california love

A few days ago, a friend and I were discussing how high California's taxes are. We currently have the sixth highest state income tax at 10.6% (trailing New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island), and the highest sales tax at 8.25% (not counting local taxes). She laughed at me when I concluded "it sucks here, too bad it's so nice". Admittedly that was not my best communication moment, but I think both of us understood what I was trying to say. It really is very hard for me to imagine living anywhere else, and as much as I complain about costs, it's still a no-brainer for me to stay.

Tangentially, I recently ran across this quote which amused me:
It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world. -- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

caution: incoherent rant

D and I have a Wells Fargo mortgage. A couple of weeks ago, a guy called us up and told us that we could refinance through their program to a much lower rate, with no fees and no new appraisal. The only catch was that we'd have to take our home out of trust and then put it back after closing. Normally this requires notary costs ($10 per signature) as well as recording costs ($15 for the first page). However, the mortgage rep claimed that we could walk into "any Wells Fargo branch" and have the deeds notarized at no fee because they would be Wells Fargo documents.

Bright and early this morning, we trekked down to Santa Clara to get the deeds from our attorney. Then, we visited two Wells Fargo branches and had them call at least three other ones in a futile attempt to get our papers notarized. Washington Street (Santa Clara) said they used to have a notary but she left. North First Street (San Jose) said that they had one on staff but that she was on vacation. They called Rivermark (Santa Clara) for us, but their notary was on maternity leave. Winchester (Santa Clara), Arques (Sunnyvale), Park Center (San Jose), no dice. Everyone was either on vacation or on some kind of leave. WTF? Do people not work anymore?

Finally, as we retreated in defeat and headed to work, I started dialing branches near home. San Carlos said their notary was on vacation (of course) and suggested Belmont. In the end, out of eight Wells Fargo branches, Belmont was the only one who actually claimed to have a notary in the office today. So much for "any branch". Anyway, we're going to try to head over tonight before they close at 6pm. I remain skeptical.

P.S. Someone should start running businesses that open just from 6am to 9am and from 6pm to 9pm. I am convinced that here in Silicon Valley, they would make a killing.

yeah, right

I dislike companies whose employees lie to me.

Today I called Citibank to request a reward check for my Citi Platinum Dividend card. Normally I'm able to request the reward check online, but for some reason the online interface wasn't showing me that particular link today. The person who answered the phone had a heavy Indian accent and identified herself as Susan. Interesting, but okay, whatever.

I asked her to send me my check, and she said that she wasn't able to see any dividends in my account, because it was "under conversion" to a new type of card. She said I should call back in a few days to request my reward. I asked if the dividends would be properly transferred to the new account, and she assured me that they would. I asked if I would be able to request the reward check online once the conversion was done, and again she said yes.

As I was about to hang up, I asked if she could give me her extension so that if I had to call back, I'd be able to tell the next rep who I'd talked to previously. She said she was unable to give me that information. I asked for her last name, and she said "Smith". Then, she wished me "a pleasant evening". This was at oh...9:30am Pacific. Susan Smith? Yeah, right.

I guess I really don't care as I'm cancelling this card once I get my money out anyway. The new rewards system (as of July 1st) totally sucks.

maybe computers are already smarter than us

Credit card fraud detection is amazing.

I spent months booking hotels, plane tickets, train tickets, and random events online. Then I travelled around the world, using the card left and right, and I never got declined. (Granted, I told them the countries and the rough timeframe.)

Yesterday, someone tried to spend $1031 and $435 with my card number online, and the bank promptly flagged my account and disabled my card.

I don't know how they tell the difference.

wow, sometimes the system works

This morning I got a call from a credit card company, for a card that I don't use much anymore. They wanted to verify a $850 transaction for bestbuy.com. Of course, I hadn't tried to buy anything from bestbuy.com. By the time I called them back, there had been several other attempted purchases: on sears.com, iTunes, and Snapfish.

