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Well, hello there in a different thread. When I had to do that, I found working through the form 1040-ES by hand to be pretty instructive. It's not super complicated. 15% is probably a slightly conservative guess - I was around 13% with AGI of $45k a few years back.
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Jun 11, 2010 06:37
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ne plus ultra posted:I will have a fellowship of somewhat more than $30,000 in Massachusetts. This will all be taxable income, and it appears nothing will be withheld. I'm having a difficult time figuring out roughly how much I should be budgeting for taxes annually. I was thinking 15% should be sufficient, but I have no idea how to confirm this... I know nothing about taxes, I just plug the numbers into a tax app and let it do its thing. Massachusetts has a flat tax of 5.3% of income. You are able to deduct from your income the first $4400 for you personal exemption and half of the first $6000 you spend on rent. If you end up working too along with school, you can deduct the first $2000 you pay for social security/medicare. If you are paying back student loans, you can deduct the interest. You can also deduct moving costs into Massachusetts. There are some misc things that tend to come and go. One year you could deduct part of your heating cost, sometimes they let you deduct your T passes, but those things are not big enough to change your estimates. That means roughly out of $30,000 you will be paying taxes on about $22,000 in income, you will owe about $1200 in state taxes. If you pay an estimated $300 per quarter you will come out pretty close.
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Jun 11, 2010 15:22
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Zeta Taskforce posted:That means roughly out of $30,000 you will be paying taxes on about $22,000 in income, you will owe about $1200 in state taxes. If you pay an estimated $300 per quarter you will come out pretty close. Does Massachusetts require you to pay quarterly or have some sort of state withholding? If not, I'd just budget it in and pay when it comes due.
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Jun 11, 2010 15:43
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Engineer Lenk posted:Does Massachusetts require you to pay quarterly or have some sort of state withholding? If not, I'd just budget it in and pay when it comes due. We do have an underpayment penalty if you under pay by $400. There is an exemption for first year filers, which I suppose n.p.u. would be. That said, considering that you are lucky to get 1% in a money market right now, we are talking about perhaps an extra $5, $10 at the most of forgone interest if you wait to pay the entire balance due at the end.
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Jun 11, 2010 16:12
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Hey guys, I hope I'm providing everything here. Debts: Credit card: $2500 @ 19.99% Car loan: 5k @ 0% Student loans: n/a Assets: Savings account: $2100 Monthly: Income: $1200(net) Car loan: $100 Car insurance: $100 Cell phone: $20 Gas: $80 Save for school: $250 Save for parking: $40 Rent: $400 Toiletries: ? Food: ? I'm going to have to move out somewhat soon. Looking at getting a place with some friends and this is the budget I've come up with, and I'm not sure how to proceed. Am I spreading myself too thin? I'm a part time student with a part time job. School runs me about $3k/year and parking for school is $480. The reason I'm not including credit card payments is I would like to abolish it ASAP(while I'm not having to pay rent). I'm also not sure how much to allocate for toiletries/food, as I've never really had to pay for groceries and that stuff regularly. I don't really eat out much and I'm fine with grocery shopping and cooking my own food. Internet/utilities/parking are included in the rent. Another thing to note is that I don't work as many hours as I could - there's room for me to pick up a few more hours and up my monthly net income into the $1400 or $1450 area. There's also some minor things that aren't included, I usually get a bonus a couple to a few times a year(~$225) and a 4 times a year stipend of about $100 as well.
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Jun 12, 2010 06:11
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Groceries and things should only run you a 2-3 hundred dollars for one person. Your car and parking are the most expensive things you've got (and you didn't take into account any sort of maintenance on the car), and if you're living in a college town where you can use public transportation I'd ditch the car in a heartbeat. Obviously this wouldn't work if you have to drive all over the place on a regular basis, so this depends on your situation. After knocking out that credit card debt, you should get your savings up a bit more (if you have a safety net of being able to live with your parents it really doesn't have to be too much). You also don't have any category for entertainment - are you never going to go out for drinks with friends, see movies, etc? This can add up quickly especially as a college student.
