Archives for January 2017

Alaska Airlines and Virgin America Merger: 10,000 Free Alaska Miles

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alaskampAs Virgin America and Alaska Airlines have closed on their merger/acquisition, they are moving towards merging the two frequent flier programs.

If you were a Virgin America Elevate member as of December 5, 2016 and they haven’t found a matching Alaska Airlines profile for you, they should send you an e-mail offering you a welcome bonus of either 10,000 Alaska Airlines miles or a $100 off discount any Alaska-operated flight when you activate your new Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account. You will automatically be assigned a new Alaska account number.

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If you are a Virgin America Elevate member and they didn’t find the matching profile even though you do have an existing Alaska Airline account, you can link the two accounts together at this link. They should then deposit 10,000 Alaska miles in there shortly.

If they did find a matching profile, you should log into your Alaska Airlines account and hopefully find your bonus 10,000 miles already sitting there. You may want to contact Alaska in a few days if you think you qualify but didn’t receive any communication yet.

You can also convert your existing Virgin America Elevate points to Alaska Mileage Plan miles at this link, currently at a 1:1.3 ratio (i.e. 100 Virgin Elevate points = 130 Alaska miles). Keep in mind that the transfers are one way – you can’t undo the transfers and you can’t move existing Alaska miles to Virgin America. The Virgin Elevate program is still operating separately for the time being with their own partners.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


IRS Estimated Taxes Due Dates 2017

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

irsclipIf you have significant self-employment or other income outside of your W-2 paycheck that is not subject to witholding (interest, rents, dividends, alimony), you may need to send the IRS some money before the usual tax-filing time. This is my annual reminder to either slide in a last-minute payment for 2016 if needed, or plan ahead for four equal installments in 2017.

Here are the due dates for paying quarterly estimated taxes in 2017; one last one for 2016 tax year and four quarterly installments for 2017 tax year. This is for federal taxes only, state and local tax due dates may be different.

IRS Estimated Tax Payment Calendar for Individuals

Tax Year / Quarter Due Date
2016 Fourth Quarter January 17, 2017* (Tuesday)
2017 First Quarter April 18, 2017 (Tuesday)
2017 Second Quarter June 15, 2017 (Thursday)
2017 Third Quarter September 15, 2017 (Friday)
2017 Fourth Quarter January 16, 2018 * (Tuesday)

 
* You do not have to make the payment due January 17, 2017, if you file your 2016 tax return by January 31, 2017, and pay the entire balance due with your return. You do not have to make the payment due January 16, 2018, if you file your 2016 tax return by January 31, 2018, and pay the entire balance due with your return.

Who needs to pay estimated taxes?
In general, you must pay estimated tax for 2017 if both of the following apply:

  1. You expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2017, after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits.
  2. You expect your withholding and credits to be less than the smaller of
    • 90% of the tax to be shown on your 2017 tax return, or
    • 100% of the tax shown on your 2016 tax return. Your 2016 tax return must cover all 12 months.

If you forget to pay (like I’ve done before), then you should make a payment as soon as possible even though it is late. This will minimize any penalty assessed.

How do I pay? When does the payment count?

  • By check. Fill out the appropriate IRS Form 1040-ES voucher (last page of the PDF) and snail mail to the indicated address. The date of the U.S. postmark is considered the date of payment. No fees besides postage.
  • By online bank transfer. You can store your bank account information and pay via electronic funds transfer at EFTPS.gov or call 1-800-555-4477. It takes a little while to set up an online account initially, so you’ll need to plan ahead. For a one-time payment, you can also use IRS Direct Pay which does not require a sign-up but it also doesn’t store your bank account information for future payments. Both are free (no convenience fees). The date of payment will be noted online.
  • By debit or credit card. Here is page of IRS-approved payment processors. Pay by phone or online. Fees will apply, but the payment will count as paid as soon as you charge the card. You may also earn rewards on your credit card.

The following credit cards currently have the ability to offer rewards equal or greater than 1.87%, meaning you could theortically make money by paying your taxes with them. Please read my card-specific reviews for details.