Thanks to the fraud monitoring software, none of the transactions had been approved, and the card already had been disabled. After I called, they immediately cancelled the card and put a new one in the mail. Pretty cool.

unexpected savings

Last year we replaced our ugly old inefficient heater with a shiny new one. It was expensive, but we figured that over the long term, we would save money (and the environment).

Recently, we got an email from PG&E:
Thank you for participating in PG&E's Winter Gas Savings Program. You saved 45% in gas usage and earned a 20% credit on your spring bill!

I love when a decision pays off even better than expected.

being well-prepared

My dad is a CPA, so both he and my mom educated all of their children about personal finance starting from a very young age.

I remember going to the bank with my mom when I was maybe three or four years old to deposit tiny sums of money into my own bank account. Afterwards, she would show me the numbers in the passbook and I would be happy that they were bigger than before. At some point she even explained to me what "interest" was; that money in the bank would make more money, all by itself. (She left out the part about inflation, at least for awhile.)

When I was in college and making slightly larger (but still measly) sums of money at my undergraduate research job, my dad insisted that I max out my Roth IRA "while I still could", and I somewhat blindly followed that advice. It was only later that I realized that it had been totally the right thing to do.

I also remember being taught about income taxes (as Dad complained about the government taking his hard-earned money away), property taxes (while he explained the costs of running rental properties), and estate taxes (when depositing money into custodial accounts for us, every year or so).

Being the well-prepared people that they were, of course my parents had made out a will early on, but it wasn't until I was about eight or nine years old that they sat the three of us down for a very special discussion. The question at hand: "If we die, which aunt/uncle/grandparent do you want to live with?"

As you can imagine, my 4-year-old sister was horrified. I think my 2-year-old brother was merely confused. Eventually, after several minutes of reassuring us that no one was in imminent danger of death, we managed to come to a consensus quite expediently, and the appropriate documents were updated accordingly.

Last week I found myself at a lawyer's office making some rather morbid arrangements myself. "Who inherits your condo if you die, your sister dies, *and* your brother dies?" is not the kind of question that I answer every day, but I guess I do feel better having done it. I tend to have very little faith in courts and other government processes.

California insurance survey

Wow, this survey that the State of California did on insurance premiums is actually really useful. Although, I'm not sure why it's the government's job to keep track of these things.

FSA debit cards

Last year I signed up for an FSA, into which I put $100. Because I'm lazy about receipts, I also chose the new debit card option.

So far, I've managed to use over $95, so from a pure cash perspective, it was worthwhile, even with the $5 activation fee. However, I ended up having to fax in receipts for most of my expenses anyway; the only time that I didn't have to submit a receipt was when I bought contact lens cleaner at drugstore.com. Nevertheless, I signed up again for next year. I guess I decided the savings outweighed the hassle.

Incidentally, while reading up on FSAs recently, I discovered some interesting details. It appears that any unspent FSA funds are kept by the employer at the end of the year. Similarly, if an employee elects to put the full $3000 into an FSA for a calendar year, manages to use all of the money in the first week, and then quits the company, he/she is not responsible for any reimbursement. I wonder if it evens out?

AMT suckage

Yesterday I got my tax return back from my CPA, and had a bit of a nasty surprise when I realized that I owed a couple of hundred dollars, instead of being owed a few thousand.

It only took me a few minutes to figure out what had gone wrong. The AMT figure was significantly higher than the ordinary tax number. I had sold some stock in 2005, had paid lots of state and federal taxes on the gain in 2006, and now was being punished for having paid those same state taxes. It feels like I'm being taxed twice!

I do love living in California, and I'm already resigned to the real estate prices, but when faced with the reality of also paying thousands of dollars a year to the federal government for the privilege, well, I start to entertain vague notions of moving to Seattle.

I've known about AMT for many years (my dad being a retired CPA), and it's even affected my taxes a bit for the last two years, but this is the first year that it's impacted my tax burden significantly, and let me just reiterate that it sucks very much. It's much worse in practice than in theory.

