Thursday thoughts
September 27, 2007
We’re finally having my birthday lunch in the office today. I selected the cuisine and menu because we have a horrid habit of over-ordering and stuffing our mini-fridge to a fare-thee-well. We can’t do that now because mini-fridge has been smelling weird for the last three days and no one can figure out why. Most of the time I’m really embarrassed by non-friend celebrations of my birthday (meaning anything staged by my family or work cohorts) because I hate being the center of attention. But now that it’s nearly a week late, it doesn’t feel like it’s really my birthday anything, so I don’t mind as much. Yes, weird.
Whether it’s because of this last big conference that required a big clothing buy or just the all-expenses-paid sort of mentality that’s seeping into regular life, I’m fresh out of motivation. It may finally be wearing off now, but I’d better not get too complacent.
Cake does a really strange rendition of “I will survive.” Or is it just weird because I’ve never heard it before? Gloria Gaynor DID do it first, right?
Fabulously Broke tagged me for a “How we met” story, so I’ll have to get that post together. Soon.
Oh! And I finally faxed off the correction to my 403(b) to increase my contributions to $1000/month for the next three months. Since I have a thing about keeping as much of my income as retirement or planned goals savings instead of paying some ridiculously high amount of tax on untaxed income, this should help offset my total taxable income tax bill that’s to come by reducing my taxable income. It’s possible that I won’t be filing as Head of Household this year, so I’m preparing for a heavier tax burden. I hate that my tax status is so changeable without any appreciable alterations to my actual lifestyle.
What else? The check will be, supposedly, in the mail next week. This whole raise business has been abnormal and decidedly odd. Whatever, come here li’ raise!
How often have you been / are you changing your 403b contributions?
Can’t wait to hear your story š
That’s a lot going on! I think you’re smart to do that with your 403(b). What a strange raise! But you’re right–a raise is a raise š
~Nonsense~ A bit more frequently than usual this year. We set our contributions in Nov for the following year because they don’t allow us to make changes in Dec for whatever reason, but I missed the boat on it so had to wait until Feb for it to become effective. In July, our entire retirement plan changed to give us a 401(a) (allowing contributions up to 5%) and company match, so my primary account, the 403(b), became secondary. Since 5% of my salary is nowhere near the contribution limit, I continued contributing to the account. Since I have my raise coming in a lump, untaxed sum for 6 months’ worth of salary, I’ve changed the amount again for two reasons. One, to reflect the contributions that aren’t coming out of that raise money; two, to reduce total taxable income.
So that’s been two-three times this year.