Blog - Page 235 of 242 - Making Sense Of Cents

Tax Withholdings and all the good stuff

September 16, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 4 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Sorry for the late post today. Suprisingly, there's only wired internet in my room and that doesn't work with my laptop. You'd think with this being a 4 star hotel that has a golf course, that the hotel would have internet in my room – but I guess not.

I know tax time isn't for a while, but such a bulk of my paycheck is taken out every two weeks for taxes that I can't help but constantly think about it.

I've been thinking about increasing the number of my personal allowances because I will get a big refund next year. In the past I have owed a couple thousand overtime, except last year in which I owed nearly $7,000 or something (this is because I owed taxes on the money that my dad left me and I didn't withhold enough from the inheritance in the first place.

“Payroll pitfalls
Payroll withholding is something you want to get just right. Why?
• If you have too little taken out, you'll owe money when you file your return. That's not good, obviously — no one likes to write out a big check to Uncle Sam.
• If too much is withheld, you'll get a refund, and that's not good either. What's wrong with getting a refund? That means you've given Uncle Sam free use of your tax money — money you could have made better use of yourself throughout the year.”

Read more: Adjust withholding so you dont get a big refund every year http://www.bankrate.com/finance/money-guides/how-to-adjust-your-withholding.aspx#ixzz1XxyWSRJh

Anyways, I'll be getting back around $4,000 to $5,000 next year and the BF will be getting around $1,500 to $2,000. We are giving the government an interest-free loan, whereas we could be earning interest on it. However, I do like having a big windfall all at once, and I don't know if I trust myself not to spend the money if I received the smaller amount of around $400 a month. I know that last sentence is a horrible thing to say as a personal finance blogger!

Me and the BF usually use a part of our refunds for fun and then save the rest. However, this year we're getting so much and I'm really excited for it. BUT, I constantly think that it would also be nice to have the money now. Should I change my withholding? What does everyone else do?

Also, I remember when I used to manage a clothing store, people would come in and use their whole tax refunds on shopping. And I'm talking thousands of dollars. That just never made sense to me!

What do you use your tax refund usually for? Vacation? Emergency fund? Fun? Pay down debt?

Life and Spending Update…

September 14, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 9 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I'm going to Los Angeles (Manhattan Beach) today for work. I'll be back on Monday morning (maybe Sunday night if I'm getting homesick). I'm hoping that I'll be able to go to the beach everyday after my meetings. Here's to HOPING! The BF is going to come on Friday to spend the nights with me since my meetings will be over by 5pm everyday. Me and the BF have pretty much no pictures together, and this time I'm making a promise to take some.

My spending has been good. We've spent maybe $350 so far on food and going out/entertainment, which is really great for us. All of our bills comes in at the very beginning on the month, so right now we are running low in cash. We have money in savings and the emergency fund, but we like to not take anything out. I've been wondering lately if I should somehow spread out all of my bills so that everything isn't hitting in one day and I won't get upset by the low amount of funds.

What does everyone else do? Do all of your bills hit at once or at different times during the month?

School has been ok, not great. I've been super lazy with school this semester. I can't wait until I'm done, which is hopefully May of 2012 or August of 2012. My classes have been completely boring me this semester, and I fight to stay awake. I was so excited about this semester because I thought I'd actually have interesting classes.

Wish me luck this week on my meetings! I get really nervous when I have to go on work trips. I also get really homesick being all by myself. I'll of course still be posting new things everyday while on my trip, probably lots of posts everyday since I'll be lonely.

Commuting and Gas Prices

September 13, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 6 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Over at The Happy Homeowner, money hasn't been spent on gas since July 8th! How is this possible? Biking to work makes this possible. So much money is saved when not having to be forced to rely on gas and cars.

Where I live, it's pretty much impossible to commute by any other means than a car. If you take the bus, it'll take 2 hours to get somewhere (whereas it would only take 10 minutes if you drove). This is not an exaggeration as the BF took the bus and train to work for around 1 month to save money, and then we realized he was spending 4 hours each day just on commuting, even though his work was only 10 miles away.

How do you commute? Do you take a car, bus, train, bike, walk, or what?

Also, with rising gas prices, we have been cancelling our random driving that we usually do. We love just driving around, but it's just not possible with the gas prices.

What have you done to balance your budget against gas prices?