How much should you pay in estimated taxes? You’ll need to come up with an expected gross income and then estimate your taxes, deductions, and credits for the year. The PDF of Form 1040-ES includes a paper worksheet to calculate how much in quarterly estimated taxes you should pay. You can also try online tax calculators like this one from H&R Block to estimate your 2016 tax liability, and divide by four quarters.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Disney Gift Card Discounts: 10%+ Off Your Disney Cruise or Vacation

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

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Update: If you have an American Express Business card, look in the Amex Offers section of your online account page for 20% off a single in-store Sam’s Club purchase of $100+ (limit of to $250 back). You could use this offer a variety of ways, but one of them is to stack with the Disney Gift Card discount below. Thanks also to commenter Jamie. Here’s a screenshot (click to enlarge):

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I bought 9 of the $150 face value packs at $142.98 each, for a total cost of $1286.82. (The $500 cards were not available in my store, and there were no transaction limits posted.) That would reach the max discount of $250 (20% of $1,250). Therefore, I will have gotten $1,350 of Disney credit and paid $1036.82, a 23% combined discount. (I’ll also get credit card rewards from the purchase.) If you were going to spend that much money on a Disney vacation or cruise anyway, that’s a $313.18 savings.

Original post:

If you are planning a Disney-related vacation, especially a package deal or Disney Cruise, I wanted to point out a current way to get 10%+ off of Disney gift cards. Act quickly though, as part of this deal will stop at the end of the 2016.

First 5% off. Right now, Sam’s Club is selling Disney gift cards at roughly a 5% discount to face value. There are two options:

Sometime they’re in stock online and sometimes they are only available in-store. The $500 gift card may be seasonal. There may be posted limits per transaction in the stores, but I’ve read several reports that you can buy more if you make separate purchases spaced apart (wait until the previous order is shipped and received). Alternatively, you can have a friend or family member buy them and pay them back.

Disney Gift Cards are valid at many places:

  • Walt Disney World® Resort (including hotels, restaurants, gift shops, etc.)
  • Disneyland® Resort
  • Disney Cruise Line
  • Disney Store locations in the U.S.
  • DisneyStore.com
  • Disney PhotoPass™
  • Disney Vacation Club®
  • Adventures by Disney®
  • Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa in Ko Olina, Hawaii
  • Disney’s Hilton Head Island and Vero Beach resorts

Second 5% off. In addition, both Chase Freedom and Discover have Sam’s Club as one of their quarterly 5% cash back categories until December 31st, 2016. That means you could theoretically get 5% back on $1,500 of Disney gift cards per card account. Discover also has Sam’s Club in Q1 2017, but not Chase Freedom. (If you and a partner both had a Chase Freedom and a Discover, that would cover up to $6,000 in total purchases in Q4 2016 and another $3,000 in Q1 2017.)

Finally, up to another 2% off? You can technically get another 2% discount on your Disney vacation package with the Disney Vacation Account. For every $1,000 you load into the account and spend on qualified vacation purchases, they will give you a $20 Disney gift card. Qualified purchases include:

  • Walt Disney World® Resort in Florida
  • Disneyland® Resort in California
  • Disney Cruise Line®
  • Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa in Ko Olina, Hawaii
  • Adventures by Disney®

You can load your Disney Gift Cards into this account, although only up to $500 will count towards the DVA bonus.

You’ll be eligible for a $20 Disney Gift Card for every $1000 you spend on qualified vacation purchases with your Disney Vacation Account prior to December 31, 2017 (date subject to extension), up to a total $500 in Disney Gift Card(s) per household.

If you have a big package deal like a Disney Cruise, it’s not that much hassle to buy these gift cards and directly apply them to your balance. On a $3,000 cruise or vacation package, getting 10% off is a $300 savings.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


My Hard Things + What I’m Willing to Give Up

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myhardthingsAs a follow-up to my post on choosing your hard things, I decided to share what I came up with. Keep in my these are MY hard things. You could have the two lists completely swapped, and that would get no judgment from me. The entire point is to do things aligned with your values and stop caring what anyone else thinks!

My hard things:

  • Save enough money and set things up to live off my investment income with minimal worry.
  • Spend lots of quality time with family, especially my three daughters. (I have 3 kids?!? How the $*%# did that happen?)
  • Spend some time alone reading and thinking about things I find interesting (ex. finance, cooking, off-grid living).
  • Exercise regularly, mostly by running around outdoors with my daughters. If I’m lucky, this will also include hiking or playing tennis with friends. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be skiing.

The things I am willing to give up:

  • A steady, prestigious job and high W-2 income.
  • “Better things” like a larger house, faster car, or nicer toys/clothes.
  • Watching television.
  • Regular ski trips, partying at bars and clubs, and Las Vegas runs with friends.
  • Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.

