The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

[MaggieBE]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Boonie-here ground beef(it is actually a mix of ground beef/pork) is about ummmm $4 a pound. Things like chicken breasts are like $10 a pound! I bought a whole chicken(two lbs) for $6 today. Frank likes steak so I bought two steaks this week(my children hate it). About $8 for two smallish steaks. I do not care for steak. I'd actually rather have ground beef or chicken wings.

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Here's an interesting & important read from the Federal Trade Commission regarding identity theft. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/cons...heft/idt04.htm

If you don't have one already, a confetti paper shredder would be a wise decision in helping protect your private info.

Hope everyone is doing well with their budgets and savings! I'm going to the bank this morning to set-up 2006's IRA-CD for 6-months. When it nears maturity, I'll either roll it over or move it to a different bank depending on interest. This one will yield 5.0% APY if I held it for one year. I'm selecting the traditional IRA so that I can deduct the amount from my taxes.

There's all kinds of funky things going on with the taxes for 2006, some of which aren't on the paper tax forms, but are on the computerized ones. In particular, the refund for the federal excise tax on phones.

Happy savings!!

[ValidRouge]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Biogeek,

Can you tell me a little bit more about the refund for excise tax on phones?

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Here's the link to the IRS website about it. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/...164032,00.html

The refund is available for both individuals as well as businesses, and since your DH has his own business, it would be best to read both. It'll tell you what forms you need & has links to download 'em.

Here's an article from USA today about it so you can read why we're due a refund.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...xes-usat_x.htm

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Here's another good read about some common, overlooked tax deductions.

http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/artic...Tax_Deductions

For those who have a mortgage or are thinking about getting one at some point, here's an article by the San Francisco Federal Reserve regarding PMI, when & how to cancel it and also how to avoid it in the first place.

http://www.frbsf.org/publications/consumer/pmi.html

It's bad enough to pay all that interest on a mortgage, but to continue to pay PMI for years when you don't have to is a slap to the face. Just my two cents.

[higgies]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

That phone tax rebate, when I got it, was just a standard $30 for everyone I think...

[kylie]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

ON the phone excise tax refund - for individulas, there are two ways to go about getting it - one is a flat amount and requires no additional forms - just one extra line on your fed. return the other way requires you to have the actual amounts of the tax on your bills for a 41 month period and you have to file an extra form. You can choose which way to do it...a standard refund amount between $30 and $60, based on the total number of exemptions claimed on their 2006 tax return is for the "easy" way but in some cases, I can imagine where it would be worth it to file the actual amounts if you are a good record keeper.

For businesses it is a little more involved to get the best refund amount because there are some limits...but still worth reading the info about it at the link biogeek posted - especially for those of you with your own businesses.

As a personal example - We'll be eligible for the $60 because of our number of exemptions...but I went through just a few bills (it's on LD and some cell and bundled serivces) and could tell that over the 41 months that count, our $ amount would easily be over that $60. Whether or not it's worth the difference to go through all those bills is another story. Time is $, too! LOL!

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Yeah, you gotta make a choice on whether it's worth your time to go through all your records. For businesses, there's a formula that you can use to estimate your refund if you don't want to go through the hassle or don't want to pay someone to go through all those phone records.

For our personal taxes, we also qualified for the $60 rebate. DH always files an extension for his business income tax stuff, so I don't know what he's going to do about the phone rebate.

[sadie147]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Bio, don't suppose you have any Canadian tax refund advice? j/k....i think i may be on my own here


So far I am doing well, had to spend an extra $100 this pay that I had forgot about, I had ordered a new snowmobile helmet and had to pay for it sunday..makes me mad because there's probably only a couple more weekends we'll even be going out this winter.

I'm going to the atm today to take out my $100 spending money. I'm going to see if i can live on that for my 'fun money' for the next 2 weeks. I work from home so really, it shouldn't be that difficult.

I've decided to pull my $1100 rrsp (like a 401k i think) to pay off one of my credit cards, the 19% visa. I will pay a bit of tax penalty for pulling it but i'm quite sure it wont be as much as the interest I am paying. When i get my annual work bonus this month, which i'm hoping is around $1500 i'm hoping to pay off my amex. I will then do what someone else (i think boonie) mentioned they do and try to use my credit card instead of my bank card for my groceries etc. I think this would be a better way to control where I am spending my money. My bank statement doesn't always show the store names..so it's difficult for me to track. My visa and amex only have $1000 limits on them, so they are fairly manageable...as long as i stick to just using one, and pay it off every pay...right now of course they are both almost at their limit. My amex interest rate right now is only 3.4% so i should try to stay away from using the visa.

I'm hoping to have been able to save about $200 in the bank this pay, we'll see. That would be amazing if I can, this is a girl that lives paycheque to paycheque and is usually down to my last $20 by payday.

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Jen, I'm sorry, but I know NOTHING about Canadian taxes or its money system.

I think you're making a wise decision in paying off that 19% Visa. Ouch!! And soon, paying off the AMEX. This will be a good month for you. I'm cheering for you to save that $200!!!!! You will be so happy not to be living paycheck to paycheck!!

[higgies]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Yeah, that's how they get away with this...If you added up your taxes over that 41 month period it would likely be in the $110-$130 range. alas, who the heck keeps their phone bill receipts for 41 months and every month??

[kylie]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Yeah, that's how they get away with this...If you added up your taxes over that 41 month period it would likely be in the $110-$130 range. alas, who the heck keeps their phone bill receipts for 41 months and every month??

Exactly! And I have been on paperless billing for at least three years...I check them and don't even print them out unless there is some problem or issue with a bill...you have access to back bills online, but only 1 year's worth - which would't help in this case. So, yeah, I, like most people, will be taking the standard amount and the IRS will get off cheap! LOL!

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Since my DH has a business, we keep all our records for at least 7 years, often up to 10 years. It's well organized, but still a pain to have to go through them to add up the taxes. It wasn't worth our time to do the personal phone records, but will be for the business.

[sadie147]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

OK so now i'm really curious, does an average person get money back on their phone in the US? or is it money back on the tax you paid on your phone? we have nothin like that here... I wish we did, i have 4 phone lines LOL

[biogeek]

Re: The Millionaires Club - Saving $$ challenge!

Jen, normally we don't get a tax break on the phone bill. The excise tax that all Americans have been paying was to foot the bill for the Spanish-Amercian war, which was in the late 1800s. So, even though we're due back even more money than the 41 months worth of taxes, it's all we're gonna get.

Everyone in the US that has paid this tax on their land-line, cell-phone, bundle services (such as TV, phone, internet, etc), and VoIP are entitled to get a refund. The stickler is that it is up to each person to be responsible for asking for a refund and there is a time limit as it is only for this particular tax year. If you miss it, you're out of luck! If you don't ask for it, you're out the refund.