I'll say right now, that if a presidential candidate that I'm otherwise undecided about (not anti-choice, not anti-gay, not anti-Taiwan, not crazy) pledges to fix this broken system, I'll vote for him/her in November.

being cheap

I don't mind spending money when I feel that it's justified (e.g. Tivo, premium orange juice, nice sheets and towels, trying out new restaurants) but I hate discovering that I've paid more than necessary for a particular item/service. So, I research purchases online ad nauseum, check prices on eBay for weeks, and track cash rebate credit cards and savings account rates.

Recently, my Nokia 8265 started to run out of power at an alarming rate. The battery gauge would go from four bars to one during a 15 minute call. Since I've had the same phone for at least three years now, and it's a TDMA model, I thought I'd look into getting a new phone; maybe a quad-band GSM.

I called up Cingular, and asked for deals on new phones, and was told that I qualified for a new phone, but as an old AT&T Wireless customer, I would have to "upgrade" my rate plan in order to get one. By "upgrade", they meant, switch from my current $34.99/month plan (with unlimited incoming text messages) to a new $39.99/month plan (with no text messaging). Apparently, even if I bought a phone from a retailer, in order to activate it, I'd have to "upgrade" my rate plan. I declined, of course.

A week later I bought a new battery off of eBay for $6.96, including shipping and handling.

short month

The end of February always freaks me out. I'm just not used to the month ending so early, and I always get caught not having done something that I was supposed to have done.

As a prime example, this morning I found myself rushing to deposit some money into my checking account on the way to work, so that I would have enough to cover my monthly housing check. Bleah.

if only hybrids were fast...

I just paid an even $40 for 13.16 gallons of gas. This marks the first time that I've ever paid over $35 for gas, as well as the first time that I've paid more than $3 per gallon. Ouch.

estate planning

If someone does no estate planning at all, when he/she dies, a probate court supervises the distribution of his/her property according to state and federal law. The whole process usually takes several months and some non-zero amount of money is paid to the lawyers involved, so it's a good idea to try to arrange one's affairs to bypass probate if possible.

People who have kids and large estates usually establish living trusts, but that involves money and lawyers. A coworker recently sent out an informational email entitled "estate planning for the cheap/lazy/single", which I found very useful, being young, healthy, unmarried, and childless. His suggestions:

- Fill out Payable On Death, Transfer On Death, or Directed Beneficiary forms (they're all more or less the same) for all bank or brokerage accounts which allow them.
- Fill out the beneficiary information for all retirement plans (IRA, 401k, etc.)
- Fill out a DMV Transfer Without Probate form to transfer car ownership.
- Use Willmaker (or some other easy-to-use software) to create a will that handles any remaining accounts.

I've done all but the last; apparently I'm cheaper than he is.

time and money

Last week, I spent an hour or so looking at plane tickets on various sites (Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, etc.). Then, I spent another hour reading about digital SLR cameras on dpreview.com, and several minutes using Froogle, Amazon, and other sites to look at current prices. I also read several Epinions reviews about auto insurance, before getting some quotes.

I've found that as information has become widely available online, I've made better purchasing decisions and become better informed about consumer products. I've also spent a lot more of my precious time researching, comparing, and bargain-hunting. Now, instead of calling up my travel agent, giving her a set of parameters, and trusting her to find the best deal, I run through a standard set of at least five travel sites looking for deals that fit my schedule. I wonder if, in the long run, it's all worth it? I do get a small sense of accomplishment from doing all the research, so I guess for now, the answer is "yes".

prenuptial agreements

At lunch today, we got onto the subject of prenuptial agreements. The group consensus seemed to be that they were strongly recommended, almost a necessity.

For me, the best argument is that a prenuptial agreement dictates what happens in case one party dies. While wills and trusts can be modified, prenups are binding agreements. Existing assets can be allocated to children from a previous marriage, aging parents, siblings, and/or other relatives. Besides, if a couple can't get through negotiating a prenuptial agreement, what does that say about their relationship?

