fauxklore | Entries tagged with money

I am finally more or less recovered from traveling for nearly a month (a 25 day trip, which I left on only a couple of days after a 5 day trip). So I have a lot of catching up to do.

Expect to see several entries over the next couple of weeks, though I also have a short trip (4 days) coming up shortly.

One quick annoyance today had to do with an investment. I have two brokerage accounts for various reasons. There's one stock in both accounts. Both brokerages sent me thick prospectuses (prospecti?) re: an opportunity associated with this stock. Brokerage A had a cover letter telling me the deadline to reply to them was August 16th, but, when I tried to act on it, they told me the deadline had been the 14th. That was in an email they sent, but I assumed the letter that accompanied the prospectus was correct. Brokerage B had a deadline of the 17th, but made it difficult to figure out how to act on it. In the end, I managed to do this with a phone call, but it was annoying that I couldn't do it on their website (which is poorly designed in several ways). This also included the annoyance of having to listen to their ad for a credit card reward program.

Celebrity Death Watch: Cynthia Weil was a songwriter who, along with her husband, Barry Mann, was responsible for a lot of popular songs, such as “You’ve Lost That Loving’ Feelin’” and “On Broadway.” Roger Squires was a prolific crossword compiler, who used the pseudonym Rufus in The Guardian and set Monday puzzles for the Daily Telegraph. Michael Batayeh was an actor, best known for appearing in Breaking Bad. Ronald L. Baker was a folklorist who wrote extensively about place names in the American midwest as well as collecting midwestern humorous folk tales. Bob Bolin pitched for the San Francisco Giants and, later on, the Red Sox. Byron Barton wrote and illustrated children’s books. George Winston was a pianist, mostly noted for new age music. Norma Hunt owned the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Roger Craig was pitcher and later, as a manager led the 1989 San Francisco Giants to a National League championship. Francoise Gilot was an artist and was Pablo Picasso’s partner from 1943 to 1953. The Iron Sheik was an Iranian-born professional wrestler. Wade William Goodwyn was the national desk correspondent for NPR. Julie Garwood was a romance novelist. Firouz Naderi was the program manager of NASA’s Mars exploration mission at JPL and later became the director for Solar System Exploration. Roger Payne was a biologist who recorded humpback whale songs. Treat Williams was an actor, who was notable for playing Berger in the film version of Hair. Carol Higgins Clark was a mystery writer who followed in the footsteps of her mother Mary Higgins Clark, with whom she coauthored several novels. Cormac McCarthy was a novelist, primarily of violent Westerns. Christy Digham was a singer with the Irish group Aslan. Robert Gottlieb was the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and The New Yorker, as well as being on the board of directors of the New York City Ballet. Luisa Gander was the first lady of Puerto Rico from 2005 to 2009. Donald Triplett was the first person diagnosed with autism. Glenda Jackson was a movie actress. Paxton Whitehead was an actor who appeared on Broadway, as well as in movies and television shows. Gus Newport was the mayor of Berkeley, California during the time I lived there, though I remember nothing about him. Gregory Klinishov was a co-creator of the Russian hydrogen bomb. Teresa Taylor played drums for the Butthole Surfers. Dick Hall pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, as well as other teams. Isabel de Costa Ferriera was the first lady of East Timor from 2012 through 2017. Max Morath was a ragtime pianist. Frederic Forrest was an actor, noted for playing opposite Bette Midler in The Rose.

Robert Hanssen was an FBI investigator who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the U.S. for over 20 years. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. The park where he was arrested is only about 2.5 miles from my home.

Astrid Gilberto was a samba and bossa nova singer. She recorded with Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim, but is best known for her hit recording of “The Girl From Ipanema.”

Pat Robertson was a televangelist and Republican politician. He founded the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University and played a significant role in turning the Republican party toward Christian conservative ideology.

Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber, a mathematician who isolated himself and set out on a terror campaign with several bombings, which he claimed were to bring attention to environmental issues. Two of those bombings were at Berkeley during my time there, by the way.

Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian media tycoon who became a three-time prime minister.