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Jun 13, 2010 17:07
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It looks like the area I want to live in will require me to stretch a bit on rent, so it's time to work out a budget. Net Income: $1250/2 weeks (for an engineer with 2 years experience. gently caress you alan greenspan) Expenses Car: $200/month ($100/month for insurance, $100/month for gas/maintenance since I won't be driving too much) Phone/Internet: $120/month Groceries: $300/month (Probably something of an over-estimate) Blow/other expenditures: $300/month That comes to 920, leaving (theoretically) 1580 for rent/utilities. I'm looking at places up to about 1250 (some of which include all utilities) which I think is reasonable. Any surplus would go into savings, which is doing pretty well at the moment so if I end up not saving much more than a hundred or two per month for a while that'll be fine. What do you think?
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Jun 13, 2010 18:48
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$1250 for one person? Where are you living? Any chance of getting roommates to lower that at all? The glaring omission I see is that you're not saving specifically for retirement. It's easy to put money into your savings account and then blow it all on things like vacations, unexpected health issues, etc. As you build up your emergency fund (what do you have right now?) it would be good to consider starting to either contribute to your company's 401k if you have one, or starting a Roth for yourself if they don't.
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Jun 13, 2010 19:24
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moana posted:$1250 for one person? Where are you living? Any chance of getting roommates to lower that at all? Vancouver. poo poo is crazy around where I work. And a roommate in a 1br would be a bit cramped and wouldn't really work for me. Anyway I have a pretty healthy retirement portfolio already (for my age, anyway) in addition to an emergency fund, so I figure that even if I end up making very few contributions for around a year it won't be much of a setback.
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Jun 13, 2010 21:02
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DuckConference posted:Vancouver. poo poo is crazy around where I work. And a roommate in a 1br would be a bit cramped and wouldn't really work for me. You really shouldn't be spending 50% of your income on rent though. That's a good way to get yourself in a bad situation fast.
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Jun 14, 2010 14:19
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DuckConference posted:Vancouver. poo poo is crazy around where I work. http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Vancouver+severely+unaffordable+study/2482683/story.html “Vancouver is the most unaffordable of the 28 housing markets measured in Canada and the most unaffordable of the 272 metropolitan markets ranked in Ireland, the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. and Canada,” the Frontier Centre for Public Policy concluded in its sixth annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. 
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Jun 15, 2010 09:41
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Is it worth getting the Amazon.com rewards card if I make a lot of purchases off there? I have no debt and pay my credit card off every month.
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Jun 15, 2010 15:59
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Adahn the nameless posted:Is it worth getting the Amazon.com rewards card if I make a lot of purchases off there? I have no debt and pay my credit card off every month. I have it and enjoy it. 3 points per dollar at Amazon, 2 points per dollar at restaurants. 2500 points gets you a $25 gift card to Amazon. EDIT: 2500/3 is $833.33, meaning you have to spend $833 to get $25. My normal penfed card gets me 1%, or $8.33. So the card is effectively 3% cash back at Amazon (am I doing this math right?). If you think that's worth it, go for it. Grumpwagon fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jun 15, 2010 |
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Jun 15, 2010 18:33
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Is there a reason why my "Quizzle" score would be over 100 points different than my Credit Karma score? There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with my credit. 1 opened credit card that I pay off completely monthly, and a couple of old car loans that have long been paid off, and my score is 659 on Quizzle and 778 on credit karma. I know that these aren't true scores, but it seems a bit alarming to be so different.
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Jun 17, 2010 01:52
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Nah, they use different algorithms and nobody knows exactly what the true algorithm is anyway so a big difference isn't particularly surprising. If you're that worried then just pull your actual reports from annualcreditreport.com to check.
