September 22, 2006
This is an odd sort of birthday. BoyDucky has to work so I’m going to be grabbing a couple boiled eggs, walking myself to the BART station and moseying on up to the City to check out the Bay Area’s version of a Paul Mitchell school. [I cringe a little because their cuts are FIFTEEN dollars! That is a whole 50% more than my usual cut back home, but I only have one more weekend before the big Chicago trip and I still need to do some clothes shopping.]
The question is literally, is my time next weekend valuable enough to pay an extra $5 now? If I’m going to be preparing for my trip, shopping now would allow the tailor time to alter any suit/dress and would be the wiser course of action. On the other hand, I hate suit shopping and need moral support for that. I’m alone and have no moral support. Nor do I have a car to get around here to shop, instead of the City.
Huh, I just talked myself out of the haircut. *sigh* I’m going shoppin. Wish me luck.
September 19, 2006
Keeping in mind that your exemptions and personal allowances are two different things, the following guidelines are the key factors in determining how many allowances you should claim during the year:
To understand Form W-4, you must understand allowances. Think of allowances as cash in your pocket at the time that you receive your paycheck. The more allowances you claim, the less taxes are taken from your paycheck (and the more cash ends up in your pocket on payday). For example, you can maximize the amount withheld from your paycheck to ensure that you have enough tax withheld to cover your tax liability by claiming zero allowances. This will reduce the amount of cash you take home in your paycheck. The following factors determine your number of allowances:
- The number of personal and dependency exemptions that you claim on your federal income tax return
- The number of jobs that you work
- The deductions, adjustments to income, and credits that you expect to take during the year
- Your filing status
- Whether your spouse works
To claim the correct number of allowances, you should complete Form W-4’s worksheets. These include a personal allowances worksheet, a deductions and adjustments worksheet, and a two-earner/two-job worksheet. IRS Publication 505 (Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax) explains these worksheets.
I should have been claiming 1 for myself, 2 for the parents, and a 4th for claiming head of household so that my tax withholding would be lower throughout the year. As it is, I’ve overwithheld for about nine months so I’ve guaranteed myself a refund for next year. Ah well, could be worse!!
September 18, 2006
Tired but Happy’s on the same wavelength today: How much do you need before you could walk out on your job?
So things were going pretty well: the new girl started about a week+ ago and we’re getting along pretty well so far and training is goin’ alright. Stress levels are skyrocketing trying to keep her training and working and keep my work moving but, s’alright. For the better good in the long run, right?
The second new girl started today and I walked the both of them over to talk to our Department Coordinator who does all the paperwork to submit to HR for hirings and firings and everything in between.
She tells me that my status is still “unknown.” Huh? What status? Wha?
OH yes, remember that promotion and raise Bosses have been discussing over and over the last several months? The one that was suggested sometime in Feb/March, and then actually promised [“We’ll take care of you” were Big Boss’s exact words] in April? Little Boss’s exact words after that were “We just need to pick a title that’s accurately reflects your MANY responsibilities.”
In JULY we had a *final* exchange of emails in which he got the shortlist of titles that I’d be happy with and just didn’t want to discuss anymore. All that had to be done, he said, was to get Big Boss’s approval. In September I find myself applying for the new position – a mere formality – because for some reason, that’s a faster process than dealing with the paperwork for a raise. And just when I thought things were finally done? That the final paperwork was being processed by HR-above-in-the-sky? I’m wrong. Again. Because I’m told – true or not, I don’t know yet – I’m told that Little Boss still has not submitted my new salary. How difficult is it to pick a number?
I don’t know.
But I do know that if he doesn’t take care of it – today – as he said he would, I’m going home early *which, for me, is ON TIME* and firing up Monster.com. I’ve waited over six months for this. I’ve been talking to him, emailing him and discussing and “thinking about” this for months. And I keep being told that ” he and I feel that you’ve earned the title change, raise in pay, and change in duties. The only issue is when the title change would take effect.” So what is the problem?