Henry Petroski was a cvil engineering professor who wrote several books about industrial design and the history of common objects. His book To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design is a good read as is The Pencil.

Daniel Ellsberg was the whistleblower who released The Pentagon Papers, classified documents about U.S. decisions regarding the Vietnam War, parts of which were published by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He earned me 10 ghoul pool points.

Sheldon Harnick was one of the greatest lyricists to write for musical theatre. The shows he worked on with Jerry Bock include Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello!, She Loves Me, The Rothschilds, and The Apple Tree. But he also had several other collaborators. I also recommend his early song, “The Boston Beguine,” from New Faces of 1952. I met him a few times, since he often went to the York Theatre, and he was always amiable. Even though he was 99, I was surprised by his death, since he always seemed so vigorous.

John Goodenough was the oldest person ever to win a Nobel Prize, having won the Chemistry Nobel at the age of 97. He was responsible for the development of lithium ion battery technology. He was on my ghoul pool list, earning me 22 points, which puts me in second place for now.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Elden Carnahan was a stalwart of the Loser Community. In fact, he was pretty much the founder of the Loser community, having started up the regular brunches and the nrars.org website. He had been diagnosed with glioblastoma about a year ago, so his death was no surprise. I’ll still miss his unique sense of humor and his dedication to bringing people together. Also, the origins of our regular on-line sessions of (mostly) codenames have their origin in a games night he started with members of his family.

The Enigmatist: I went with a few friends to see The Enigmatist at The Kennedy Center on Saturday. I was excited to see this come to D.C. because several of my NPL friends had seen and enjoyed it in New York. Anyway, Squonk from NPL organized the outing and got the tickets. My friends, Cindy and Teri, came along. Cindy is very much not a puzzle person and, when she saw that we had to solve some puzzles to get in, she thought she would hate the show. But I got her through those and helped her understand them. There were also some puzzles throughout the show and Teri even got selected to give the answer to one of them. Anyway, David Kwong has created a unique mixture of magic, humor, and puzzles for a unique and very entertaining show. I admit that I have absolutely no idea how several of his magic tricks worked. Highly recommended for those who can get to it (and, if you aren’t local, go see it if he comes to your area).

JGSGW Meeting: This month’s meeting was about Shul Records America, which is attempting to identify where genealogical records from American synagogues can be found. It isn’t digitizing records itself, just pointing to what archives hold them. Right now it doesn’t look to be of a lot of immediate utility to me, but there may be some opportunities to get involved in some of their projects.

Money, Money: Between having bought a few plane tickets, insurance for two trips, and various other travel-related things, my bill for the credit card I use for travel expenses was more than twice what it normally is. And I still have to pay the balance for my December trip, as well as needing to buy two more plane tickets (one of which might end up on a different card, because it will probably be on American). I’ll have the costs of several hotel nights, too. Sheesh, I also have a New York trip in August. I have the money, but I basically spent two months of pension payments on travel last month. Good thing my short term savings account has the equivalent of about two years of income in it. Whew!

The Cheery Metro Driver: There’s this one driver I sometimes get on the Orange Line who is notable for his cheeriness. In the morning, he has a spiel that includes things like, "as I always say, think great, be great." In the afternoon / evening, he has something to say at each stop, e.g. "Clarendon welcomes you," or "Ballston greets you with a warm hug." It’s silly, but it does make me smile.

Retirement Planning: My company is changing our retirement plan. I took advantage of a free consultation with Fidelity on the options for the new 401(K). I don’t think I learned much I didn’t already know, but it did help me figure out what to sign up for. The thing I am still unsure about is what to do with the existing 403(B). I can leave things where they are or roll them over to an IRA. I think leaving them where they are makes the most sense, because there are some pre-1987 contributions, which have different rules re: required minimum distributions. On the other hand, that increases the complexity of the calculations and it may not make that much of a difference.

Coffee Makers: One of my friends asked on facebook for advice about replacing a broken coffee maker. I wrote:

I'm usually making coffee just for myself, in which case I use the Vietnamese drip coffeemaker I bought for a quarter in the market in Saigon.