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Jun 17, 2010 04:20
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Two questions: One, I just got my info for my fellowship in Illinois- it's 20660/year, what should I be saving for taxes? Second, we just moved into Illinois and had to sign up for Comcast. They wanted a $150 deposit and cash up front from my fiance, but they waived the deposit for me and were willing to bill me. His credit is slightly better than mine: I have more cards and more debt than he does and missed a payment when I was 18 (22 now) and he is a few months older than I am so has longer credit history. Until this past year he never had car insurance and he has never had a phone in his name alone. Both of us have had cable/utility services in our names. Any idea why he would be asked to pay a deposit? Should we run his credit to make sure there's nothing wrong?
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Jun 17, 2010 15:22
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dopaMEAN posted:Two questions: Assuming you take your own exemption ($3650) and take the standard deduction ($5700), your taxable income will be $11,310. This also assumes you don’t have any other income (no interest, dividends, no other jobs) and no credits or deductions apply. If that is the case, the tax table states that you will owe $1281 in federal taxes. I am not familiar with Illinois taxes. It’s always a good idea to check your credit every year to make sure that there are no glaring errors because if there are, its nice to fix them at your leisure instead of when a loan is on the line. But I wouldn’t assume something horrible just because Comcast would have made him put down a small deposit. Utility bills are not reported on credit reports (unless they go to collections) http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf
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Jun 17, 2010 20:21
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I couldn't find the right thread for this.. How are people getting away with spending like $200/mo on food and groceries? That's like living on less than 7 dollars a day. That's like one burrito with a small drink (hold the sour cream and guacamole). In college I think I spent around $400+ eating a lot of Subway and plain bagels and I thought I was doing good. But now I have to support myself on $12.50/hr and a extra two hundred bucks a month would be really nice. How do you do three meals a day on your miniscule budgets? Pasta and root vegetables? Can you write out a typical breakfast/lunch/dinner and snacks saying how much each meal costs? Grumpicat fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Jun 19, 2010 |
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Jun 19, 2010 02:42
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Grumpicat posted:I couldn't find the right thread for this.. Here is an example of our weekly grocery list. Typical weekly grocery list for breakfast Stonyfield Organic Yogurt with Oats ($3.00 for the large tub) Oats ($3 per year for a huge thing of oats). Cereal ($3 for a big box of generic cereal) Gallon of milk ($4) Dozen of free-range eggs ($3) Carton of orange juice ($3) 2 loaves of Oroweat bread ($3 since they were normally buy one get one free). Typical weekly grocery list for lunch Pound of lunch meat ($7) Baked Lays chips ($4, normally buy one get one free to double as snacks) Head of lettuce ($2) Typical weekly grocery list for dinner Pack of 6 no-antibiotic added chicken breasts ($8) Pre-packaged marinades for chicken (5 for $5) Pack of peppers ($4) Onion ($1) Organic Japanese noodles ($3) Fresh broccoli ($2) Teriyaki sauce ($4) Barbecue sauce ($3) Pasta ($1) Jar of pasta sauce ($3) Flatbreads ($3) Mozzarella ($3) Pizza sauce ($1) Drinks: Mostly tap water, but we also made a lot of sweet tea by brewing tea bags ($2 tea bags, $2 sugar). Snacks: Kemp brand frozen yogurt ($3), box of fruit snacks ($3), chips (above), bananas ($2). That comes to about $88 per week for 2 people and that's with us buying lots of yuppie, super healthy brands. If you don't care about corn syrup in your bread or steroids in your chicken, you can get a LOT more. We're able to have 3 solid meals per day and some variation on chicken, pasta, pizza or some Chinese/Japanese/Thai noodle, rice or curry dish each week. Those figures also doesn't take into account the fact that we almost always have leftovers from dinner and don't actually need to do a full grocery shop once every week. As mentioned before, we also tend to go out to eat once or twice a week and bring home leftovers, so our groceries stretch a further still. Of course, you'll need a hundred bucks or so to stock a kitchen in the first place with stuff like spices, oils, condiments, flour, sugar, etc. but once you have a base to work from you'll be fine. It's also very helpful to stock up on frozen vegetables (my supermarket has amazing 10 bags for $10 sale that allows us to add veggies to our pre-purchased sauces, flatbread pizzas, etc. to make them healthier without all the extra salt from canned foods). Hope that was helpful!
