Well I gave it a whirl. Like the red, not so much the pink, but seems to be the best color match. I don't know what I am doing.

Anyway, other good links today.

#1:

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2006/08/the_10_best_mon.html

Is it the same old, same old, I don't know, but a good list to live by.

Of course instead of get out of debt I find it much easier to not get into debt in the first place. But I know for many it is too late so reads good advice.

& again with the giving. But I found a better article on the subject - more in line with my feelings. 3% I can swing, would consider a worthy goal.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney...

Which reminds me, in my family the women are the givers and the men never give money to charity - think it is a waste. So I was thinking about Suze and women and money - and well - she has a point. Then again I don't advocate not giving anything to charity. I guess I am middle of the road on the subject. & through time my dh has encouraged me not to give money we really didn't have to give (in our opinions) and I have got him to be a little more giving to the community in non-financial ways. Because there is still no way in hell he would give up a dime. I think today he would for a cause he really felt behind. Maybe. But nowhere near 3%.

ETA: Oh yeah I bought an egg coloring packet for 50 cents or something the other day because I was at the drug store anyway - was a while back. Anyway, opened it last night and it had 2 shrinkwrapped packages inside. Thought it was a little odd and looked at the box. Opened one and starting counting. dippers and colors and stickers and such. Yup I got 2 for the price of one - a mistake - LOL. Nifty that it was all shrinkwrapped. I threw it in the cupboard for next year. Now the trick is not to forget about it. BM had a blast coloring eggs last night. Plus he dropped the darkest egg on the floor and when I looked at it this morning it looked so cool - the crack looked like a spider web - geometric and all that - we all thought it was pretty cool. Will probably attempt deviled eggs tomorrow, you know with all my spare time and all. Anyway, I spent a few bucks on candy and treats. Last year was like the first big easter and I got baskets and plastic eggs and all that. Initial investment, I am pleased this year is so cheap. We are providing chips and salsa for easter dinner tomorrow. Dh gets the chips on sale and will make his homemade salsa. Last time he made it with leftovers and said he spent less than a buck on peppers or something. So we have been eating a lot of salsa - very frugal. We eat so much peppers, garlic, onions, cilantro, mexicany stuff - we always have the leftovers. Add the canned tomatoes - we're not tomato fans. But for whatever reason I could live off them in salsa form - hehe.

Oh yeah it is crazy here, but I need my SA fix - hehe. This week is just extra crazy - big Easter weekend, family visiting, have to finish parent's tax returns, egg decorating tonight, etc., etc. I still have to find time to write another article this week. The family will just have to deal - the house is a disaster. Dh just told me his parents and aunt were spending thenight SUnday night. I had no idea. Well okay then. They can take the filth or leave it I guess - hehe. Dh doesn't help as much as I would like and I have no hours in the day. So I will try not to fret about it.

ETA: Oh yeah - before the links. HAd to say an interesting week. I got the gas bill and it was negative $10. Lol. Around $27 for the month (cool - mild weather - not much heat on) but a $37 adjustment - I have no idea why. But I'll take it. Then yesterday a $20 rebate arrived in the mail. I thought I had been waiting on one, but I guess not, turned out it was my parents'. But just funny money seems to be dribbling in my mailbox. Knowing my parents they will probably let me keep it anyway since I am doing their taxes. So woohoo. Here's to more negative bills - hehe. They just fixed our electric meter too so I would not be surprised if I had a negative electric bill - LOL.

Today Free Money Finance had some interesting links. I am enjoying the blog.

freemoneyfinance.com

http://plonkee.blogspot.com/2007/04/atheists-should-tithe.ht...

#1 - Atheists should tithe. Sure that is great and all. But why again with 10%? Is it just me or does 10% seem like a ridiculous amount of money to tithe? I keep seeing this figure come up. I mentioned it about Automatic Millionaire. & like I probably said then. On these tight budgets we have found far more value in giving of time than money. On the other hand I do hope to be in a place to tithe more down the road. But I guess I am more of the Suze variety, I want to take care of myself first. IF we do well, we will have plenty of money down the road to tithe more. I am just such a big believer in giving to the community in general the 10% thing just irks me - encouraging people who don't have money to give 10%. Whatever happened to giving more of yourself than just your money, is what I wonder. & finally, if my dh got a job and we made six figures I could see us tithing much more. But $10k/year? No way in hell. Ask me again when my kids are through college, mortgage paid, and I know I Can afford my retirement and healthcare. Then I will be glad to give my excess. But I do have to say you know I just gave $100 this month that I didn't really have. If I did that every month would be less than 2%, and quite a stretch. I wouldn't think it is great to give much more. Tithing is not worth going into debt over or neglecting your retirement. But my husband spent hours volunteering at the public television station and on this movie, and I did a lot of free tax returns and tax advice this past month or 2. There is so much more to giving than giving cash, or even than giving to charity. I am all for giving, but I am more for giving what you truly have to give. I guess my experience with my giving nature is I tend to too often give more than I have, and it doesn't do much for me. But since we had to really take step back in recent years I have found more rewarding ways to give, I guess. My experience.

