I don’t know what it is with the media and their need to sensationalize that which is sensational enough.  In the past week i have seen two headlines that completely misrepresented the article.  One said that Americans have more debt on their credit cards and “few” pay on time.  What the article really said is that “fewer” are making on time payments.  You can see that there’s room for a huge difference in real numbers there.

Another (also having to do with credit card debt) said that Americans charge up their cards because they don’t understand debt.  What the article was really about was that Americans don’t usually know the formula for compound interest off the tops of their heads.  Now there’s a shock.  It does not follow that we don’t understand debt, though.

That particular article based it’s conclusions on some study that presented people with questions about how long it would take to pay off debt.  Then (and I mean immediately after, without answering the question presented) it said  a “full 18.6%” (a number that’s not full) didn’t know how to respond to how long it would take for their balance to double.  It doesn’t say how the question was worded or what the possible answers were so I find I don’t know how to respond to this report except with a degree of doubt since many factors could effect how long it takes for a balance to double.

It’s SOOO annoying when they write articles that seem to have edited out every other sentence and end up providing nothing similar to information.

I’ve been so excited about the return I knew I’d be getting from the feds that I completely forgot to do anything about my state return.  I’ll probably owe because they don’t take out taxes properly.  For those of you looking for forms, go to the website for your states Department of Revenue.  If you’re in Arizona, make a note of the  date on the ‘December Tax Facts’.  When they got behind, why didn’t they just skip a couple months?

How much do you think your rebate will be for?  They can range from nothing (for the young who don’t work) to an unknown amount for couples with lots of kids (today that means you have more than one, but I’m using that in the old school sense where you have more than 7).

Whatever you get, keep all the paperwork you get with it and read it carefully.  One (and only one so far) article out there says that the rebate will be coming off any money you would have been getting next year.  If true, I don’t know what that means for people who who owe or who wouldn’t be getting as much back as this rebate is for.  I would GUESS that it doesn’t have to be paid back because it seems there would be more information about that if it did need to be paid back next year.

Anyway, make sure you read the information really well and keep it with your tax records.

And if the IRS doesn’t have your current address, make sure you send in a change of address form.

If you like to drive insurance is a must. It protects you from life’s little accidents. Cost-U-Less has insurance that can fit into a student’s budget. They’ve been helping people get coverage since 1980 and they specialize in giving insurance to students. If you have questions about insurance, they have answers.

My retirement accounts lost money for the first time ever. It figures – I just found out how to take some money out of just bonds (the safe but little gains approach) and put them in something else. I didn’t go crazy and take out everything and put it in international stocks (which actually did fine last quarter) or something.

So I guess that means we’re in a recession. Yes, the world revolves around my portfolio. As my accounts go, so goes the world. It couldn’t be the other way around.

I’m happy to report that since I didn’t have much saved for retirement, I didn’t lose much. I’m thinking I’ll just ride it out with things as they are and see what happens next quarter.

I finally know a person who does their own trades. I was just about to ask more about how they do it when I had to run off and dig a mud ball out of my daughter’s mouth.

I feel so uneducated in this arena, I think I might want to look into talking to a stock or futures broker. It just seems so intimidating. On the other hand, it’s not like I wouldn’t be able to sell what I’ve invested in, unlike my house (at least I think that’s how it works) which I didn’t have nearly as much apprehension about buying.

Maybe this would be easier if they used a companies full name instead of just a stock symbol so I knew without having to look it up what is doing well.

Undoubtedly you have heard me talk about what you need to get together in order to file your taxes and for those of you who believe you’ll be getting a refund, I know you have scurried to get things in order. Then again today is the day that those things were all supposed to be mailed by so you may need to wait just a couple more days before you can begin in earnest.

Once you have your W-2s, your 1099s and know how much you contributed to your 401(k) for your Saver’s Tax Credit you can start filling out the forms. Are you going to hop from library to post office and from town to town in search of your 1040? No, because I told you earlier that you want to go online to get those.

What I forgot to tell you about was the handy dandy efile. Sure I get the forms from the IRS web site but in the end I find a program that lets me efile so I can get my refund faster. It’s something I’ve done most of the past 8 years and often the program finds credits I didn’t know existed (like the aforementioned Saver’s Tax credit).

Save yourself some time and money. Skip the search for forms and be brave enough to do this yourself (with the help of a program that asks all the right questions).

In case you haven’t heard it yet, there’s TONS of buzz about the Fed cutting interest rates again.  It is fully expected that they will but if something weird happens and they don’t, it pretty much spells a drop in the stocks which rallied only yesterday on speculation that the cut would happen.

The question is, are these cuts actually helping the economy or are they just affecting things temporarily and a recession is inevitable?  Unfortunately I think it is the latter but time will tell.  In the mean time, you might look into refinancing your mortgage and benefit from lower interest rates.

I’m driving myself mad.  I’ve gone through the third draft of my taxes because I’m so excited about getting them done! Each time a new tax form comes in the mail, I redo the numbers getting rid of some approximations and putting in the real amounts.  It always works out better after I do this because I always overestimate my approximations.  I end up happy but perpetually wanting that last form to come in so  I can actually file the darn thing and be done with it.

By the way, now that it’s the modern internet age and you can’t get real forms anywhere, remember that irs.gov is the place to go to get all those forms you didn’t even know you needed.  Like when you got to line 21 on Schedule A and found out you need Form 2106 to report unreimbursed employee expenses.

Some may think it’s lazy, but I would say it saves me a hassle when I use labels instead of writing out my return address. I mean, I already abbreviate my first name and as silly as it sounds, Piccadilly is not that easy to spell. I love it when they come for free in the mail (ok, I’m really supposed to make a contribution to whatever organization sent them) but there never seem to be enough of them.

Growing up my parents had lick and stick address labels but now you get to peel and stick them making them a million times better. No more gross after taste. On top of that, the variety is huge. You can get some that look formal, some that look funny and some that are just for Christmas cards with little effort, time and money on your part.

Maybe your address labels will inspire you to start a correspondence with someone just so you can send out some of your labels. Later you say, “Did you notice my address label?” and they say, “Why, yes. Quite striking indeed!”

The Arizona weather can really do damage to your car both inside and out.  It’ll dry out your dash board and make it crack; it’ll erode your finish and you end up with peeling paint.  In the case of my parents, it made their license plates peel.  The design and state are completely gone.  I’ve though recently about getting a car cover, though at this point it seems a bit pointless since the paint is already on it’s way out on my car.  Without a doubt, if you have a nice car that you hope to preserve, get yourself a cover so that you don’t have to deal with cosmetic repairs as often as you otherwise would.