I’m not there yet, but it’s nice to have them written down. If I’m not spending my time working towards one of my hard things, then I’m not being productive even with the newest To-Do List app, ergonomic standing desk, and pristine e-mail inbox. I should also be careful to stop doing the things on my “Give Up” list.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


PSA: Cuisinart Recalls 8 Million Food Processor Blades

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

bladerecallIn case you missed it during the holiday rush, Cuisinart has issued a recall of over 8 million food processor blades in the US and Canada. This covers a huge chunk of their machines sold in the last 20 years, including the one in my kitchen. The riveted blades can crack over time and leave small metal pieces in your food (yikes!).

This recall involves the riveted blades in Cuisinart food processors with model numbers that begin with the following: CFP-9, CFP-11, DFP-7, DFP-11, DFP-14, DLC-5, DLC-7, DLC-8, DLC-10, DLC-XP, DLC-2007, DLC-2009, DLC-2011, DLC-2014, DLC-3011, DLC-3014, EV-7, EV-10, EV-11, EV-14, KFP-7 and MP-14. The model number is located on the bottom of the food processor. The blades have four rivets and are silver-colored stainless steel and have a beige plastic center hub. Only food processors with four rivets in the blades are included in this recall. Cuisinart is printed on the front and on the bottom of the food processors.

Cuisinart will send you a free replacement blade if you contact them through their website at recall.cuisinart.com or call them at 877-339-2534 from 7am to 11pm ET Monday through Friday and from 9am to 5pm ET Saturday and Sunday. They have not offered anything further such as partial refunds or reimbursements.

I submitted my information online and received a confirmation e-mail. They were very vague with how long it would take to send the new blades.

Thank you so much for registering to receive your free Cuisinart replacement blade. Our blades are fabricated using precise manufacturing processes, which of course means, that they take some time to produce. We are producing new blades as rapidly as possible to meet the demand resulting from this replacement program.

When your blade is about to be shipped, we will send you an email so you can anticipate when it will arrive to the address you indicated on your replacement blade registration. In the meantime, you are able to use all other cutting implements and accessories that may have come with your Cuisinart food processor.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Choose Your Hard Things: You’ll Never Be Productive Enough for Everything

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

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I was catching up on some longreads and enjoyed Why time management is ruining our lives by Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian. Here are some quick notes.

Inbox Zero. I’d heard of “Inbox Zero” where you keep your e-mail inbox completely empty, but didn’t know that the inventor Merlin Mann later gave up pushing the concept because he found himself “typing bullshit that I hoped would please my book editor” instead of spending time with his daughter. Meanwhile, we now have the (finished) book Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford that proposes that being messy can create better results.

My personal theory is that the organization level of your e-mail inbox simply doesn’t matter. If something is truly urgent they’ll get in touch somehow, likely by sending you another e-mail!

The productivity treadmill. Most of us have never had to walk a great distance to gather water. We no longer have to chop wood; we just turn on the heater. We have separate appliances to both wash and dry our clothes. There are countless ways to avoid cooking. Yet, we are all so busy. I found this paragraph quite observant (and sad):

The time-pressure problem was always supposed to get better as society advanced, not worse. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that within a century, economic growth would mean that we would be working no more than 15 hours per week – whereupon humanity would face its greatest challenge: that of figuring out how to use all those empty hours. Economists still argue about exactly why things turned out so differently, but the simplest answer is “capitalism”. Keynes seems to have assumed that we would naturally throttle down on work once our essential needs, plus a few extra desires, were satisfied. Instead, we just keep finding new things to need. Depending on your rung of the economic ladder, it’s either impossible, or at least usually feels impossible, to cut down on work in exchange for more time.

I would add that the average person spends hours of time watching TV to recuperate from the stress of each day.

Less is more. Don’t work harder to fit more stuff in. Sit quietly and figure out the really important stuff. Do that. Drop the rest.

But in the meantime, we might try to get more comfortable with not being as efficient as possible – with declining certain opportunities, disappointing certain people, and letting certain tasks go undone. Plenty of unpleasant chores are essential to survival. But others are not – we have just been conditioned to assume that they are. It isn’t compulsory to earn more money, achieve more goals, realise our potential on every dimension, or fit more in. In a quiet moment in Seattle, Robert Levine, a social psychologist from California, quoted the environmentalist Edward Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Being productive doesn’t help if you just add on more things. Don’t use being busy as a form of psychological avoidance:

The more you can convince yourself that you need never make difficult choices – because there will be enough time for everything – the less you will feel obliged to ask yourself whether the life you are choosing is the right one.

