Taxes

by Andy Hough on February 8, 2010

I spent this weekend at my mom’s house doing her and my brother’s income taxes. My brother’s was easy because he just had income from two jobs allowing me to use the 1040-EZ. It took less than ten minutes to finish his return. My mom’s taxes were a little more complicated. She no longer pays enough mortgage interest to itemize her deductions or her taxes would have been even more complicated. Since she works and draws Social Security I had to figure how much- if any – of her SS was taxable. I also had to fill forms for the Saver’s credit and the Making Work Pay credit. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t figure out from the instructions but it was time-consuming. The Missouri state income tax is perhaps more complicated than the federal return. It would seem to be easy since you are mostly transferring information from your federal return to your state return. Missouri makes you do some extra forms though to keep things from being too easy.

I was going to do my own taxes as well this weekend but I was taxed out by the time it came to do my taxes. With my self employment income my tax return will be the most complicated of all. I may not have even made enough to have to pay federal taxes but I will have to pay the self-employment taxes no matter what. I’m hoping that I will have some federal income tax credit that I can apply towards my self-employment taxes.

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January Investment Income – $89.50

by Andy Hough on February 5, 2010

My January investment income dropped slightly to $89.50 from $90.93 the month before. This was a result of the value of my IRA going down and no money being added to my investment portfolio.

It has been suggested that this is perhaps not the best way to measure my investments since it doesn’t completely reflect reality. After taking that into consideration I am going to come up with a new measurement based at least in part on my actual dividend and interest income received. I’ll still be calculating my investment income as I am now as well so that I will have a consistent measure for comparison purposes.

Disclaimer: This is not my actual investment income. To get this figure I first add up my retirement savings, emergency fund, and any other money I consider permanent savings. What the total of my savings would earn at 6% interest for a month is my monthly investment income. My goal is to get this amount to $1000 a month. If I have $1000 in monthly passive investment income I will be able to retire early.

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January Income – $1805.92

Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

Online Income

$407.62

Interest

$51.83

Stock Dividends

$20.33

Job

$971.33

Survey/Cashback

$6.67

Ebay/Selling stuff

$108.14

Bank Bonuses

$240

Total

$1805.92

January was a pretty good month for income. It was nice to see that I made almost as much from my alternative income sources as I did from my job. It will be difficult to match my alternative income total this [...]

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January Expenses – $1148.74

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

Household

$403.79

Entertainment

$67.32

Transportation

$138.76

Food

$115.09

Health

$67.66

Phone

$34.63

Debt

$29.00

Laptop/printer

$333.15

Total

$1189.40

My expenses were reasonable in January. If it weren’t for the purchase of a new laptop and printer they would have been under my goal of $1000 and I still didn’t miss that target by much.  There won’t be any large purchases in February and I [...]

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Books I Read: January 2009

This is something new that I am hoping is of some interest to you. I’m going to post general impressions of all the books I read on a monthly basis. This month’s list is only a partial list because I wasn’t keeping track of my reading earlier this month and I [...]

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January 2010 Review

One month of 2010 is done. Not a lot happened this month. I did put in my notice at my job this week. My last day will be dependent on when they can find a replacement for me. I might work until the end of February. I quit so that [...]

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What a $360 Apartment Looks Like

Here are a few pictures of my apartment for those who are wondering what you get for $360. The pictures were taken from my cell phone and I’m not much of a photographer but I think you will get the general idea. My apartment is two rooms if you can’t tell from the pictures. [...]

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What Do You Spend on Food?: A Grocery Budget Experiment

It is always interesting to me when people share their grocery budget and the foods they buy. There is a wide variety of opinions on how much is needed to buy groceries for a month. Look at the comments on my post about my food stamp experience and my follow-up post on food stamps [...]

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Weekend Spending Spree

My goal of spending less money this year is not off to a very good start after this weekend. On Friday I saw that Nebraska Furniture Mart was advertising a twin mattress for $30. Since I have been sleeping on the floor in my new apartment this looked like a pretty good deal. [...]

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Frugality is Not “Not”!

Many who have a negative opinion of frugality see it as “not” having a big house, “not” driving a big car, “not” going out to eat, etc. Viewed that way it is no wonder that they have a negative opinion of frugality. Frugality, like many things, can be defined by what it is not but [...]

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