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Jun 19, 2010 06:47
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Grumpicat posted:I couldn't find the right thread for this.. The average goons tend to spend seems to be around $400 just on groceries. That number gets skewed when I factor in the crazy dining out numbers I've seen since I started doing budgets for people. Personally, we spend about $260-$300 a month on groceries. My lunches consist of either lunch meat or lean cuisine and we usually eat the same 7-10 meals over and over again. In addition to that, we spend $150 dining out per month too (We go out to eat once a week and she buys bagels and coffee at Dunks/I usually buy lunch at work once a week). This is definitely not the norm. Pillowpants fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jun 19, 2010 |
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Jun 19, 2010 11:56
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Thanks, I'll see what I can do along those lines.
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Jun 19, 2010 16:41
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Is it worth it to consolidate my loans? I have these loans / interests rates code:
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Jun 20, 2010 15:23
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Sorry for the wall of text that follows! I thought the more background info, the better advice I'll receive. My husband and I just put a deposit down on a large 2-bedroom apartment and I'm very apprehensive about the cost. Basically, we plan to rent this place on our own over the summer and share the apartment with another couple (who currently live outside of the UK) once the academic year starts. Our went would be insanely cheap if we split with this couple. The rental agency called the landlord to verify that he was okay with having 4 people in a 2 bedroom flat and he said that would be fine. We went into the rental agency ready to begin the rental process, but hit a snag. Since the couple in question don't have their UK student visas yet, we were told they can't be on the lease. They said just me and my husband would have to draw up a lease and add the couple at a later time. Needless to say, we need to make sure we can afford this place on our own if the couple backs out or the landlord changes his mind. We only have the rental agency's word that the landlord is a nice guy and would allow us to add more people, so I'm really paranoid that he will change his mind. There were others coming into the agency who wanted the flat, so we had to act very quickly and put down a deposit. I'm worried this was a bit of a rash decision. I don't want to post my husband's take home income without his permission, but basically the rent, utility bills and council tax comes to 64% of his takehome pay. He's contributing the max to his pension, making payments on his student loans and we have a small savings cushion of around £1,500. We live in the UK where healthcare is free, so we wouldn't be absolutely screwed in the event of a medical emergency. There would still be enough money left over for groceries, the occasional night out, our very modest cell phone bills and £100 or so to per month to beef up our savings or pay off some of some student loans. Neither of us have any credit card debt or other financial obligations aside from an upcoming summer vacation that's mostly paid for and my $60k in student loans ($40k now, grad program will be an additional $20k) that are deferred until November 2012. I'll be a full time graduate student in the fall so we're living on just my husband's income right now. I'll have a job that pays £900 per year (not much at all, but every little bit helps) and plan to get another part-time job. We don't own a car so we don't have car payments, insurance payments, gas expenses, worries of unexpected car repairs, etc. The flat is incredibly well-located so we won't need bus passes or have any transportation costs at all. Is this a reasonable amount to pay? I know typical calculators say no more than 30% of your income, but we're in a unique situation where he's paying for the both of us and we don't have to worry about healthcare and transportation costs. I'm freaking out about how expensive it could be if we're stuck with the lease all by ourselves and there's still time to back out if we're willing to lose the deposit. Some perspective would be much appreciated!
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Jun 20, 2010 22:30
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Grumpwagon posted:I have it and enjoy it. 3 points per dollar at Amazon, 2 points per dollar at restaurants. The majority of my purchases are either at restaurants or Amazon and I would recommend the Citi Forward card over the Amazon card. You get 5 points per dollar for restaurants or bookstores (yes Amazon counts). While can't redeem points 1:1 for cash, it is better than than 3%. You can also pick gift cards at 1:1 for major companies (e.g. Sony, Dell, etc.) making it truly 5% cashback. I just picked up a PS3 for 'free' using this card.
