December 26, 2006
but I still use a tax preparer. I scrutinize every other aspect of my financial life but I still hand over all my paperwork to my parents who take it to the CPA who has taken care of our taxes for the last 15 years. I know, I gotta grow up and do my own taxes. Every year I say that this is the year I’m going to get grown and just do the taxes on my own. I’m just not sure that this will be the year. It’s because my dry-run numbers never match his and the refund expected is never as much as his. He also discounts the amount he charges me every year for the 4 forms he works on to a flat $50. I have to say, 50 bucks for getting upwards of $500 more than expected? Well, maybe next year will be my year because THIS year I’m going to claim the correct number of allowances.
December 24, 2006
The same friend I was helping with debt reduction has become engaged! And of course, in a matter of minutes we’d gotten down to the nitty gritty of what it’s going to cost in terms of the wedding location, the timing, the honeymoon, etc. She’d wanted to be married in June of 07, but that’s not going to work out so it’s been put off to 2008. Because of that, she’d like to have our bridesmaid dresses custom-made instead of just rented. And she wants to pay for them. Yikes! That’s definitely a more Asian tradition so I’m pleasantly surprised but she’s not rich and I hope she knows someone who is going to give her some hefty discounts because I don’t want her to go into debt over it. She knows that too.
In the meantime, I’m happy for her!
then we’ll get down to business.
My holiday bonus came in and I can top off my emergency fund!! AND I have enough left over for a good running start at opening my Roth IRA before the April deadline for 2006 contributions!! I am beyond excited. I can’t believe that I’ve leapfrogged several months of saving!!! Well, I mean several months of *small* chunks of saving and frustration if I can’t quite make my savings goal for the month due to unforeseen circumstances. I know that the savings goals were ambitious but I really made it, AND before December 31st.
I had one tiny diversion from depositing the entire check into the e-fund and Roth fund, but you’ll have to see my San Diego trip confession for that, er, digression. Other than that, I was a good girl! I promise!
Do you know what this means? I can actually start throwing some money into the Ooops fund and then rewrite my budget to include contributions to the Roth, the wedding fund, the car (buying and maintenance of) fund and the travel fund. Er, ok that MIGHT be a little more ambitious than realistic, but still, the freedom, oh, the freedom to make that choice!
For so many paychecks, my savings progress felt so very agonizingly slow. It seemed that after crunching the numbers, crunching the tops of my pens and generally tip-tapping away at my calculators, it just wasn’t possible to stop staring at that pink and white e-fund bar because it was NEVER GOING TO FILL UP.
So there are about half-a-zillion things my office has done wrong this year, but the year-end bonus and Christmas gift was definitely not among them. As if topping off my e-fund and nearly filling up a Roth IRA contribution wasn’t exhilaratingly awesome enough, we got 30G video iPods. Of course it comes with a not-so-hidden barb for me: I’m heading up the new Podcasting with one of the newbies and this might be to shut up my “uhm, I wish I could help you but I don’t even HAVE an iPod, I don’t know how to work one!” excuses. This means that when Big Boss freaks out over an iPodly emergency, I’ll have to know how to rescue him. *eyeroll* 🙂 I’m joking — receiving an iPod when I could never justify the expense is pretty delish. And my little cousins are quite awesome as well and are filling it up with as much 80’s and country music my little blogger heart could wish for, free of charge as well.
Now to the serious stuff: holiday bonuses: Man, I love those things. Ok, I love them with this job because they actually give you one. I fondly (*cough, uh huh*) recall my previous job. Although the previous owners knew how to throw a fantastic holiday party, I never had the pleasure of experiencing it because soon after I started, they sold out to a corporation. They went from a full-on family atmosphere to a $30/employee, per year allowance. That wasn’t the bonus, mind you, that was an allowance to the company. The company would then generously take a $5 cut to pay for the main courses for the holiday party whether or not you could/would make it, and then let you select a $25 gift certificate/card from the list of fundraiser gift cards the head doc sold for his son’s school. Ahhh, yes, the good ole days.
Anyway, BoyDucky tells me that his bonuses are based on performance evaluations that are assessed by the employee and supervisor, which are passed on to the supervisor’s supervisor. The bonuses are in line with the recommendations: “meets expectations” gets you one set amount, “exceeds expectations” gets you whatever set amount that might be, and you see it in your next paycheck. I’m not sure how the taxes are considered in his case.
My bonus seems entirely subjective. Little Boss makes his list of names and recommendations and Big Boss either approves them or discusses them further. I’m absolutely positive that Big Boss’s ultimate say is more heavily influenced by his wish to appear the benevolent dictator than any sense of reality and appropriate reward for a job well or poorly done. I have no idea what the recommendations are based on, a percentage of the annual salary? The cost of his annoyance subtracted from the overall contribution that person made that year? The number of nickels in his pocket multiplied by their age? It’s supposed to be a merit bonus, but no idea have I. Big Boss then writes a personal note and the check which is sealed up and handed out at the office lunch. We get a 1099 at tax time and have to claim the bonus check at a contractor’s rate. Since no taxes are taken out, I would set aside an approximate amount from that money for the tax – it cannot be fun to realize that you owe x% of that big yummy check a few months later. I know that I was underclaiming allowances throughout the year and even though I increased my allowances substantially in the last few months, I’ll still be due a refund so I’m not worried about having the money to pay that tax.
