Recent content by mudpuppy

It sounds like you're an individual contributor now, right? If so you're probably around the right range. There might be some upside potential for more pay with a different job but I wouldn't expect a whole lot more. Unfortunately our industry still seems to reward management more than...

Mobile check deposit apps are a godsend -- I can't think of many things I'd like to do less than going to a bank to deposit a check -- especially on a Saturday morning when (1) they're slammed with people and (2) I could be sitting around drinking coffee. Only time I set foot in a bank these...

My niece had a soccer match on Saturday. There was 6" of snow on the field, so the other team didn't bother showing up. They made a snowman instead of playing.

Yeah, my brother-in-law's ducks do the same. There's a lot of scary things that come out at night that might try to eat them.

You are correct that you shouldn't pay tax to SC for your wife's business income in NC. But usually states want to see the federal AGI as an input and then have a schedule where you subtract off the out-of-state income.

If you think that's bad, what about non-resident property owners? Even to own a vacant lot you pay property tax, and have no voice or vote associated with it. So often non-resident property taxes can be double or more what residents pay since they have no say in the matter and thus it's easy...

Wow, I got around 45% in my Physics 1 class. Was freaked out at first but it turned out to curve to an A.

I saw a robin this morning, so that counts, right? Even though we got 3" of snow and it was 15 degrees with a windchill near 0 yesterday morning?

Since medical spending accounts let you pay pre-tax, if you're in the 22% tax bracket you save that plus your state taxes right off the top. People sometimes don't like to use these accounts because they don't like "losing" the leftover money if they don't plan it out right, but as long as you...

I agree with you that most big banks are useless at stuff like this. I would hope that brokerages (Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, etc.) that are much more used to dealing with these types of accounts would be smoother, but based on some of my interactions with E*trade I wouldn't bet on it.

The rules recently changed for inherited IRAs. You used to be able to take withdrawals over your lifetime. Now you only have 10 years from when the IRA owner died to withdraw all the money from the account. You'll owe tax on the amount you withdraw in the year(s) you withdraw it at your...

So we did 6 rounds of chemo and a check about 6 months later showed no recurrence/spread of the cancer. Given his age, we decided we weren't going to subject him to 6 month checkups, since the result would be either be no news, or more chemo that we didn't want to subject him to. That was 4...

Last year I found out that not all investments in an IRA are tax-sheltered. If you buy a limited partnership that generates passive income that they report on a form K1, you might owe tax on that. It's also not always clear what investments generate a K1 form. The best part is K1s are not due...

Based on what I'm seeing on my Facebook feed, Michigan should also be blue. Because (1) Stafford and (2) we live close enough to Ohio to hate everything about it.

Yeah, that unpredicted snow last week turned out to be about 4" here, out of nowhere. They were saying 19" here the next couple days but they've dropped it down to 11". Hoping the new forecast is more accurate. 11" is fine to deal with but 19" isn't as much. I got my plow stuck last time we...