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Jun 21, 2010 03:17
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Grumpicat posted:I couldn't find the right thread for this.. As a college student I was eating for like $4 a day by purchasing food in bulk, making food in bulk and cooking hearty, simple meals that have a lot of leftovers (which you can freeze). Anything you buy from a food-establishment you can make yourself for cheaper. That $5 subway-sub can be assembled yourself for a few dollars. Stews, soups, pastas, whole chickens, whole turkeys, cheap cuts of beef (mmmmm braised bbq beef), cheap ground beef, oatmeal, rice, stirfrys. Buy and a cook a ham, slice it yourself for some cheap deli meat. A 50lb bag of white rice from Sams Club (will cost you ~$30) will literally last you forever. Five pounds of flour will let you bake like 6-8 loaves of bread. Use cheap starches (potatoes, rice, etc) to bulk up meals so you stay full longer. I also had no shame in college and ate leftovers for 90% of my meals. But I justified it since 4 gallons of stew would cost me $25 and give about 15-20 (very hearty) meals. I'm sure I'll start eating a little more respectfully once I move out to my job shortly, but I doubt much will change. Cooking is fun and cheap 
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Jun 21, 2010 17:05
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tour de horse posted:Is it worth it to consolidate my loans? Student loan consolidation makes the most sense when some of your loans are variable, and the consolidation process will fix them at todays low interest rate. You don’t get a lower rate by consolidating; they determine everything by figuring out the blended rate. Without doing the math, it would probably come in somewhere around 6.5% or 6.6% i.e. your largest loan would dominate the final interest rate. It makes less sense if they are already fixed. You can research different plans. You can get discounts for direct debit from an account, or by making ontime payments for 3 years, but if they are already fixed, you lose the ability to hammer the small one at 8% hard, and then the 6.8% if you want to do it that way, or I guess the 5% one if you are doing the Dave Ramsey snowball thing. Personally I saved quite a bit of money, but mine were variable and I was able to lock mine in at 4% back in 2004 and the discounts eventually brought me down to 3%, but that option doesn’t seem to be available to you.
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Jun 21, 2010 17:07
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Let's say I have a credit card that has $1000 of debt with a 25% APR. I speak to the credit card company and they agree to give me a 6 month temporary APR of 3% on all future purchases in that time frame. I spend $500 on that credit card. My balance is now $1500. If I paid off $500 on that credit card, would that go towards the previous amount that has a 25% APR on it or the new amount that has 3% APR on it? I would assume the latter, because credit card companies are mischievous assholes, but I just wanted to see if I was right.
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Jun 22, 2010 14:06
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I'm in a position to buy shares in a company from another individual. The price for the shares is agreed upon. This is happening in New Jersey, and I can't figure out whether or how much VAT I have to pay on that transaction. Where and how would I find out about this? Is this the right place to ask? Googling didn't help, I only seem to get results regarding income tax on the profit from selling shares. I need to know about sales tax when buying shares, however.
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Jun 22, 2010 23:14
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the posted:Let's say I have a credit card that has $1000 of debt with a 25% APR. This will all be explained in your card holder agreement  If this was pre-credit card act, you would likely be 100% correct. Now they can't do that. Usually payments get applied in the following order. - fees - past due amounts - prior balances, they have to apply money to the highest rate first of equal ages - current balances If you were to actually do the equations long hand, it would probably take reams of paper, but you should still refer to your card issuer to check on the actual order of how payments are applied.
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Jun 23, 2010 02:24
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I'm Canadian and a student. Currently I'm saving some money each year but not making enough to be taxed. My current strategy is to max out my TFSA and to not put anything into my RRSP because I don't need a tax shelter and I don't pay a penalty if I need to pull out money from my TFSA in the future. Is this wise? My current TFSA is all GICs since it only has $10,000 in it. I've been waiting to build up a decent amount before I start diversifying. I imagine when the amount you're saving each year is still significant compared to the total size of your portfolio then the return rates are less important than the amount you're putting in each year. Edit - also what is the best online broker for a Canadian? I've heard Questrade and OptionsXpress are good. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jun 25, 2010 |
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Jun 25, 2010 00:00
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cowofwar posted:I'm Canadian and a student. Currently I'm saving some money each year but not making enough to be taxed. My current strategy is to max out my TFSA and to not put anything into my RRSP because I don't need a tax shelter and I don't pay a penalty if I need to pull out money from my TFSA in the future. Is this wise? Sounds like you have all your ducks in a row. You're right, in that the difference between doing GICs a a proper portfolio isn't all that big compared to how much you're able to save at this point. I use questrade. While they're the cheapest (IB is a bit cheaper for very active traders) their tools for viewing your portfolio/balances pretty much suck.
