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COMPUTER TIP OF THE WEEK for all Windows users:  download the latest FREE version of Treesize!  I had some older versions of this that were just okay, but Ver 4.2 is amazing! This little utility fills a huge usability hole in Windows by scanning any portion of your file tree, reporting the sizes of every subfolder, and neatly sorting them by size. Unlike the old version I was using, this one is lightning fast: scanned my entire C drive in seconds!  
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tldr;  I managed to spend almost a week Getting (some of) My Affairs In Order.  The fireproof lockbox now has a justification for existing.

Two or three or five days ago I was inspired by The Internet to add a few things to the fireproof lockbox in the office closet. All that was in there was a folder with passports, birth certificates, and the like and one folder containing the giant abstract for the house. The Internet puff piece that crossed my digital desk suggested a few other obvious things to keep in there, like vehicle titles and emergency cash. Well, that sounds easy enough, right? Let's just add them.

But the most obvious thing to add was the Family Survivor Document and Password List that was started about 10 years ago and desperately needs updating. A lot of the updates are scrawled on the old hard copy in the pink binder, so they just needed to be transcribed. But the Password List had of course ballooned to the point where it needed its own document.  So I figured I'd start with that. I do, of course, have all my passwords recorded in various places, so I started with that. Because my record-keeping impulses tend more towards intermittently obsessive that truly organized, I naturally discovered that the multiply redundant places I had recorded certain passwords did not agree with each other. So I had to login to all of them to see which version was  correct. While I was at it, why not update some of the passwords on Loyalty accounts where I had carelessly reused the same password? That shoujld be easy, right? Which led to the unwelcome discovery that most of my credit cards and loyalty programs had changed their password requirements, in many cases forcing the use of email addresses as login names (which I HATE). So in order to change my password I had to abandon he handy "username" I had chosen and check/update my email contact info, which is surprisingly difficult to do on some of these awful websites. Alaska Airlines was excruciatingly difficult, eventually  resulting in my disabling Richard's account completely. I still have to call Customer Service to get that fixed. *sigh* But I did get the passwords updated to something unique on the accounts that still work.

Then I moved on to the main Family Survivor Document, which actually took a lot less time than the passwords. Although I had a hard time finishing either one because just as I was about to print the hard copy I thought of something else I had forgotten to add. 

Then I discovered that the giant abstract, although interesting as a historical document, does not include any actual DEEDS. I finally found a couple of extremely poor copies of our deed in a file folder marked "CLOSING DOCUMENTS" and just added that whole folder. Also, while I was at it, the Social Security and Medicare folders. And my latest insurance policies, which was one of the things I started out to do but had almost forgotten by this point. 

Then it occurred to me that I might as well throw in some digital media with backups photos and important files. That led me down the path of doing a little bit of file cleanup and reorganization, and I'm still in the midst of that. And that's when I downloaded the new Treesize, which was the high point of this whole process so far. 




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I completed my not terribly complicated taxes using H&R Block Deluxe and found myself staring at a completely ludicrous result. Normally my Minnesota tax bill is nearly as high as my Federal. Because despite what you may have heard, Minnesota does NOT have a wonderfully progressive tax code. They tax all capital gains as ordinary income (the Feds do NOT tax it at all, at least at my income level), which clobbers middle-class retirees living on mutual fund investments. Minnesota also taxes a large portion of my Social Security income. At least they did last year. But this year I ran the taxes and owed the state only $420 instead of the usual $3000 or so. My income had dropped a little from last year, but not THAT much.

I was convinced that I had done something wrong and spent literally hours poring over the forms, trying to figure out where that huge new "Subtraction" had come from. I finally recognized the amount as the sum of our taxable Social Security and that $520 "rebate" that the state sent out last year. 

So I googled around and discovered that Minnesota has stopped taxing Social Security for couples making < $100K!  About time! It makes a surprisingly large difference in the bottom line. So if you are on Social Security and have been putting off doing your taxes, you may have a pleasant surprise in store. 
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tldr; if you are on Medicare and have Health Partners insurance you might want to read this. 
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Richard and I have a Medicare Advantage program with HealthPartners, which we have been generally quite happy with. Sufficiently so that I have become quite lax at doing that thing where you review your health insurance plan every year, looking for gotchas and unfortunate changes. This year I was surprised to receive a couple of shiny white debit cards in the mail. They just say "Health Partners" in big letters, but on careful inspection I spied "Choice Card" in tiny white on white embossed lettering. This forced me to start trudging through the murky pathways of the HealthPartners website looking for the explanation. I took one wrong turn, leading me to a completely different Choice Card that seems to be some sort of FSA? Nope, it's not that. Finally found it. Here's the link, as a public service for other HP customers who are currently staring in confusion at their unexplained new cards.