http://allfinancialmatters.com/2007/04/03/how-much-is-your-4...

#2 - How much is your 401k costing you?

I just had to say I found this to be more true than most of you will ever know. I was doing profit sharing accounting for a bunch of different plans (some with 401ks) and the rates of return in these managed pland were not that great, and the broker fees completely wiped them out. That was before accounting fees and administration fees. Do you know how much work it takes to do the accounting and administration on a small plan with just a few employees? This is mostly the type of plans we work on. I was working on a number of these when I joined SA (here) and decided to drop my broker. IT just re-iterated the fact to me that brokers are useless. My PSP money made 1% last year all the fees. Lucky thing for me is my boss will retire in a few years and I will get to roll in an IRA and invest it with a hell of a lot less fees. Woohoo. As far as my old 401k, it did much better. But I was only there a couple of years. It was a huge international corporation, maybe with so many people there are more to spread the fees around, is all I could figure. Not a great deal for small companies overall. But the boss would keep it regardless - he can shelter almost $50k/year of his income from taxes. This is why they are done, fees and all, at the smaller level.

http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/saving-beyond-401k-and...

#3 - picking on a guy who saves his full ROTH and 401k contribution. Yeah, I do see the people who save too much and don't have any fun. But this one really rubbed me the wrong way. You bet if I made $95k in the most expensive region in the country I could save all that and have fun too. I did just that in my 20s. Anyways, a lot of assuming going on. I just think it is sad people think it is impossible to live on that salary, save that much, and have any fun. Single!!!! Whatever. You all know I have plenty of fun on much less today and supporting a family of 4. Not only do I have fun but I don't fret that much about how I earn my living. IT is quite freeing not to depend on your entire salary to survive!!! CHalk that one up to the "is it bad to over-save?" pile. I picture this guy on a beach sipping margaritas in his 40s saying "suckas" to the rest of us. LOL. Plus the point is ENTIRELY missed that in general if you can swing a full 401k contribution, you will have the tax savings equivalent to a full ROTH contribution. So I guess I am not sure why they are bashing this guy's awesome tax planning. If he is really making $95k it means he is effectively only saving 15% of his money and putting the tax savings in his ROTH. Not exactly a crazy overly-aggressive retirement savings strategy. & to me sounds like awesome tax planning.

Today is one of those days that I just want to go crawl under a rock and hide. Yeesh.

On the plus side, my boss told me today that the tax code is more complex today than it ever was his entire career. That makes me feel a little better. Though sometimes I wonder why I even bother. I am about to give up on the tax code - hehe.

I had the sweetest new clients come in today and about wraps up my tax appointments. I keep thinking back to them and thinking at least I had a really pleasant start to my day. I needed that.

I also left my cell phone at home and feel naked without it (fear of being stranded on the side of the road or soemthing) but had to go to the bank by my house. So I stopped home to get my cell and surprised my fam. IT was nice. I used to go home for lunch every day. Told them I would consider it once a week in the summer - it isn't very far.
Wasted gas, but the fam is so worth it!

Just a weird, chaotic day. *sigh* Saw the family, super nice clients, and yet I feel like all the rest of my good intentions today have gone to hell. Yikes. Curse of April 3rd. Hopefuly april 4th will be better!

This week at work kind of sucks. I feel somewhat of a load off because most of my deadline stuff is done. By some strange miracle. Even though it seems to be one of the most hectic seasons here due to lack of staff. But I am stressed with the weird/foreign projects I am left with.

But I am getting more experienced and working faster all the same. I Don't think this is the most hours I ever worked a tax season, but definitely the most work I ever did. A good 25 individual tax returns signed with my name, a good 10-20 I helped with (mostly prepared) on top of that. Plus last week I got out 4 partnership returns (made about 10 partners happy). & this week I have 2 ugly partnerships to plow through (might take all week) and various other things.