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Jun 26, 2010 16:49
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After bills and such, my monthly surplus is ~2k, which I have been using to build an emergency fund, but I now have one years expenses saved up. I don't know what to use that money for now. In debt, I have: Student loan - $11k - 7% Student loan - $9.5k - 6% Misc other student loans - $4k total - <3% Car - $7.5k - 4.25% I've already done my max Roth IRA contribution for the year. Should I invest my extra money in some other way or start paying down the loans faster?
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Jun 27, 2010 04:30
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At 6-7%, I would probably just pay down the loans. You're going to have the same question again in about a year, though - start saving for a house down payment if you want, maybe? Contribute more to your 401k if you have one? Otherwise start thinking about some place to invest outside of the tax-advantaged retirement accounts.
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Jun 27, 2010 15:37
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With that much extra money, knock out those student loans - you're just letting that interest bleed you away otherwise.
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Jun 27, 2010 21:56
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Posting this here because I'm sure this is the type of question a newbie would ask. I have to watch CNN all day at work, and they always run this ad for a place called Consumer Debt Advocates. They advertise helping you settle your credit card debt by using "the free information the credit card companies DON'T want you to know..." I don't need credit card help, but I just have to know, what type of information could a place like that be offering?
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Jun 28, 2010 15:00
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CobiWann posted:Posting this here because I'm sure this is the type of question a newbie would ask. At best, these companies are not doing anything you couldn’t do on your own, at worst they are incompetent and expensive. They don’t have any special kind of magic words that can erase your debt. What they will do is try to negotiate settlements on bad debt, or work out payment plans, or see if the cards will accept less than the minimum if you can’t afford to make even that. You typically pay them a percentage of the amount of debt they supposedly save you, and for accounts that are on a payment plan, you pay them monthly and they divvy up the payments as needed to all your cards, while keeping a percentage of the money for their own administration. What always ends up happening is when everything is on autopilot and no one is watching is any number of snafus that snowball against you. One of the cards will raise the minimum payment, and they will accept the payment every month but you will fall further and further behind, like you are on a treadmill, but not running quite fast enough, and by the time you realize it you have been reported 60 days late for a better part of a year. Or they send the payments to the customer service address, not the payment mailing address. Or they pay right around the due date so some months two payments hit, but then the next month nothing does. Or they just forget to pay one of them. Or…. Long story short, there is no easy way to get out of debt and these companies are selling the idea that they can make it easy.
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Jun 28, 2010 16:43
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Zeta Taskforce posted:Long story short, there is no easy way to get out of debt and these companies are selling the idea that they can make it easy. Thanks. I figured something as much, and they're just preying on the "credit card companies are evil" line of thinking. Basically, the best way to get out of debt is not to get in it in the first drat place. I wish commercials would say that...
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Jun 28, 2010 17:14
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CobiWann posted:Posting this here because I'm sure this is the type of question a newbie would ask.
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Jun 29, 2010 04:45
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cowofwar posted:Credit counseling and debt management include some good nonprofit agencies and a lot of terrible predatory organizations. And guess which category advertises on TV.
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Jun 29, 2010 05:33
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I'm sure someone here will be able to answer this for me... Can you legitimately get a credit card company to cut debt/monthly payments without loving your credit score? I am 23 year old college student who got in trouble with credit cards when I was younger and have been suffering since. I take responsibility for this and am not trying to weasel my way out of my debt but if I could get my monthly payments down or some debt forgiven I would sleep better at night.
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Jun 29, 2010 18:02
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