Well, it appears we still don't have electricity at work. Still!!

May be another day off...

Which means I will probably work all weekend.

All I keep thinking is thank goodness this was not the week prior!!! Or late in January (W-2s and payroll filings due). The timing is okay. For every day off now though, one less day off later.

I am thinking of lugging in my laptop and seeing if I can find a wireless internet connection. (We're right next to a hotel, maybe I could even talk to them if need be, but I am not sure if they have power).

We have plenty of windows and light and then at least I will have my files. So I may be able to get some work done. Maybe not much though.

I also have a tad I can do from home. I can get a few hours in today. But not much more than that.

So after like 2.5 days off and maybe today, I will probably have to work all weekend to catch up. Here's to overtime.

(Someone outside working on it said it could be 7 days. Oh my!!!!) There are a lot of homes in the area that are still out as well. Craziness.

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Well, I will enjoy the impromptu vacation best I can. One thing I may do today is clean the cars. Nothing huge, but clean out the junk and vacuum. For one, dh's car has baby toys in it. LOL. I have been meaning to do this for a while. I swept through our bedroom yesterday and did lots of laundry. The downstairs is still pretty decent from when we had holiday guests. So leaves the cars. If the power is out tomorrow I will make dh go through the garage with me while the kids are at preschool.

I kind of giggle when everyone goes on and on about big houses being more to clean. My kitchen is a little bigger and I have an extra 1/2 bath. But the 1/2 bath is not much to clean, nor is the extra counter space in the kitchen. The kids' rooms don't need much and I don't touch dh's 2 rooms. So, eh, I just don't clean much. I didn't before and I don't now. I don't find it is a big time buster. I don't even have maid on my wish list. I have a weird thing about maids. I just don't mind cleaning up that much either.

I must admit the master bath is a little overwhelming, but we don't use anything but the sinks and toilet. So it isn't much in the end. We just used the kids' showers. We started this long ago when we had concern of a leak. It appears it was a false alarm, but I like only having one shower to clean. You don't use it, you don't need to clean it.

But get a few days off work, and the house is a little more organized and more sparkly than usual! The kids are at an easy age right now. I remember BM was getting to this age, and then we had another. But they can play together and occupy themselves. Oh, it is divine! As such, I Was getting a lot done around the house anyway.

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Yesterday I had a seminar and skipped their food. Just wasn't in the mood to sit with strangers and eat crappy food. I went to Round Table. I forgot how pricey their lunches were. Spent like $8. Oh well, it was certainly a treat.

I went there on a seminar a few months back and I remember they seemed annoyed I did not order the buffet, after informing me the buffet was like $9. Um, no thanks!!! So yesterday was same thing. "What? You don't want the buffet???" She looked really annoyed too. I am thinking if you don't want people ordering from the LUNCH menu, then maybe you should toss the lunch menu. Rude rude rude. It will be a long while before I go to RT for lunch again. I should have just done Taco Bell. Would have been a lot less calories.

I told dh it must be inflation or something. I met a friend for lunch and Sizzler was a good $10 or something. Since when was lunch so expensive?

Since I never eat out much besides dollar menus and Taco Bell, I guess.

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Oh, the most annoying thing about my seminar, which the average joe blow would never know. But is that California has stopped conforming to Federal tax laws.

Annoying annoying annoying. The sticking point for me has been HSAs. I am almost sold on trying one, but the nonconformity is just so flipping annoying. It means it wouldn't be deductible for state, the interest/earnings would be taxable for state. (Which we are in the 5% tax bracket for state & 15% for fed. It makes a substantial difference in our taxes as our state percentage is not that much lower).

Of course you would want to keep track of your basis in the case the tax law did change down the road (lord I hope).

Anyway, last year I remember that being the one big pain, but this year they said Cali did not conform to one new thing this year. So we have a thick book of all the differences. It is just pure insanity. For one, kiddie tax rules. It's still age 14 for Cali. Not the new rules. Just means a lot of different record keeping since you pay tax for federal but not state. Or you save taxes on fed but not state. So you have to track the basis. But who does that? So no one does. So what's the point of not conforming? Then people don't track their basis and blindly pay taxes on things twice. Way to go California. Is this how they balance the budget? How complicated must it be for them to figure all this out as well???

My first thought was maybe Cali was smart putting it's foot down on endless tax breaks. We need revenue. As annoying as it is, maybe there is something smart about it. But the instructors' political slant was Republicans would not pass any of these through because they RAISED revenues. You have got to be kidding me. "We didn't do the same Fed tax increases to SAVE you money. But look at the bookeeping nightmare mess we left you. You figure it out." I mean come one, for our clients, fine, they have us. I don't think most people hire CPAs or have a clue about any of this.

Likewise, the Dems hate the HSAs because it cut taxes? I don't know. They have said before that HSAs will not conform anytime soon. So it is frustrating. I was hoping for a glimmer of hope this year, but didn't get it. All we got was a bigger nightmare. Something like we have not conformed to any of the Federal tax changes in 2 to 3 years.