Guess what! It's a new benefit! A rather obscure and limited benefit, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth. This card can be used to pay for certain "expenses not covered by Medicare" up to $475/year!  You can only use it for 4 things: chiropractic care, prescription eye ware, hearing aid products from one specific company, and home-delivered meals from one specific vendor (but only right after you get  home from rehab care). The "Mom's Meals" benefit is hilariously niche, but the prescription eye ware benefit can apparently be used at any optical service. Perfectly timed, since I really need new glasses. Wow!

While I was at it, I followed a helpfully placed link from the Choice page to something labeled "OTC benefit" and discovered another hidden program that gives you $50/quarter for drugstore stuff: vitamins, bandaids, pain relievers, sunscreen, bedpans, etc. This one did NOT come with a card; you have to order online from the limited list of products on their special portal. But hey, it's free stuff that anybody can use: $400/year for the two of us. Nothing to sneeze at. I struggled through their extremely broken registration process, managed to get our accounts established, and verified that there is indeed $50 credit in each account. I placed an experimental order for a knee brace and a couple of replacement cane tips for Richard. Curious to see how long it will take to get here.

I also discovered through closer scrutiny of my plan benefits that Medicare insurance covers prophylactic dental care even if you don't spring for the ridiculously expensive extra dental insurance. We've been going to the same dentist for the past 30 years or so, and I never updated our insurance info when we went on Medicare (because I did NOT buy the dental insurance, so I thought it wasn't covered). So we've been paying out of pocket for exams and cleaning for 8 years when we didn't have to. D'oh!  Note to self: give insurance info to the dentist at next appointment.  
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 Since Amber's brood became a family of 5, flying them out here for Christmas has become a daunting financial endeavor. Christmas time domestic fares are typically in the range of $600-$800 per person, so... do the math. But for the 2nd year in a row, Amber and I managed to cobble together enough points and miles from our credit card hobby to cover ALL OF IT. And with beautiful non-stop Delta flights that do not require getting up before dawn or arriving at midnight. Go us!

Of course, last year's deal drained 6 years worth of Chase Ultimate Reward points and this year did a similar number on the Amex points. But hey, this is the kind of thing I was saving them for. The last big points cash-in got Richard and me to the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017. Now we're concentrating more on making memories for the grandchildren. 

Of course the way the airlines have been performing over the past 5 years, it's still a crapshoot. Those beautiful non-stop flights will probably be changed by the airline at least 3 times between now and Christmas, if they even take off at all. But right now it feels like a huge win. 
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This almost never happens. Usually when a credit card company announces that they have revamped their credit cards to make them ever so much more valuable, they are at best taking something away with one hand while offering some unwanted new feature with the other. Not this time. Chase is replacing their popular Freedom card with a massively BETTER version called Freedom Flex. They've also upgraded their related Freedom Unlimited with dynamite new reward categories.

Freedom is the no-annual-fee card that gives you 5% back on different categories of spend every quarter. It still does that. But now you also get 3% back (year round) on dining and drugstore purchases, and 5% back on travel booked through their travel portal. The dining category is excellent, but 3% on drugstores is unprecedented. Do you know how much you can spend in a drugstore? Sometimes (but not often) you'll find drugstores in the rotating 5% category, but I've never seen a card that gave 3% back year round!

Best of all, if this is a new card you get a $200 Welcome Bonus and 5% BACK ON GROCERIES FOR A YEAR. That is a fantastic deal for a no-fee card! Hell, it would be a great deal on a card with a $95 annual fee. I already applied for one, and we'll be switching to that for our grocery purchases for the next year as soon as the card arrives.  

If you already have a Freedom card, you should call and get it upgraded for free to the Freedom Flex. Because it's not a NEW card you won't get the 1-year grocery benefit, but you get the other new categories.

If you have a Freedom Unlimited you get the new categories automatically without having to even call. Just remember to use it at drugstores going forward, and for dining (including takeout) unless you have a better option. Or just use it for everything, which is not only what Chase would like you to do, it's a good choice for that if you want simplicity. It gives you 1.5% back on all purchases with no annual fee, and now you get 3% on drugstore and dining to boot. 

