February 21, 2007
According to this MSN article, it appears that many people are making mistakes in filing their tax returns by not claiming their long-distance telephone tax refund, claiming excessive amounts or just misclaiming the refund.
The easy way to claim it is to just base it on the personal number of exemptions you’d taken:
If you claim one exemption, you can claim a $30 refund; two exemptions, $40; three exemptions, $50; and four exemptions, $60. On Form 1040, you claim the refund on Line 71.
The more complicated way is to base it on the actual amounts of taxes you’d paid since March 2003. (The tax was 3% of the long distance bill.)
I think I may go ahead and do it the more complicated way because I have all my cell phone records dating back to ’05, but that involves digging up all the Padres’s cell phone records and the home phone records as well.
Don’t forget to take this refund if you paid for long distance service between March 2003 through July 2006.
February 19, 2007
The travel nurse recommended three injections for my trip that the shot clinic nurse said won’t even become effective until 10-14 days after I get the injections. Which, as it turns out, does me practically no good whatsoever. So, as long as I get hold off contracting tetanus, typhus or hepatitis A until the latter half of my trip when the vaccines start working, they will have been worth the pain.
I discovered that Kaiser offered this rather nifty service called the travel nurse. Basically, you call them up and they prescribe the recommended immunizations which are administered at the shot clinic (ow). The shots are free of charge. Wise decision ’cause I think paying for the shots would have just added insult to injury. My arms hurt!!
The travel nurse also makes recommendations about medications you should take with you, and those DO cost something. After spending about fifty bucks on RXs, I’d better come out of this trip hale and hearty.
If you have to travel to a rural area, you should definitely check with your health insurance provider for such a service. They’ll pay for preventative measures, in this case, which is far more economical and prudent than waiting until you actually get sick because most health insurance won’t pay for very much health care provided out of the country.
February 17, 2007
Two weekends left before I have to leave the country, so I’m running my feet off trying to get all the financial situations squared away: money for the Pa, money for the Ma, paying bills, etc. etc. It’s a bear, I tell ya.
Ma gave me my red envelope today, and I suspect she gave me a sheaf of Vietnamese money because she wanted me to open it up and show Pa what I got. She thinks she’s funny. This, however, goes against my pseudo-OCD rule of opening all the envelopes I get all at once. Still, I have my suspicions. So long as she didn’t give me Canadian money!
It’s Lunar New Year’s Eve, by the way. I’m thinking this year would be more “profitable” if I stayed away from my relatives instead of seeking them out as usual. Normally, I collect a red envelope from each aunt/uncle pair, but as I’m getting older and they keep having kids, I’d have to give multiple red envelopes to their kids! 😉 That’s right, ladies and gents, you can only game the system for so long! Hehe. To be perfectly honest, I’ve a half ton of work to do and not enough time or brainpower to do it, so I’d better get crackin.
February 16, 2007
I work hard, my credit cards should work hard for me, too! (Yup, I’m a deadbeat! Heehee) It’s time to evaluate which of the current credit cards should be switched out for cards that will yield more consistently useful rewards. I’d not intended to keep any of the new credit cards I got (solely for the points/miles bonuses) but I suppose they’re worth keeping during the fee-free year.
[Oh my lord, I hate trying to create a table in Blogger. I give up!]
Currently using ….
Card: Hilton Honors AMEX
Earning: 3-5 pts/$, for restaurants, cell phone
Primary Use: (wallet-worthy) Restaurants (5 pts), airfare (3 pts), cell phone bill (5 pts)
Rewards redemption: No redemptions yet, Total: 43,000 pts
Card: Chase Free Cash
Earning: 1 pt/$, for all purchases
Primary Use: (wallet-worthy) “Daily” use: phone bills, purchases, medical bills, etc.
Rewards redemption: Routinely $25 check for every 2500 pts
Card: Citi Driver’s Edge
Points: 3 pt/$, for gas, groceries, drugstores, 1 pt
Primary Use: (wallet-worthy) Gas, groceries, drugstores
Rewards redemption: Use for car maintenance as necessary
Card: Citi Dividend Select
Earning: 2 pt/$, for utilities
Primary Use: (stays home) Utilities: trash, water
Rewards redemption: None yet
Switching to ….