But if I am making coffee for a group, I love the Bodum Santos stovetop vacuum coffee maker. It has the advantages of being beautiful and making fabulous coffee, as well as looking complex so it impresses people.

She said that was a very Miriam answer. But to add to it, I actually have a lot of coffee makers, none of them automatic or electric. I use the simple Melitta filter pretty often, too, either letting the coffee drip directly into a mug or into a pot, depending on how many people I am making coffee for. It has two advantages over the Vietnamese drip pot. First, it is faster. But, more importantly, you can just throw out the filter and grounds, instead of having the mess of cleaning grounds out of the coffeemaker. I also have a little plastic drip coffeemaker that I use for extreme travel situations, e.g. camping or visiting relatives who think instant coffee is drinkable. That and a small baggie of coffee I have ground before leaving home has saved my life – and that of the people I was visiting.

The other one I use fairly regularly is an ibrik, i.e. the copper thingie used for making Turkish coffee. That’s quick, but takes a bit of skill. It also requires a much finer grind of coffee beans, which my grinder can’t really achieve, so I have to get the coffee for it ground at the roaster. I think it works best with a darker roast than I normally drink – practically burnt, though not quite Starbucks level of burntness. I recommend using Ethiopian harrar beans, though Yemen moka would be even better if you can find them. (For drip coffee, I primarily use Indonesian coffee beans. Haitian beans are also good for drip coffee.)

I am not a fan of the French press method. And please don’t even mention Keurig in my presence.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/437686.html

Rant the First - Republican Health Un-Care: Giving people a maximum $4000 credit when health insurance often costs over $1000 a month doesn't do anything for affordability. Eliminating coverage for things like maternity care and vaccinations will increase the need for more expensive coverage later on. This is sheer cronyism, a break for rich insurance company execs and does nothing to help people.

I firmly believe single-payer would be the right way to go for the simple reason that it would allow a much higher percentage of insurance costs to go to actual health care, instead of paperwork.

As for Paul Ryan's ridiculous iphone comment, an iphone costs well under what a single month of insurance costs. And even the earliest adapters don't change their phones out more than every 12-18 months.

Rant the Second - Ticketmaster: There are really two parts to my annoyance. The first is that I was buying tickets to go to the circus with a couple of friends (because this is it for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey and I have never been, though I've been to a number of Cirque du Soleil shows and to the Moscow Circus). The tickets show up as being $65 plus fees. The fees added 17 bucks a ticket. That's about 26%, which is fairly extortionate. But what really bugged me is that there was no apparent way to see what the fees would be up front.

The second annoyance was that a new block of tickets for Hamilton went on sale yesterday. After some searching, I actually found a couple of dates with single tickets that were only mildly exorbitant (in the 200 dollar range). Only to get an error message when actually trying to purchase such a ticket. And, of course, they were gone when I tried again later. There are still tickets available for some dates, but only at prices starting at $549. Yes, I could afford that if I really wanted to. But there are plenty of other things I'd like to see at far more reasonable prices.

I scribble a lot of things in my planner, some of which I intend to write about here. These are kind of random and I have no idea why I numbered them.

1) The Washington Post reported on a ghost bike put up at Dupont Circle. I think I had vaguely heard of the idea (a white bike with a placard commemorating a bicyclist killed in an accident), but I don't think I'd heard of one in this area before.

2) The news about Spirit Airlines planning to charge for carry-on luggage in the overhead bin got lots of coverage. There was somewhat less coverage of Senator Schumer's objection to it (and plan to introduce legislation). I think he has a good point. Airplane tickets are taxable; fees are not. The unbundling of services is a way of cheating the taxman.