And if you would like to apply for a nice new Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited, please let me know and I will send you a referral link. You get the same intro offer ($200 + 5x on groceries) and I get a referral bonus. 
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tldr;  Minnesota tax law is not kind to retirees, and is nowhere near as "progressive" as it claims to be.

The 1099 from my brokerage account finally arrived yesterday, and I plugged it into my tax software immediately. I need to get an idea how much I owe so I can figure out how I'm going to pay it when I file in April. For the 3rd year in a row I was baffled to discover that my Minnesota tax bill was higher than my Federal tax. The lowest tax brackets (where my income falls) are 10-12% for Federal tax but only 5.5% for Minnesota.  So my Fed tax should be about twice my MN tax, not 10% LESS. So, WTF?? 

This year I decided to figure it out, and after about 3 hours of digging around I finally realized what was going on. It turns out that Federal tax law is far more progressive than I realized and Minnesota is pretty much "screw the poor." Or anyway, the sort of poor. If you're too poor to have retirement savings, the rest of this will be of no interest to you and you can go back to complaining about the wide, flat, Minnesota tax brackets.

I poked around in the H&R Block software FAQ, got a hint, pursued it down the halls of Google, and finally unearthed the surprising answer. Most people are probably dimly aware that Capital Gains income is taxed at a lower rate than other income. This is invariably portrayed by the media as a "Tax Break For The  Rich." But it's not only rich people that have capital gains income. If you own mutual funds, as most people who have managed to amass any retirement savings do, you almost certainly have Capital Gains income (and maybe even the more esoteric Qualified Dividend income). In my case, 2/3 of the income from my investment account is in those categories. Not because I'm so smart, but because my broker is. Anyway, it turns out that while The Rich do get a tax break on that type of income, The Poor get an even bigger one, at least from the Feds. In fact, if you are in the lower 2 Federal tax brackets, you pay 0% tax on Capital Gains and Qualified Dividends! Minnesota, on the other hand, appears to tax everything as ordinary income. I never noticed this before because when I was working most of my income came from salary. But as a retired person, most of my taxable income is from retirement savings, so it's very noticeable.

Incidentally, this has nothing to do with last year's new tax law (I refuse to call it a Tax Cut). This 0% tax for lower incomes did not change significantly between 2017 and 2018. 

Today's PSA

Dec. 1st, 2016 01:55 pm
dreamshark: (sharon tire)
I just found a clearly bogus charge for $15.99 to SEI*SOCCER.COM on one of our credit cards. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could have gotten that card number. It's a hotel credit card has been safely stowed in my "sock drawer" for 6 months, hasn't been used since the last time we stayed at that hotel chain. That was fortunate, since it made the charge stand out.

But this is a popular time of year for credit card fraud, since it is easy for smallish charges to slip by unnoticed with all the holiday shopping. So, if you use credit cards (or a bank debit card), double-check your statements.
dreamshark: (sharon tire)
Two of my credit cards were hijacked in the past week.  In both cases, the illicit transaction was caught by the credit card company (Discover and Citi, respectively) who texted me fraud alerts. The Discover card has been cancelled and replaced. I got the new card in 2 days and it's back in service. I just called Citi's fraud department about today's breach. They tried to get away with "new cards will be sent in 5-7 days."  I said that would not be acceptable, please overnight them. I wasn't real impressed with the alertness of the account rep I talked to, so I repeated this point 2 or 3 times. We'll see if the cards get here.

The Discover frauds were all in-store purchases, which means that they actually stole the number and cloned the card.
Unclear about the Citi card. Both charges were in New York City, which suggests they may also have been physical cards.

If that's the case, Barnes & Noble could be in trouble as they accepted one of the two fraudulent transactions. As of October 1, any store that does not have chip-reader cards is responsible for credit card fraud. And with good reason. Cloned cards don't work on chip-reader POS terminals. So it's about time all the retailers out there quit whining and dragging their feet and just implement the new technology already.

So how did they get our card numbers? Well, as it happens these are two of our newer cards, so it's not hard to look back at the purchase history. The Discover card has mostly been used with Apple Pay, which is pretty much unhackable. And the only two retailers where we have used both the Citi and the Discover card sans Apple Pay were...  Home Depot and Ace Hardware. 
dreamshark: (sharon tire)
So, apparently an Experian server was hacked a few weeks ago. Not the whole Experian database, just a section of it where they stored a bunch of sensitive information related to T-Mobile accounts. Not payment or credit card info, just all the information you give your phone company when you sign up for service (name, address, DOB, SSN, etc.). Apparently T-Mo was under the impression that Experian would use their special expertise to store this information for them securely. Right. They might as well have put it on a government server.