But I digress. The whole discussion made me wonder about the current percentages (the number of couples who sign prenups, out of the number of total marriages), so I went back to my desk and tried to find out.

According to several sites, it is very difficult to track numbers on prenups, because they can be written at home and do not need to be filed until they are about to be enforced. However, according to anecdotal and indirect evidence (lawyers drawing up prenups, number of divorces which are settled using prenups, etc.) the numbers have been on the rise since the 1970s, and prenups are widely used in the United States.

There is more resistance abroad; for example, the Chinese are about evenly divided on whether prenups are a good thing. One reason is that according to Chinese superstition, it's unlucky to mention divorce, when a couple is about to be married. Honestly, I think it would be more unlucky not to mention it.

free credit reports

How did I not hear about this earlier?

Starting today, residents of California (and 12 other states) can get a free copy of their credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus, once a year. Better yet, there's a centralized website for requests: www.annualcreditreport.com (for some reason the site requires that the URL be pasted into the browser).

I'm thinking I'll request one now, and save the other two for later.

Millionaires for Bush, Billionaires for Kerry

I just read a very intriguing article entitled "Millionaires for Bush, Billionaires for Kerry" which tries to explain why the uber-rich tend to lean Democrat.

My favorite part:

On Wall Street, veterans speak of "f***-you money": the nice round figure a guy needs to set himself up for life, buy (and decorate) multiple residences, create trust funds for kids, and still have enough cash to buy expensive toys and pursue new business ventures. At a certain point—somewhere north of $10 million—wealth may become "f*** you and f*** you, Republicans" money.

I object to the "guy" part, though.

the never-ending tire saga

About 3 months ago, I went to Yosemite with a bunch of friends. As I mentioned previously, I took a nail in my left front tire, and had to get it patched at the Yosemite Garage.

More recently, I noticed that my tire seemed to have sprung a slow leak. I had to fill up my tires about every two weeks, and then every week, and then every few days. At that point I started to look into getting new tires.

The Tire Rack was highly recommended by several, so I browsed around and found that Michelin was offering a $50 rebate on a set of four tires. Michelin makes a very nice Ultra High Performance All-Season tire called the Pilot Sport A/S. However, at $135 a tire, they were significantly more expensive than my other choice, Pirelli's PZero Nero M&S, at $101 a tire. I waffled for a couple of days, and managed to forget completely that the rebate was expiring at the end of the week.

The following Monday, I was all ready to buy, so I clicked rapidly through the checkout process until I discovered the rebate had expired. I sulked for about a week, not wanting to admit defeat. It's horrible when you lose money due to your own laziness. I kept thinking if I waited long enough I would discover another coupon or rebate. Finally, last Sunday, I caved to reason and bought the tires.

Monday evening, on my way home, I took a nail in my left front tire. My new tires arrived Tuesday afternoon. If I had gotten the tires with the rebate three weeks previously, I would have just been out $135. I guess the moral of the story is that procrastination pays? Maybe a better moral is that lots of times, things just work themselves out, in the end.

As an aside, it really kicks ass to live just minutes away from work. Tuesday morning, I called up a co-worker at 10am and he swung by and picked me up on his way to work. That afternoon, I convinced another co-worker to come by and talk me through putting on the spare. Last time I had a flat, a bunch of guys did all the work, so I wanted to make sure I learned how to do it this time. I figure if I know how to change a flat, maybe I won't get one.

fat what?

A friend pointed me to fatwallet.com the other day as a good site to find discussions on credit cards and rewards information.

Since then, I've used it to find an 8% cash back offer at a sporting goods store, some informative postings comparing various digital photo sites, and several promotion codes for various online shopping sites. I'm trying to figure out it's not more popular. Are people just too lazy to do a little research to save a little money?