3) Speaking of taxes, I got the "your return has been accepted by the IRS" e-mail pretty quickly. Doing my Virginia taxes on line was quick and simple. The iFile system has always surprised me for its ease and simplicity in a state that is normally not interested in anything Thomas Jefferson hadn't thought of. So, sure enough, the neanderthals in Richmond are taking it away for people over a certain income. This affects about 12% of the state. Those people will have to pay for tax software to file electronically. The claim is that this is in alignment with the federal government, but that isn't true. The feds provide free fillable forms for (almost) everyone. (The exceptions involve the need to file certain less common forms.) The really stupid part of this is that, while it will allegedly save the state six cents a return by outsourcing the electronic filing, it costs a dollar to handle a paper form. There are plenty of people like me who refuse to pay a private firm 30-50 bucks to file our taxes. And, oh, I don't suppose it's possible that the large political donations to certain politicians by Intuit have anything to do with this stupidity, right?

3) Back to travel, United is introducing a fee to stand by for an earlier flight. You only pay the $50 if you actually get on, but what is irritating is that they are not exempting all elite frequent flyers, only 1Ks. I need to find the right email address to send my complaint. They have a legitimate concern about people booking cheaper flights and hoping to stand by for more expensive ones, but most elites are business travelers who are just trying to get home earlier if a meeting finishes before they expect it to. (I have also used that system when connecting from an international flight. It's hard to predict how long immigration and customs will take, so I err on the conservative side and switch to an earlier flight if I get through sooner. I have done this exactly twice in the past three years.)

4) There was another news story about the closing of the last sardine cannery in the United States. I have to admit that I can't remember the last time I ate sardines, though I used to eat the ones that came in mustard sauce fairly regularly and the ones in hot sauce somewhat less often. But didn't they switch to pull-tab opening at some point? Do people much younger than I am know about the old key system for the cans?
And did anybody else get the Stan Rogers song "Tiny Fish for Japan" stuck in their head while thinking about this?

5) I went to a reception for the new director of DARPA, Regina Duggan, on Thursday night. The traffic was bad and I missed the first couple of minutes of her talk. From what I did hear, I thought she spoke well - knowledgeably and entertainingly. It gives me hope for the future of science and technology in the Department of Defense. By the way, does it strike anybody else as odd for an event scheduled from 6:30-8:30 p.m. to be a coffee, wine, and dessert thing?

6) The resulting flight disruptions are making the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull a real pain in the ash.

7) I bought my plane tickets for the NPL con in Seattle. I also discovered that next year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the same weekend as the Virginia Storytelling Alliance gathering. How can I already have a schedule conflict for March 2011?

8) Holly wanted my comments on the last episode of The Amazing Race. ( Here they are, behind a cut )

Several years ago, I was scurrying around just before the filing deadline, trying to finish my taxes because of an inadvertently exotic investment. I had bought shares of the Boston Celtics on the New York Stock Exchange, more on the grounds of thinking it was cool to own a little bit of a sports team than anything else. When it came to doing my taxes, I learned that just because something is sold on the NYSE doesn't mean it's a stock. The Celtics are (or, at least, were) a publicly traded limited partnership. This meant filling out additional tax forms. I waded through 40 some odd pages of instructions on limited partnerships only to find a sentence that told me that none of the above applied if the partnership was publicly traded. There was even some statement that you had to include but that the IRS had no form for. (You had to type it out yourself on another piece of paper.) I filed my taxes on April 14th, sold the shares in the morning, and only had to wade through all this one more year.

(it is a bit of a digression, but my friend, Steve, gave me a hard time about selling off the shares. Steve is a big basketball fan and was getting married that summer. I contemplated giving him a few shares in the Celtics as a wedding present. But I decided that was excessively cruel, especially as he was marrying an Australian woman and moving to Melbourne.)

Anyway, since then I have diligently stayed away from exotic investments. Or so I thought until I spent three bloody days trying to find out what to do about the negative original issue discount on my inflation protected treasury securities. I did eventually figure it out, despite the IRS. I'm now waiting to see if my e-filed return got accepted or rejected. And debating about whether to do the Virginia return now or hold off until the morning.

Back in August, the bank I have my credit card with (a card chosen for frequent flyer mile maximization and fee minimization) sent me a new card because (they said) their database had been compromised. There was no evidence of fraud but they were doing this out of an abundance of caution, a phrase that should strike terror into the heart of anybody being massively inconvenienced. So I updated numbers on things I pay automatically. Which is, fortunately, few as most of my autopayments are utilities I pay from my checking account.