The silver lining is that every time my personal data gets compromised in a well-publicized data breach I get a free Identity Protection Service for a year or two. This time it's Experian's own "Protect My ID Elite." This looks better than the cheapo version I got from Target after their data breach a few years ago. About all that one did was send alerts every time I opened a new credit card. This one has all kinds of nifty services that I hope I never need, like a Lost Wallet service to help make frantic calls to credit card issuers and a $1 Million Identity Theft Insurance policy.

There's an Internet Scan service that promises to "continually monitor a vast number of online sources where compromised credit and debit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and other personal data is found, traded or sold."

It also includes quick and easy access to my Experian credit report. Somewhat surprisingly, it seems to be 100% accurate. 
dreamshark: (sharon tire)
Every now and then someone chides me for not having a will. I don't really see the need for one, since it would just say "everything to spouse unless we both die, then divide equally between children" and that's what happens anyway if you die without a will.

But I do see the need for an instruction book. It was hard enough dealing with my mother's estate, and she had everything planned out in advance and everything documented in paper files. Nowadays our lives are so full of online accounts and complicated bill paying mechanisms that it must be a nightmare trying to deal with a sudden death. And then there is all that STUFF that baby boomers have accumulated for our children to deal with after our death.

So today I started a project I've been meaning to do for a long time. I started writing up a Family Survival Guide for use in case of death or health emergency by whoever has to deal with it. Eventually I'd like to put it into a nice hardcopy format, but I started out with a Word document to capture the first things I thought of. It's already 5 pages long! The section on "Locating Assets" just keeps growing. So far it includes:

  • Financial record books (a series of small spiral notebooks)

  • Four filing cabinets and a fireproof filing box

  • A shelf of 3-ring binders with financial statements by year

  • Passwords to my iPhone and the password-keeper app on that iPhone

  • Key files on my computer, ranging from notes files to a huge comics inventory spreadsheet

  • Private page on my website with links to online accounts

  • Google docs spreadsheets

  • Broker's phone#

I've barely started the Online Accounts section. The resources listed above point to the most important ones for legal and financial purposes, but what about the 10 zillion others - social media, online subscriptions, email, my Ebay account? Which ones need to be closed, which ones should be updated to let my online friends know what's happened?

I wonder if anybody has come up with a good computer program or workbook for dealing with all this? And by "good" I mean one that is updated for modern life. I'm sure there are tons of out-of-date estate planners that never even mention passwords.
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On Wednesday, someone got hold of my Amex Delta credit card number and went on a spending rampage.

On Thursday, the Amex fraud department called me to confirm some "questionable charges."  The activity started with a $3.00 charge at Tesco (a convenience store in England), and continued with about $1,000 worth of merchandise ordered from 4 or 5 websites. Now here's the amazing thing. The only charge that went through was the $3.00 at Tesco. After that, alarm bells went off and ALL the subsequent charges were put on hold until they could be confirmed (and presumably denied after I said that they were not mine).

On Friday I received my replacement credit card via Express UPS.

Wow.  I am impressed by the efficiency of the fraud-detection department.  I have no idea how my account got stolen.  I still have the credit card in my possession.  I almost never use it online, although I do have a couple of automatic monthly charges on that card (Netflix, USI).  I had used the card within the last few days, at Schuler's Shoes and Costco, so I'm inclined to suspect one of those.  But the nice lady from Amex said not to bother trying to figure it out - "There are so many ways they can steal your credit card number.  They can even do it electronically when they walk past you on the street."  Really?  They can do that?  I thought that was still in the realm of things to worry about in the future.  Yikes

I am both freaked out and reassured. Apparently the only thing keeping the entire massive structure of the credit card economy functioning is these fraud detection algorithms.

Has this happened to any of you?
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After spending what amounted to a full day making donations to worthy causes online, I have some ideas on what I would like to see in terms of privacy policies. Everything I mention below is something I saw at least once on some site, but I don't think I found a single one that implemented all of these things. If I find one that does, it's going to the very top of my repeat donation list!! Looking at it from the point of view of the donor (who is probably donating to more than one cause and doesn't want to end up drowning in charitable solicitations) these things seem pretty obvious. Apparently when looked at from the point of view of a single organization desperate to get donations, it's not so obvious. So I'm writing this as advice to the organization itself.