The one thing I always try to stop myself from doing, knowing that the bonus is so subjective and NOT mandatory, is planning for it when I’m making my yearly financial goals.
How did you make out this year? How do bonuses work for you, if at all?
December 19, 2006
As a rule, I don’t really enjoy your typical, run-of-the-mill Asian wedding banquet. They’re just boring. But apparently I’ve missed out on some weird new fad at the two family weddings my parents attended the past couple weeks: they ran raffles and lotteries. One raffle gave the winner the chance to take a mystery-money envelope ranging from $5-$200 or to be put in the lottery for a $2000(!!!) cash prize. [The fool took the chance on the lottery, btw, and came away with nothing instead of the fat $200 he could have gotten. I think they were kidding about the “as low as $5” thing because all the raffle winners got no less than $50.] My parents came home with a nice new vase and an MP3 player! I’ve been promising myself an MP3 player since I started this job (oh, say two years ago) but never got one. I’ve totally scored. Now I just need to figure out how to break it out of that plastic prison they call packaging. Then, on to the tech-savvy cousin for music!! Yesss….
December 18, 2006
We’re coming perilously close to the end of the year and the thought of unfinished business occurs to me. The issue of the overpayment from some months ago is still unresolved. I’d asked Little Boss what he wanted to do about it because he’d expressed doubts about the payroll coordinator’s reliability when she brought me the worksheet detailing the exact amount I needed to pay back to the department a while ago. He didn’t think she could be trusted to correct the error because she’s the one who caused the problem in the first place. He’s got a point because she has a terrible track record when it comes to dealing with our office. He suggested that we take the worksheet to the payroll department (not the same person) and find out if the calculations were accurate. The funny thing is, the secretary experienced the same problem and she pointed out to me that because it was payroll’s error, there wasn’t a darn thing they could do if she didn’t pay it back. I wonder if she ever paid hers back.
For my part, I don’t feel comfortable keeping the money if that’s not really my money. I mean, my job and my reputation is worth more than a thousand bucks – I didn’t work my tushy off just to be remembered as the person who kept some chunk of money that didn’t belong to me! But what he wants is rather ambiguous because he made the comment that he’d considered calling the money (part of?) our bonuses if it didn’t make me unhappy because it was money “already spent.” Well I wouldn’t mind because it’s not spent, though I did throw the money in my e-fund to accumulate interest while we made a decision. I don’t count that money as mine or as part of my net worth. And payroll taxes were already taken out of it so I wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with a big fat 1099 this year, that’d be nice!
I should just go ahead and make out the check and see if he’ll take it. It’s an odd thing, trying to give your boss a payroll rebate.
December 17, 2006
I’ll post the results of the San Diego Getaway challenge when I get back next week (Dimes may very well be right…).
The friends’ gift exchange challenge, however, has been met and I have emerged victorious!! Yeah, that’s dramatic but consider the challenge: Brainstorm, find and purchase a gift(s) spending $50 or less by December 27th. BUT the bonus is that the invitations to the gift exchange were mailed out last week and I still haven’t received mine. The invites contained the mail-it-to-your-gifter wish list, which means I haven’t even mailed out my wish list to whichever poor sap is supposed to get my present(s) by the due date. Luckily, I wheedled my giftee’s name from my friend and dashed off to Amazon to hunt down my targets. I didn’t get exactly what I wanted for her, but I did come close. 2 DVD sets: Harvey Birdman Vol 1, and Venture Bros. Vol 1 (going for about $60 in stores), for $12 including standard shipping. I used my gift certificate because not spending money out of pocket took precedence over getting myself something.
They’re both new and are scheduled to arrive on my doorstep before Christmas so I’ll have plenty of wrapping time. I think that makes me a bargain-shoppin’ winner and not just a cheapskate.
December 15, 2006
Oh holy cow. I wondered what happened when my site hits doubled and realized that not only had I been mentioned in JLP’s roundup, I clearly didn’t finish editing my title and it makes NO SENSE. I really meant:
Much as I don’t like Suze Orman, we have something in common.
I did not mean that was necessarily a good thing. It’s a habit I’ve formed over the course of the years to keep myself from getting over-confident and overspending. It’s worked for me so far, but it’s not entirely accurate as there are a few things I could afford, and I sure could be livin’ the high life right now, but as many a wise saver has said before: the way to really build up a good cushion is to live like a broke college student for a few years after college. And that’s totally who I am in my head: a broke college student.