January 2021 Update The tax forms are starting to trickle in. Probably won’t start reviewing them until mid-February once the brokerage statements all land. We’ll see if we have any drastic changes to the tax code to account for in 2021. Covered Calls Update I’ve written before about the covered calls that I’ve been writing… Continue reading January 2021 Update
In my last post, I laid out my plan for contributing to my children’s college education and creating incentives for keeping the cost down without sacrificing the quality of their education. My final contribution goal (including a 3% inflation) came to $299,901. That’s significantly smaller than the original number of $413,264, but still pretty high.… Continue reading Playing 529 Catchup (Part 3)
In my last post, I discussed the sticker price of a college education and some of the ways to fund it. If you recall, the total expected cost for my daughter’s college education is $57,629. Like me, you might be feeling some sticker shock! If you don’t have sticker shock, then at a minimum you… Continue reading Examining College Expenses with Incentives
The silver lining to the pandemic this fall was having our oldest home from school all the way from Thanksgiving to this week. This week, another semester starts and she’s back at school. During the holiday break, she put together a skeleton schedule for the next seven semesters. Simply taking a normal load each semester,… Continue reading The Cost of College
Happy New Year! I hope you had a merry Christmas and are ready for 2021! I know I am. Busting The Myths of Plastic Recycling This month I listened to Planet Money’s episode on recycled plastic, titled Waste Land. I remember hearing their earlier episode on how recycling of plastic has never been very viable. … Continue reading December 2020 Update
It’s the end of another year. Here are some end-of-year financial “chores” that you might consider as we close out 2020 and head into 2021. Adjust W2 Withholdings I track my expected tax burden in a custom spreadsheet and tailor my withholdings to be as close to zero as possible. I’m okay with underwithholding, but… Continue reading Year End Financial Chores – 2020 Edition
During the presidential election, one proposal put forth by the Biden campaign was to switch traditional 401(k) contributions from a tax deduction to a tax credit. With today’s current tax regime, when you make a contribution it reduces your taxes at your marginal rate, which for me is 22%, or 22 cents for every dollar… Continue reading 401(k) Deduction-vs-Credit
Recently, I spoke with a family member who decades ago, made a decision to prematurely cash out a pension plan prematurely, netting about $5k at the time. Fast forward 29 years later and the cost of undoing the earlier cash out cost $37k, an annualized rate of return around 7.1%/year. To help frame things, if… Continue reading Playing it too safe
Over the past twenty years I’ve had checking accounts at nine different brick-and-mortar banks, including: First Security (defunct), Wells Fargo, Charter One (defunct), Fifth Third Bank, Washington Mutual (defunct), Chase, PNC, Suntrust, and M&T. Why so many? After all, changing banks can be a bit of a pain. Most of the changes were due to… Continue reading Branchless Banking
November 2020 Update Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! I started this blog a year ago. We were in the middle of our family DIY study abroad in Spain (remember when traveling was a thing?). After reading Jeremy’s suggestion to “do interesting things and share them publicly” in his Selling the Dream post, I decided… Continue reading November 2020 Update
