26 paychecks, it always comes…