There are two possibilities: either he’s neglecting me, his sole asset currently producing or he doesn’t want it to go through. Either all the time I free up for him by taking on more than above and beyond my title and responsibilities is worthless to him, or he has some issue with finalizing the promotion and is blocking it.
And you know what? More and more this sounds like what was being done with the two previous problem employees instead of proactively writing them up and firing them: attrition. He figured that the longer they went without the promotion or raise they wanted, the sooner they would get sick of the stalemate and quit. Gee, sound familiar? The only difference here is that I’m taking on THREE TIMES the responsibilities and I’m being promised things I’m still not getting. Not too much different from the things the other two wanted – I’m pretty empty handed from what I can see.
There will always be urgent and critical matters, but he can enjoy figuring out what the rundown is each morning without asking me. Because the way he’s handling matters, he’s leaving me with no choice. It’s both embarrassing and infuriating that I have to be ready to quit before he’ll take this seriously but it looks like that’s the case.
So my question is, how long do you wait before enough is enough? How long is too long to wait for a promotion? Me, I’m drawing my line in the sand today. Don’t worry, I’m not going to foolishly outright quit, but I’m going to start a serious search. Here’s hoping he gets it together.
September 17, 2006
This Friday, I ended a v-e-r-y long week with one misstep after another.
On the way home, I realized that I had forgotten to transfer money to my Citi card in my haze of tired-and-NOT-happy. Then I managed to miss my train stop which made me get home 17 minutes too late to get the transfer in before 12:01 am EST. When I finally got the website working, I found that there was an erroneous finance charge on my other Citi card. I explained the relevant parts of this to the CSR, who was having trouble with her computer, and oddly enough, both our problems combined just made the whole ridiculous situation better. For two people with problems, we had a raucously giggly good time trying to fix everything. And she credited my account the finance charge with no questions asked.
Today, I called the 877 number given for a Toyota owners promotion on their Tmobile services or equipment, was hung up on, and grumpily called 611. The next hour was an astonishingly thorough and educational hour on the phone with a very nice fellow named Jonathon in Kansas who painstakingly researched all the phones available to me for an upgrade suiting my personal requirements. After a couple hints about the scarcity of decent phones for retaining customers – ok, I flat out told him that the selection didn’t look like retention was important to them – he even found a few extra discounts that could be applied to some of those phones because of my long history as a customer and superb payment history with them. Or so he said. But hey, discounts AND flattery? I preened.
He discussed the discounts and technical merits of the four phones that he thought met my needs, and even looked up the new phones that would be made available tomorrow for upgrades even though he couldn’t tell me exactly what their prices would be. The new-new phones sounded pretty nifty but I knew that there was no way I was payin’ the equivalent of a month’s service for a new phone.
So, rather than one of their obsolete-within-two-weeks free phone I thought I’d end up with [a Nokia that doesn’t even show up on the page anymore, or the Samsung t209], I paid about $30 for a Nokia 6103 to test out. I get 30 days to try the phone and decide if I like it. Not only that, he arranged things so that the $50 rebate and the additional $30 rebate would be applied immediately and I would only be paying the end price of $20 and the sales tax of ~$10.
The only downside is having to pay sales tax at the original price, but I would have had to pay that anyway – something the guys in the store would not have bothered to point out to me! In fact, when I went to the store, the guys in the store wanted me to pay $30 after rebate for the Samsung t209 that is FREE online!! Yeah, I really don’t think so!
On top of all that, he explained the minor-to-anyone-else points of the Nokia’s durability and the kinds of hands-free sets that were packaged with each of the phones, AND explained Bluetooth to me. The major selling point? Was that he wasn’t trying to sell me anything. Or at least, he insisted that I take the time to learn however much made me comfortable and that the discounts would be available to me at any later date if I wanted to do more research. He was so helpful and informative that I decided to go ahead and try out the new phone because if I hated it for any reason, I can return it, return to my old non-contract status AND try out yet another phone when and if I wanted to.
Jonathon, you made my day as a customer. I am on a new 2-year contract with T-mobile and I don’t even mind! Good show!