If You Are An Organization Hoping to Get Online Donations

1) The Charity Navigator website offers some specific guidelines for donors who are concerned about unwanted mail, spam, etc. ( How to Stop Solicitations by Mail.) A lot of people visit this site when researching charities, so start here to see what kind of privacy control donors are starting to look for. Note that the primary thing that Charity Navigator will rate you on is a clearly posted privacy policy, so start with that.

2) The tricky thing, of course, is what goes INTO the privacy policy. Privacy policies are often full of annoying gobbledy-gook and obvious statements with the one thing people want to know (who are you going to give my address to?) kind of obfuscated at the bottom. I'd say, keep it simple and tell the truth. If you feel that your organization simply cannot survive without selling or trading donor lists, be truthful and try to put the best spin on it.

3) Accept donations via Paypal! This makes donations much quicker and easier, provides the donor with online proof of donation for IRS purposes, and allows donor to keep their personal information private. Oh, and test your website to make sure the Paypal button actually works (and not just with Internet Explorer!).

4) Offer anonymous donation as an option. Many sites have a checkbox for this. If they also offer Paypal as a payment option, this is far more convincing since they don't have to ask for personal information to verify a credit card.

5) If your privacy policy explicitly promises that you won't share personal information with other organizations, place this statement prominently on the website in addition to burying it in the privacy policy. This is a huge selling point for many people and seeing this promise may seal the deal.

6) Offer a set of checkboxes allowing donors to specify how YOUR organization will contact them in the future. Most people just HATE getting monthly mailings, but they may be fine with a quarterly newsletter or yearly donor reminder. I suggest the following set of options:

  • anonymous donor (organization keeps no contact info)

  • newsletter (by email or snail mail) on request only - specify newsletter frequency

  • gift reminders : choice of snailmail or email, specify frequency (allowing user to choose zero)

  • no phone contact whatsoever (and don't require a phone number on donor form)

  • if you must, ask for yes or no to "share my contact info with partners"


7) When prospective donors email you with questions about your privacy policy, have the answers ready and RESPOND IMMEDIATELY. Remember, if somebody sends you an email like that they are trying to make a decision on where to make a donation, and you are not the only fish in the sea. You might be surprised how few organizations actually respond to such queries and how much of a difference it makes. (I dropped two organizations that I had been planning to donate to and gave $1000 instead to the one that actually responded.)

Let me know what you think. Would these privacy features make a difference to you as a donor? How do they look from the point of view of an organization looking for donations?
dreamshark: (Default)
This kind of follows from the previous post about charitable contributions. I noticed that one of the organizations I contributed to online depends on the DMA opt-out site for their own privacy policy. That's the Direct Marketing Associaton opt-out site. The most useful option is the last one, "Other Mail," which includes charitable solicitation. You can opt out of everything on the list at once (although of course the site "recommends" against that).

I'd been meaning to register here for years, but hadn't gotten around to it, so I finally did. I also followed the link from this site to OptOutPrescreen, a similar site that lets you opt out of those annoying unsolicited credit card offers. I checked a few fraud alert sites and they confirm that this is for real. It sounds a little dubious when they ask you for your Social Security Number, but apparently it's on the up and up.

I doubt that either of these registrations will STOP the junk mail, but it may slow it down. To my amazement, the National Do Not Call list actually worked, so maybe this will too.

I especially recommend the Credit Card opt out to my children, [livejournal.com profile] thorintatge and [livejournal.com profile] ambertatge, as I am tired of receiving pre-approved credit card offers in their names. *ahem*
dreamshark: (Default)
This turned out to be harder work than I expected. I have some disposable cash during a time of hardship for many, so I decided to make some substantial charitable contributions this year. I was looking for reputable charities that provide help specifically to individuals in need and community arts organizations. I want to be able to donate online without ending up on any mailing or calling lists (paper, email, or phone). And I need some kind of proof of donation for tax purposes.

