About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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April 10, 2007
Zachary’s post about dropping off his wife at the airport two minutes too late to board reminded me of something.
I did sort of the same thing on my return from the Vietnam trip, except I arrived at the airport later than I should have, and missed the cutoff to check baggage while waiting in line to check said baggage. That sucked. And they wouldn’t send my baggage after me, on the next flight out either. Me and the baggage, or no go, they said. *sigh*
United wanted $100 (!!) to change my flight so that my bags could go with me, and since that was twice the fee I’d paid for the ticket in the first place, I seriously considered leaving the bags behind with BoyDucky.
Luckily, it turned out that since I was flying an award ticket, they were able to change my flight to the following morning without a fee. They may never say so officially, that I could find anyway, but award tickets are much more flexible when you’re at the airport and run into problems than a regular paid flight.
*Yes, this is the same trip wherein I had problems on the train, the outgoing flight just to get to SFO to catch the international flight, etc. etc. etc. Rather fitting, don’t you think?
Hmph. It turns out that, despite my intense denial, the accountant is right and I can’t claim HOH status with both Pa and MaDucky as my dependents. Force of willpower can’t make him wrong, after all.
MaDucky made more than the 3,300/year income limit, and so, despite the fact that I’m pretty much paying for the entire household, I cannot claim an exemption for her. This means I could end up owing money after all. I’d artificially inflated my exemptions for the last quarter of 2006 to compensate for what I thought was overwithholding all year, but forgot to factor in my bonus and the possibility that I might not have 3 exemptions this time ’round.
Drat.
What does this mean? Well, I’ve already reduced my exemptions for this year. But, I have to try to sock away more into my retirement accounts to lower my taxable income some more in case my bonus is the same as last year’s or better.
Phooey phooey and drat. I hate it when well-laid plans go awry. It’s a good thing I never counted on a refund, though.
April 8, 2007
April 7, 2007
In what may seem to most PF bloggers a ridiculously simple and obvious frugal move, I’ve gone and renewed my library card. For various reasons (accessibility, doubts that they had anything I’d not read yet, etc.) I haven’t been to our public library in years. The one time I did go there to study last summer, I found the upstairs to be resoundingly noisy and annoying with children running around, talking at the top of their lungs and eating. Shocked to my very soul, I haven’t been back since.
This afternoon’s visit was much more sedate and satisfying. They couldn’t find my library membership from a decade ago, but didn’t require my birth certificate, utility bills and passport to verify my identity. Though I did have the utility bills in my purse, they were none of them in my name, and would have been useless. Happily, the library has relaxed their standards just enough to allow even a reprobate like me to borrow a few books. I was only allowed three since it was my “first visit” but I’ll just come back tomorrow and heave home another armful of books. How reminiscent of my childhood this is!
AND, I’ve got reading materials galore without violating my no-spend parole. Happy day!
I often ask BoyDucky to name three things for me. Three things he’d consider the most important “fun” items he’d spend on. Three things he’d like to do before he grows up. Three things we should definitely do for our wedding. Three reasons why we shouldn’t elope and skip the wedding nonsense.
His counter-proposal? Three trips before we have kids. We’re … well, I’m young 😉 and we both want to travel. And we like to travel together. Since we’re long distance, we spend more time travelling to each other than with each other, so we definitely want to discover new places together when we finally live in the same city. Trips within trips are fine and all (aka: the Vietnam trip: I had to travel to meet him, and then after we returned to the States, I had to travel back home again) but an actual trip in all its planning, budgeting and fussing glory is what we want.
We’d like to do three trips after we’re married but before we have kids, to see friends, to explore, to eat.
Where would you go?
I’ve got grandiose dreams in mind, none of which are affordable, I think:
1. Europe. Like naming an entire continent’s not cheating?
2. East Coast. I’ve got my 25K American Airlines miles ready and waiting, how ’bout you?
3. Someplace totally exotic. Er, was I supposed to wait for our honeymoon for this one? Does the honeymoon count? Should it count? And Comic-Con doesn’t count.
April 6, 2007
I received my first Roth IRA transaction statement today, and I must admit: I’m baffled. It lists income dividends at the end of each month, which I understand: as your fund makes money, you get dividends paid out which are just reinvested in the same stock or bond if you choose not to take the money out. Yes? So, what’s this other thing, the long term capital gains thing?
This statement has a lot more information than my usual Vanguard statements. It lists the Year-to-Date Income Dividends, the ST/LT cap gains, the contributions/distributions, and the total income year-to-date separately and neatly. It’s even got my 30-day yield, share prices, trade dates, and total shares owned. Yet, I understand so little!!
I’m really writing this post to serve as a big fat reminder that I need to look all this up and figure it out. But I’m not going to do it right this second because it’s ten til midnight and I’m old and tired. Better luck tomorrow.
All week I’ve been thinking: I can have Good Friday off if I want. Do I? I have lots of work, should I really take another day off after taking Monday off? Finally I decided to go for it since I’ve totally put in my time working weekends and such for the past … entire time I’ve worked at this job.
Apparently it never sank in. I was at the ATM this morning, frustrated that I didn’t have a pen even though I specifically thought “put a pen in your pocket for the ATM”, and wondering why on earth the bank’s doors were still open at 2pm on a Saturday.
………
*lightbulb* It’s not just Friday for me!! Happy Good Friday, everyone!
I got lots of financial stuff done today:
Recycled a few bagsfuls of cans – $6.15 (Oh, the irony: walking around the recycling station, people had littered … their bottles and cans. Come on!!)
Deposited my reimbursement from work for my train pass and various transportation, and birthday gifts purchased for the office: $128.13
Deposited a payment from BroDucky for some money I’d loaned him. (*cringe* I know, I swore that I’d never do that again and … I regretted it as soon as my resolve slipped. But, never again!! It is way too stressful dealing with finances, much less allow family and trust issues get into the mix. That’s just ugly.)
Filled in most of the remaining blanks in the past three months’ worth of bills on my Pearbudget file.
(I like the fact that I can make it web-based via Google Docs, but does anyone else find the navigation of the site really slow?)
Decided that April and May have to be no-spend months to make up for the free-flowing money in January and March. That leaves me all of June to save up for whatever budget I get for Comic-Con at the end of July!
Still left to do:
Trawl CashDuck to make some extra monies so the April and May’s budgets aren’t so squeezed that they start looking like those Pillsbury Dough tubes!
I have to get new windshield wipers for the DuckyCar. She’s needed wipers for a while now, but I just never got ’round to that.
Put together PaDucky’s resume. Keep your fingers crossed!!