With so much noise, is it any wonder that “mindfulness” is in? When your mind is quiet, it is easier to realize the life that is true to yourself, as opposed to the life others expect of you. To loosely paraphrase Merlin Mann: Choose a select few hard things and stick with them. Because they’re your things.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Free Estate Planning Guide and Workbook from American Red Cross

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

arc_estateIf one of your New Year’s Resolutions is to create an estate plan for you and your loved ones, here’s a good starter kit. The American Red Cross has a free Estate Planning Guide and Workbook which comes in both electronic fillable PDF form or a paper workbook format if you give them your address. It is roughly 50 pages and includes blanks to store your asset and beneficiary information, make future edits when needed, and print multiple copies to share with your attorney and family members. The guide will help you to:

  • Understand estate planning and the importance of having a will.
  • Gather the information they need to prepare to draft or update your will.
  • Discover ways to minimize taxes and liabilities for your families.
  • Explore the benefits of making charitable gifts in your estate plans.

Here’s a snapshot of the Table of Contents:

  • Why Everyone Needs a Will
  • When to Revise Your Will
  • Get a Head Start on Writing or Updating Your Will
  • Three Pillars of Every Estate Plan
  • Will Planning Workbook
  • Charitable Giving Through Your Will or Other Gift Plan
  • Including the Red Cross in Your Will
  • Making a Gift Outside Your Will
  • Gifts that Benefit You and Keep the Red Cross Strong

The American Red Cross also offers another free PDF resource called Disasters and Financial Planning: A Guide for Preparedness and Recovery.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


What If You Invested $10,000 Every Year For the Last 10 Years? 2007-2016 Edition

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Instead of just looking at one year of returns, here’s an annual exercise that helps you look at the bigger picture. You may know the 10-year historical return of the S&P 500, but most of us didn’t just invest a big lump sum of money in 2007, and most of us don’t just invest in the S&P 500.

Investment benchmark. There are many possible choices for an investment benchmark, but I chose the Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Fund. This all-in-one fund is low-cost, highly-diversified, and available in many employer retirement plans as well open to anyone with an IRA. In the early accumulation phase, this fund is 90% stocks (both domestic and international) and 10% bonds (investment-grade domestic and international). I think it’s a solid default choice where you could easily do worse over the long run.

Investment amount. For the last decade, the maximum allowable contribution to a Traditional or Roth IRA has been roughly $5,000 per person. (It was $4k in 2007, but has been $5k or higher since.) That means a couple could put away at least $10,000 a year in tax-advantaged accounts. If you have a household income of $67,000, then $10,000 is right at the 15% savings rate mark.

A decade of real-world savings. To create a simple-yet-realistic scenario, what would have happened if you put $10,000 a year into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Fund, every year, for the past 10 years. You’d have put in $100,000 over time, but in more manageable increments. With the handy tools at Morningstar and a quick Google spreadsheet, we get this:

saving10year

In this case, I would say that ending up with a gain of over $50,000 for every $10k annual investment is nothing to sneeze at. If you put in $20k every year, your gains would have been over $100,000. Some of that money was invested right before the crash in 2008, and some has only been in the market for a few years. Not every year will have turned out to be a great year to invest, but taking it all together provides a more calm, balanced picture.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Investment Returns By Asset Class, 2016 Year-End Review

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Although I am not always successful, I’ve been trying to pay less attention to the daily, weekly, even monthly movements of the markets. Once every few months, I will update my portfolio spreadsheet and make sure that I am investing new money towards my target asset allocation, but that’s about it. That said, I do enjoy a good year-end review. Here are the trailing 1-year returns for select asset classes as benchmarked by passive mutual funds and ETFs. Return data was taken from Morningstar after market close 12/30/16.

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Commentary. If anything, I think 2016 reminded us that although many people are paid essentially to make predictions, most of them aren’t very good at it. Indeed, the more important skill is explaining why things actually turned out the way they did in hindsight. That way, you have a reason to believe their next prediction…

As 2016 ended, I was a bit surprised to see that every asset class listed above had positive returns. Accordingly, most people who owned a diversified portfolio in 2016 had decent returns. The Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 fund (90% diversified stocks and 10% bonds) was up about 8.9% in 2016. My personal portfolio (overall 70% stocks/30% bonds) was up about 7.8% in 2016.

As I get closer to having to live off of my portfolio, I am increasingly focused on the amount of dividends, interest, and rental distributions that my portfolio gives off. (This is in the low 2% range.) I know that total return is more important, but seeing the cash come in makes me more comfortable. I like the analogy to an investment property. If you get a reliable $2,000 in rent coming in every month like clockwork, you care less about the market value of the house itself.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.