Card: Chase Cash Plus
Earning: 5 pts/$, for gas, groceries, drugstores; 1 pt/$ on regular purchases
Primary Use: (wallet-worthy) Gas, groceries, drugstores, regular purchases (medical bills, shopping)
Rewards redemption: $50 check/5000 pts
Card: Hilton AMEX
Earning: 5 pts/$, for restaurants, cell phone
Primary Use: (stays home) Restaurants (5 pts), cell phone bill (5 pts)
Rewards redemption: Eventually I’ll need a Hilton Hotel room. Until then ….
Card: Starwood AMEX (until 12/07)
Earning: 2 pts/$, for Starwood purchases, 1 pt/$ on all other purchases
Primary Use: (stays home) Large expenditures like auto insurance
Rewards redemption: 20k points can be converted to 25k miles, or 10k/night at Starwood hotels
Card: CitiBizPremierPass (until 01/08)
Earning: 1 pt/$ plus 1 pt/mile flown, for airfare purchased with this card
Primary Use: (stays home) Airfare
Rewards redemption: Just adds to the TY pts pool
I like the idea of pulling out all three cards that I carry normally and replacing them with one or two cards. The Hilton AMEX was going to be retired but I decided it can stay for the sake of the Autopay cell phone bill because I’ll need to use those Hilton points eventually. I may as well have a slow trickle feeding that pool of points until I’m ready to redeem.
The extra 1% I’m getting from the Citi Dividend isn’t really worth it, though, and while having an extra cushion of auto maintenance money from the Citi Driver’s Edge is nice, I can get 2% more and in cash from the Cash Plus card.
The Starwood card is good because it nets an extra 25% when you convert the points into miles so it may be worth keeping on just because that’s an extra 5k miles I can get on United. Depending on the saver fares available, that 25k miles can either equal one free flight (roughly equivalent to $220) or 1.66 free flights = $360.
I may just use that Starwood card for all regular and large purchases and keep the Chase card for my gas/grocery/drugstore card. I’m still reducing the cards from 3 to 2, and I wouldn’t want to carry just one credit card because it’s best to have a backup card when you charge everything like I do!
So, what’s in YOUR wallet? Do you *hustle* the credit card companies too? 😉
now that I’m home. I’ve pulled all the paperwork I need to settle the missing credits from Cardoffers.com. The Dish Network bill is in the to-do folder so that I can send in my rebate form with the first billing statement. My new CitiBusinessPremierPass card will earn me points both for the price of the two flights, as well as one point per mile flown (within 6-8 weeks after the first departure date) for my upcoming trip. The auto insurance and water/sewage/trash bills have been entered as manual accounts in Yodlee, and Dish is now in there as well.
Now? Now I can wrassle out the best credit card line-up for the year.
On the 13th, I realized that we should send a bouquet of flowers to one of the gals I work with who consistently does her best to accommodate our, sometimes insane, demanding requests everyday, including weekends, and does so cheerfully. I ordered a dozen roses for next-day delivery with a box of chocolates and paid the extra $10 to make sure that it was going to arrive on Feb. 14th.
I’ve been so busy this week that I didn’t remember to check on the delivery, and didn’t know if she received them. The tracking showed that the flowers were never delivered, and were sitting at a FedEx delivery facility as of yesterday. Chris at Proflowers checked into the situation and not only did he NOT fall back on the (perfectly valid) excuse of bad weather, he assured me that we would receive a 50% refund on our order, more than making up for the expedited delivery fee and he would order a fresh bouquet so that she doesn’t get a wilted bunch. And he’ll upgrade the vase to the nice red vase that I originally liked best. AND he’s upgrading the bouquet to something that’s in stock so that we don’t have to wait until the 26th-28th.
They’ve had my business since college, but now they’ve got my business for good.
They may be slavedrivers around here, but they sure do pick nice Valentine’s Day flowers! I’d forgotten how much I like receiving flowers. BoyDucky’s not allowed to waste his money on them anymore, but the office is welcome to regale me with gifts and such 🙂