And of course, before I posted this, I found that SingleMa had beaten me to it! =)
September 16, 2006
Checked out the 2006 Withholding Calculator and I’m not sure what’s more mystifying: the fact that I may come up overwithholding almost double my actual tax bill, that they’re recommending that I increase my allowances to 13 to adjust for the remainder of 2006, or the fact that I just can’t bring myself to believe them.
The IRS, I mean. I don’t believe their website’s calculator that I’ll only owe half of the total
amount that will be withheld this year. I probably should, and probably should adjust my W-4 right away since I’m running out of 2006, but I can’t really believe it.
There’s no logic to this disbelief at all. I just don’t want to change it and find out that it was utterly the wrong thing to do.
And? You can have 13 allowances? What are allowances? I should look this up.
I thought that looking at all the pretty pictures in Elegant Bride would give me ideas that I could economically reproduce sometime in the future. After all, I figure that the time factor when planning a wedding is one of the major reasons vendors can charge so much for their products or services. Just about every bride is planning for an event in the next year-ish, so they don’t have time to bargain shop or to look for creatively economical solutions.
It turns out that my logic was a little flawed here. Bridal products and services are ridiculously expensive because they’re bridal and because quite a few brides/families will pay that kind of money for those sorts of goods. And Elegant Bride is very much catering to that demographic.
For example, they feature the “best weddings” submitted by brides and grooms. These include weddings that involve going to Italy and custom designing a gown, and renting out an entire villa! Or feature articles highlight the new practice of throwing afterparties after the reception is over, featuring bands and brides wearing two custom-made Monique Lhuillier dresses during the day and a third one for the afterparty. Brides who schedule hairdressers a year in advance and actually make periodic consultations all the way up til the actual day to make sure that their hair is absolutely perfect every second of the day. Brides and bridal parties who will pay a makeup artist $1700 a day to do everyone’s make-up, clearly budgetarily justified because if “the bride is already spending 50,000 on her dress” $1700 is pretty much chump change. [Well, they have a point, if you’re going to spend thrice as much on your dress as I could afford on my entire wedding … $1700 pretty much has to be tip money.]
So, Elegant Bride is not for me. Oh, I saw two really pretty dresses that I liked. But I’m sure they cost about a year’s rent or so. And no, I’ve never ever had that highly-touted “jeans or rent?” conversation with myself, as fashionistas apparently have on a routine basis. I find myself so turned off by the whole mess that I seriously felt completely anti-wedding last night. The thing is, I’m a planner and organizer at heart. I love details. I’m the one who plans everyone’s surprise birthdays and farewells and all. And I considered planning a wedding, so long as I had plenty of time, a fun proposition. But this? The ten thousand dollar dresses, the twelve hundred dollar a night suites for honeymooning, the sheer materialism just rubbed me the wrong way and it’s got my back up.
Maybe I’ll settle down after a while, but I seriously don’t want anything to do with the trappings of a traditional Western ceremony right now. Hmph, they’ve sucked all the fun out of planning a party.
September 15, 2006
I have a windfall! It only took 3 phone calls and 20ish minutes following up over the last month, but I think Citibank finally came through with my $200 promotional bonus for opening a new checking account and linking my credit cards.
I found this little item this morning:
| FINANCIAL CENTER DEPOSIT/ PAYMENT |
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| AT FC# xxxxx & TELLER# xxx |
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$200
How very nice! That means I get to *artificially* bump up my savings deposit for this month from -60 [under target] to +140! I haven’t resolved my overly high savings goal problem yet because I’m still having to work all the overtime that gets me close to the goal I posted, but that’s an issue that’s in the back of my mind. (sidenote: This also means the goal meter finally moves!)
Eventually, sometime next year maybe, I’m going to have two, maybe three, people working with me who are meant to relieve some portion of the present workload and I’m going to try to work a slightly more reasonable schedule – somewhat less than the standard 60 hours/week would be nice. No, I’m not just being a spoiled brat here, I definitely believe in doing my time and earning my place but I’m just not sure that I can sustain this intense pace with no end in sight. If nothing else, it’s a matter of identifying and warding off incipient burnout.
Moral: Burnout is bad — you get cranky, and unemployed.