In September, they declined a charge while I was buying a plane ticket (admittedly, in a foreign country) and froze my account. A phone call straightened that out easily enough, though I was still annoyed. Given that most of my credit card usage is travel related, one wouldn't think that buying a plane ticket for roughly $120 would be "unusual activity."

In October, I got a call and email from their fraud alert system, which did turn out to be actual fraud. (Note that this is with the new card, the one that replaced the card in the compromised database). In December, I had another attempted fraud. Both of those charges had been declined, which suggests that they can get some things right as far as "unusual activity." The second time, they again replaced my card.

Anyway, this led me to decide that I really should have a second credit card in case they froze my card due to attempted fraud when I was unreachable while traveling. Since American Airlines counts all activity, not just butt in seat miles, towards lifetime status, I applied for their card. And got declined due to "insufficient positive reports."

So I requested my credit report. And I saw that both of those replacement cards were listed as "lost or stolen card." Now, that may not be why I was declined, but my guess is that it's a red flag. Since when is either of those reasons for replacement a "lost or stolen card"? I'll write a letter attempting to get this corrected, but it is a major hassle.

Maybe I should ignore the miles and just get a card from one of the banks I have an account with.

I came home from the theatre and minor automotive crisis to another stressful moment. My mail held a letter from the IRS.

I had apparently made an error in my taxes, due to having had qualified dividends. My taxes were reduced about a hundred bucks.

That's right - the IRS actually caught an error I made in their favor. There are instructions on how to dispute this but, somehow, I don't think I will.

I finally (3 days before the deadline) got around to filing my claim for that class action lawsuit involving foreign currency transactions on credit cards. Being the sort of traveler that I am (and compulsively organized about financial record keeping, so I actually had the credit card statements to back it up), I chose the option where you itemize your foreign spending by year. A few things surprised me as I was pulling the information together.

1) Some of my foreign transactions weren't. Charges in Ecuador, for example, were in U.S. dollars, which makes sense since that is (or at least was) their currency. But some less obvious charges were made in dollars, e.g. a Welsh train ticket (but not other British train tickets).

2) I am a nicer girlfriend than I thought, since I spent more money taking Robert out to dinner in London than I remembered. I should probably not have just put that in writing since he will now make me pay for dinner when he's here in a few weeks.

3) The single foreign currency I had the highest dollar value transactions in was Canadian dollars. Yes, I have been to Canada a lot, but that's mostly because the Antarctic cruise was paid for in Canadian dollars. British pounds came second. Everyone who I asked to guess, assumed that it would be South African rand, but I guess I paid cash a lot there.

4) I had one transaction in the currency of a country I haven't actually been to. That's what happens when you use a Thai website to pay for a Japanese hotel.

The real surprise will be how much money I end up getting back.

I finally finished doing my taxes. My major hold up this year was misplacing a 1099 form. Which I still have not located but I realized I could find the amount from the end of year statement from the account.

What is strange is that I think of myself as being one of those "do the taxes in early February" people. Which would have worked as that was a somewhat unbusy time (well, except for sleeping 12 hours a day to make up for Fiji and getting a bad cold and all that). But Congress was dragging their tails on fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax so I had to postpone some. And then I was busy and then I couldn't find that bloody 1099 and so on.

But what I really wanted to note was that I had to look at last year's state return to see how much money Virginia had extracted from me (as I had owed them money last year) and I discovered just when I had filed my taxes last year. It was April 9th.

Which does not exactly qualify as early February.

And by the way, buying the condo did make a significant difference in my taxes, as I will get refunds this year from both feds and state instead of owing both.

Yes, I do have a holidailies entry on Areas of Unrest. It has to do with Jewish music again, as well as a critical moving related errands.

I have a sort of odd question, though, on another subject. Suppose one makes a payment of additional principal on one's mortgage. The statement comes the next month, which includes a breakdown of the regular payment with respect to principal and interest. Why is the new balance not just the previous balance minus the principal part of the previous payment minus the additional payment? Am I missing something or did they screw up?