P.S. I'm trying to win the $5 00 Budgets are Sexy giveaway sponsored by Life Insurance Finder.

Check it out! You can find my bucket list here, but here's a snippet.

Activities/Adventure/Fun

Go skydivin
Get my piloting license (I have my first class soon!)
Go parasailing in the ocean

Stay at home husband

September 12, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 9 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

DailyWorth awhile back had a great article titled “My Stay-at-home Husband isn't a Loser.”

Yahoo also had a great article about this.

My BF isn't exactly a stay at home husband, but I make the bigger income, and I most likely always will. This has caused problems for many other people who don't understand. Many people still believe that the man should be taking care of the woman and blah blah blah. However, I make more money than nearly every man I know (every man my age at least).

BUT, what I want to tell people is that I am independent! I can take care of myself.

Anyways, more and more men are staying home to be a stay at home dad, and more and more men are making less money than their spouses. This is the new normal, and should be accepted!

What do you think about stay at home dads or husbands that make less? I feel like this should be an obvious conversation about how men and women should be considered equal with no biases, but you never know.

Also, before I forgot there was also an interesting article on LearnVest the other day about Money Mic: Why I Want to Marry Rich. It's pretty interesting, I'd take a look at it.

Spending Guilt

September 10, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 4 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Whenever I buy something, I always think about it, A LOT! And most of the time I will have spending guilt. No matter what it costs, I nearly always think twice about it afterwards. I have a serious spending problem, but I would like to believe that it's under control. So now whenever I buy clothes, I always think about it and end up regretting it.

Such as the other day. I went to the mall and found lots of cute dresses, but I put ALL of them away. I'm very happy and I didn't leave with any spending guilt! Here's a great article to help you with any spending guilt.

What you can do:

Look at what's making you feel guilty. Is it clothing items? Electronics? Try to evaluate what it is exactly.
What dollar amount is making you feel guilty?
What could this money be better spent on?
Saving and being frugal is good, but to a point. I set aside a certain amount that I must spend every month. This amount is very low, but it keeps me sane.
Save for a future splurge ahead of time.

How do you get over spending guilt? How much do you spend before you feel “guilty”?

Coupons

September 9, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 8 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Do you use coupons? It seems like there's coupons everywhere nowadays. Online, newspapers, magazines Groupon, DailyDeals, text messages, and so on.

I coupon to keep my budget for household items down. I don't usually find too many coupons for the food that I eat. Here's a link to my latest couponing trip where I saved 51%. I follow a couple of sites such as Living Well Spending Less for tips.

I try not to use coupons on items that I would not normally buy also. I also think that extreme couponing is a little too extreme. No one needs 100 tubes of toothpaste.

Here are some tips:

Don't buy items just because you have a coupon
If you do decide to be an extreme couponer, please do not clear the shelves
Make sure you read the fine print on the coupon. Don't try to “scam” the system
Make sure you understand different stores coupon policies

What's your input on coupons? How far do you go?

My Household Budget

September 8, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 12 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Recently Serendipity and Red posted their household budgets. I realized I should do this also so that I can keep track and everyone else can have a little view into my life.

As most of you know, our goal right now is to increase our monthly income by another $1,000. This makes bill paying much easier and paying our debt much more possible. With this extra money, all of our budgeting percentages here, have gone down.

Anyways, this is what our monthly household budget looks like:

Mortgage: $1,100
Car Payment: $400
Gas (car): $350
Electricity: Anywhere from $50 to $250
Gas (house, heat, stove): $30
Cable: $60
Internet: $60
Car Insurance: $100 for all cars
Groceries: $300 a month
Eating out: We really need to cut down on this, but this can be anywhere from $300 to $700 a month.
Cellphones: $110
Sewer: $30
Trash: $17
Water: Around $21 a month

And then whatever is left over gets split up among debt and emergency savings right now. This is usually anywhere from $500 to $2,000, it just depends on the month. It fluctuates so much because I didn't have a vacation fund before, and I've gone on lots of vacations this past summer.

Luckily, my work has a great retirement plan and I have a Schwab account set up through them. My goal right now is to pay off debt, and then to start contributing to my retirement account as well. I know this is not the way others would do it, but I hate my debt, so this is my plan first.

How is your budget going? Any tips or insight on my budget?

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