These requirements turned out to be surprisingly demanding. My overwhelming preference is for sites that take Paypal. This is just the perfect way to donate: you don't have to give them any information about yourself at all, and Paypal keeps a clear record of exactly who you donated to. It's also really fast, since you don't have to waste time filling in all that personal information in online forms (and then looking for ways to make them promise not to USE that personal information). Unfortunately very few charities have added the Paypal option to the usual credit card selections. So I've been looking for sites that have one or more of the following (preferably ALL): anonymous donation checkbox, opt-out checkboxes for email or other followup contact, posted privacy policy, explicit promises on the main page not to share your information with anyone. I will not donate to any site that requires a phone number for any reason except credit card verification; that rules out quite a few of them. I sent email queries about privacy concerns to causes I wanted to donate to that had no optouts or privacy policies. Meals on Wheels gave me an immediate response with strong assurances of privacy and anon donor option. One other charity responded that I could call them and give them all the same information I didn't want to give on the website (WTF?). None of the others even answered. Disappointing.

Here's the list that I have donated to so far:
Intermedia Arts [community arts organization in my neighborhood, in desperate financial straits, takes Paypal!]
Minnesota Emergency Foodshelf Network [local, provides food to the hungry, anonymous donor option]
Feeding America([formerly Second Harvest) [excellent rep, food to the hungry, anon donor option]
Greater Twin Cities United Way [many worthy causes, reliable and discreet, privacy policy, email optout]
Marine Toys for Tots [excellent rep, helps poor families, privacy policy, email optout]
Meals on Wheels [local, provides food and social support to elderly, quick email response to privacy questions]

I am currently trying to get the Paypal option to work on the "People Serving People" site. I think they have a bug in their script. I have sent them info on the problem I am having and hope they will fix it, because I want to donate to organizations that serve homeless families. I have given up on Sharing and Caring Hands. I have contributed to them in the past and found there is no way to stop the monthly mailings begging for more money. Their site offers online donation but no optouts, no Paypal, no privacy policy. So... too bad. It's a worthy cause, but there are others that are more respectful of donor privacy. Sadly, I can't find any privacy options on the HOBT site either.
dreamshark: (Default)
When I got my totally unnecessary and undeserved Federal Tax Rebate check earlier in the year I said I was going to give it to charity. I still intend to, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I have some ideas, but wonder what other people would suggest. I would much prefer to give to organizations that offer a convenient, online option to opt out of junk mail and that will promise not to sell my name to other organizations.

I'm leaning towards the following:

Food Shelf: maybe Second Harvest, maybe the Minnesota Emergency Foodshelf Network.
Homeless shelters: Sharing and Caring Hands
Arts Organzations: HOTB, Intermedia Arts
Miscellaneous: Meals on Wheels, Toys for Tots, one of the Jewish charities that got shafted by Bernie Madoff.
dreamshark: (Default)
It's hard not to feel a little nervous when venerable banking institutions like Lehman Brothers are failing. Merrill Lynch, which did not fail this week but faltered long enough to be snapped up by a bigger bank, was the brokerage that my family used throughout my childhood for college funds and other investments. It's sad to think of the Merrill Lynch bull icon going away. It's also the brokerage where most of my mother's estate resides, and I am right in the middle of slogging through the paperwork to distribute the money to myself and my siblings. *gulp*

I'm putting the rest of this behind a cut to avoid annoying folks that are worrying about paying next month's rent and don't really care what happens to the Merrill Lynch Bull. )
dreamshark: (Default)
One of the catchup things I did last week was meet with my broker to review my retirement plan, which I manage by a combination of inattentiveness and outright avoidance. Turns out I'm in better shape than many people my age, mostly because I accumulate money by being too disorganized to spend it on the things that it really needs to be spent on, like a new roof. Also, if I stash money away in places where I have to make phone calls or negotiate online forms [see below] to get at it, I just leave it alone.

Of course, meeting with A.J. ended up with new items being added to my list of boring chores to put off, such as selling some stock purchased through the employee stock plan and investing it in IRAs before the tax year closes. Unfortunately, QLogic announced record profits again, which for some reason always makes our stock plummet. [Don't ask me, I'm just an engineer, not a Wall Street analyst.] So now I don't feel much like selling the stock anymore.

So instead of that I guess I'll sweep some of the accumulated cash out of the pathetic money market fund where my brokerage puts extra cash and put that into IRAs. I think I can accomplish this with an email.

I also managed, finally, after 2 days of working at it and with help from a friend (you know who you are) to submit an expense report for my new Franklin planner. *whew* Isn't it amazing how much easier our lives are now that every little HR task is outsourced to a different online service provider? NOT. I miss the days when you just picked up a form in the HR office, filled it out, and turned it in.