Ah, might not sound like much but this is on top all of our regular/usual work which I still trying to mill through. I've got a pile a mile high of partnership/coporate financial statements where the work was done enough to prepare the taxes, but the final financial statements are not printed and completed - all that timely administrative work and making the financials pretty. Just no time. It just means May will be tedious getting all that junk out. Probably issuing 12/31 with 3/31. Never this behind before overall.

Some things that are going really good though is a big manager left last year and I was kind of thrown to the wolves on big financial planning in December. I was really nervous about it, but the thing is the old guys are so anti-computer and I found a way to automate most everything and get it done pretty fast. So the usual 12/31 crunch just wasn't as bad as I imagined. & to top it off as I go through these tax returns everything is panning out as I had predicted. Right on. Score 2 for automation. Accuracy and speed. Plus I made a hell of a lot of mistakes 12/31/05 which were fresh in my mind and I Was determined not to do again - LOL. The combo worked out well.

Anwyay, you all might assume I am going on vacation April 18th. But no, we have 3/31 financials to work on and payroll tax deadline of 4/30. All it means is we have 2 weeks to cram in 4 weeks of payroll work. I could be terribly sneaky and get to it since I am feeling caught up, but I have the feeling some of my co-workers may need a little more help with 4/15 stuff - that I should make myself available to help. Then we will have 2 weeks to cram. It is just one never-ending treadmill here from about December 20th through April 30th. May will be a catch-up month, but at least time to breathe. But what I really look forward to is summer. Maybe cutting below 40 hour weeks for june, july, august. Taking 1/2 day fridays or something, haven't decided. Waiting to see how the workload ends up I guess.

I think I will take a Friday off in May though and we will go to Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Aquarium is not cheap, nor probably the drive, but we can go for the day and stay with family a couple of nights so will be fun. Kids will love it. Probably just earmark my writing money for that. Hopefully the kids will be free - will have to check.

http://www.mbayaq.org/vi/

Dh and I usually sneak off for a weekend in May, but I miss the kids so much from working so much and our cruise is 1st of June. I think we can wait for that - 4 heavenly days away from everything - just can hardly wait.

Anyway, there is great excitement here because BM's preschool is raising baby chicks and they were scheduled to hatch today. Anyway when I dropped him off this morning one was trying to hatch out. BM is SO excited. I was telling dh that about the only thing I remember from my preschool was we did have those little chick eggs in an incubator. So it will probably be a pretty memorable experience. Anyway, he could hardly contain himself he was so excited to see the baby chicks. We'll see how it pans out. He was telling me how he wanted to play with them today. I said, um, maybe Wednesday. Like his brother they will be very little and delicate to start but maybe in a few days they will be running arounf with the kids. He might have to wait to next week - I am not sure how long they keep them before they give them back - 4H or something.

*Played as joke on my parents. We actually love April Fools but I get lazy with age. Brings out the kids in us I guess though. In reality I felt too sick today to work on their taxes as promised. But they did not know that so I called and told them they owed $15k. I was trying to pick a number high enough to shock them, but since they expected to owe I Wasn't sure how much. I did good - my mom said she was freaking out. My dad was confused, but I got them good. I didn't prolong the torture too long. They probably think it is worse that I haven't looked at it yet though. I am trying to talk them into extension. But they aren't going for it. But they might have to at this rate.

*Just updated my net worth. Short on time so did a quick excel sheet for 3/31. Did a column with house and one without because it skews everything so much. But without house it landed at a few dollars short of my current salary. Too funny. 30 with 1 years salary. But it will be even more by the end of the year - still have 9 more months of being 30. Not bad, not bad. I didn't even include the cash equity we paid into our house like I usually do. Just thought of that. With that we are well over 2 years salary in net worth. Over time will mean more. For now I am making a good $25k less than when we both worked (which was only 1 year or so at that level) but a good $25k more than the last few years so it is really hard to pinpoint where we should be, how much we really need to live on and so on. But I am pinpointing our expenses at around $50k/year which makes me want to grow our net worth about $25k/year - seems reasonable and yet a little aggressive at this point. Reasonably aggressive.

*Tonight we will splurge on dinner out. I wish I Was feeling better and my taste buds would enjoy more, but I don't remember the last time we all went out to eat on our dime. Maybe in December for birthdays - I don't know. So it should be fun. Then again the little one is really grumpy this weekend. So we'll see. We had a good month overall so figured what the heck. I think we are breakeven on the budget...