O.M.G.

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Financially things are rather ho hum.

I went through Quicken and added some new categories. For one I separated out our insurance premiums in case we do decide to go for HSA. All of our medical expenses would then be deductible for state. But then none for fed if we do the HSA. But I have to track how much I can reimburse from the HSA annually if we set it up. We can't reimburse the premiums, so set that up as a separate category.

We are having an okay month. The weird thing for us is we budget our expenses as a whole monthly, and that is what I track. But since we put so much on the card, it affects the following month as well. When we pay it. So I felt like we had a big credit card month for december and was stressed. But as of today I got all the bills paid in January and looks pretty breakeven. Not bad.

I think I am short $250. I should have set aside $250 for medical on 12/31 (reduced premiums) but didn't. But I realized I just have to. Before I would have HAD TO pay the bill. There is no excuse. I was kind of thinking, who cares if I start 1/31 instead. So I put that in Quicken as a $500 transfer 1/31. Leaves me short $250 on 1/31. I will take it from short-term savings if I have to. I am pleased it was such a breakeven month otherwise. How did that happen? I just wrote a $630 check to preschool and it about killed me. LOL. But maybe I can do this a few more months... (I might even get a huge raise and will have no problem finding the $250. We also still have stuff to sell).

Which reminds me, yesterday I learned that in Cali, if you sell more than one or 2 things on ebay for a few hundred dollars, or you regularly sell your household "junk", you have to have a sellers' permit. You have got to be kidding me. I am kind of glad we just opted out of much ebay selling. I don't know how much the permit is and all that, but yeesh. (I was thinking glad we only sold 2 big things last year).

Of course, who would know this???

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Anyway, I have no idea what my financial goals are for '08. Too much in the air.

I think odds are we can put a good $5k in a HSA (probably use most of it but will be a nice tax break). I am trying to think if we save up decent cash how much we should put in there though. How much to IRAs? How much to 529s? It's awesome to have so many tax-deferred options, but it is mind boggling.

& how much just to cash? Or should we start diverting much of our cash to ROTHS? Then we could easily max out.

I just don't know.

There isn't much I could decide until I know my raise. !!!! With the power out I doubt I will find out today.

So I am trying not to think too much. I won't know how much we can really put in an HSA until we see if we use our deductible this year. It will be a while. Though if we use it all I know we can fund it and reimburse ourselves the entire thing, but get the tax deduction. (Then I'm sold).

I think mostly we want to focus on building up more cash this year. It's just interesting that we have so many options. Build up the HSA? Build up cash in ROTHs for emergency? Just build up our taxable cash?

I am mostly thinking of contributing no more than $5k to ROTHs this year (with the exception if we move another $5k cash over of our efund).

That would put as at a 17% contribution rate with our profit sharing.

I still feel very cash poor, and so am thinking of putting as much as we can to savings this year. I am starting to think that makes more sense.

I am not even sure if it makes much since to contribute anything to retirement (more than the 10% I get anyway). As long as we are saving the money and not spending it.

I just know me. When will it ever be enough? $15 cash? $20k cash? $30k cash? I like cash too much.

The year is long and so we'll see. The nice thing is when it comes to HSAs and ROTHS, we have a good 15 months to decide.

One thing I am thinking of, since we had a dismal IRA year this year, is moving $5k to cash before april 15th. I was planning to save $5k for car purchases this year. This way we could keep our efund savings intact and start storing it in the ROTHs. If we never touch it... Then we can convert it to the stocks down the road when we aren't so cash poor. It is a very tempting strategy. I could do the same in 08 & 09 and get a good $15k cash in there for emergency. The cool thing is we could still contribute 17% to our income (to stocks and such) so it feels very win-win. We still wouldn't touch the $12k cash in taxable accounts either, this way. So win-win-win. I could only see using that ROTH cash if I lost my job or something. & I wouldn't contribute that 2nd $5k otherwise. Which means we would lose the tax shelter if we don't take advantage with our cash.

& the interest would be tax free!

I need to really read up the rules on ROTH withdrawals to be sure. There are some ins and outs. Though overall I have heard this strategy much and makes sense.

If we can do that and add 17% of our income to our retirement (stocks), it really makes sense. I am very concerned that if dh goes back to work we will be lacking tax shelters, so whatever we can get in now is good. My other motivation. & why I expect we could convert all that cash to stock within a few years. Likely... Might as well get it in there while we can.

Oh, I had considered putting some money in regular IRAs for tax savings this year. I learned yesterday cali does not conform. So though our traditional IRA would be deductible for Feds it might not be for state.

Forget it. Since we paid so much tax in recent years to convert to ROTHs, we'll just stick with it. I am happy to be done with all those conversions anyway.

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This week will be a little pricey. Have to replace my windshield and get LM into the dentist. See what the prognosis is on his shark teeth.

so we'll see how that goes. Can put those on the card to worry about February. (I will have a good $400 in the car fund by then so I am okay with that. Dental expenses come from short-term savings, so I think I have both covered anyway). We'll see.