Crystal Groves

Nothing of great importance is going on for me right now (that I’m willing to talk about here, anyway). I am steadily chipping away at the Grove membership manual that has been sorely lacking, as well as my CTP. I do a few web projects now and then for my Grove and for ADF, and I make sure I have personal time to just enjoy. Whether this is by watching deer outside with dad or going through boxes in the basement. The key thing for me is to find a balance between duties and life. For some reason people always seem to think I am overwhelmed or too busy with projects. That is simply not the case. I balance my life out very well. I reached a high point of busyness when I was taking my tax class, but that has long been over. I change tasks that I work on now and then, usually because I want to ride the “motivation” for a certain project until it runs out. Then I will move on to a different one. This works for me. I don’t have to complete everything right away, and I’m certainly not taking on anything new (unless it’s freelance work for extra $).

Speaking of taxes, I did get my return back on Friday. I got $1606 back, $114 of which went to state because of some of my freelance work. PA also has what is known as “Local” taxes, which I saved up $600 for throughout the year since work does not take out local taxes. I also spent $200 on some new clothes which was sorely needed as my duct tape was not holding up anymore The rest went to debt, and to starting my dad up his own checking account so I can see if switching him to that instead of credit will help us balance out our financial relationship some. On average he puts about $900 on my credit card, which is about what I pay into it every month, so this was clearly not working.

And before someone preaches to me about getting money back for taxes……I am not stupid. I know what taxes are. But I prefer not to “owe” taxes, I claim one of my exemptions and that is it. I do not care about your opinion on this matter.

I have not had much desire to blog about much of anything lately. I’m note entirely sure why. I’ve had things to write about, but most are summed up quickly and tweeted. I suppose twitter is taking away most of my blogging.

I decided to loan a friend $95 to get a discount on something that was important to him. I know he’ll pay me back as soon as he is able, and I mostly did it because I wanted some good financial karma right now. Those that give will receive, afterall.

Dad has also gotten some baby keets (Guinea fowl), so we will be having some tick eating ugly birds in a couple months. I am excited I’ve missed having them.

I checked my escrow account and saw that my taxes were paid on time, so I was able to get the $100 or so discount for paying early. I’m still going to call and confirm the tax collector that it was received just for my own peace of mind.

I’m very excited for the coming months. So many possibilities

I received my first tax notice for Fiscal 2009 on Friday. I wasn’t sure what it was at first and then realized that in PA you have to forward your property tax bills to your mortgage holder to pay out of your escrow account if you have one, which I do.

Right now my escrow account has like $1600 in it, and this bill is for $503.97 if paid by April 30th, which is a 2% discount. Normal price is $514.26 if you pay by June 30th, and the penalty price is $565.69 if I pay by December 2009. Naturally I want the discount so I mailed this off Monday.

I’m very very new to property taxes and escrow though, being as this is my first time owning property. I’m curious, does the $1600 currently in my escrow account mean that I have over $1,000 overpaid in it? Or should I expect another tax bill soon for some other crazy PA tax that would take over the $1,000. Or do they split property tax bills into several payments throughout the year and this is just the first quarter or something? And even so, I’m still paying into my escrow account every month, so the account is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger, so that wouldn’t make sense.

These may just be questions for my mortgage company, but if anyone has any insight, I’d be all the appreciative for it.

Silly PA taxes.

I’m going to set up a reminder on April 1st to verify the payment was received from my mortgage company because 1. I don’t trust mortgage companies to do anything right, and 2. The tax collector does not send a receipt unless you mail a stamped addressed envelop with the payment, which I can’t because I’m not sending the payment.

Total tax return for this year: $9677

But that’s with the first-time home-buyer tax credit of $7500, otherwise it’d just be a little over $2k.

Normally I wouldn’t have taken the credit, but since it’s an interest free loan, and I wanted to pay off my car that is -not- an interest free loan, I figured it would be a good trade off. Especially when I’m trying to pay off my fathers loan this year as well. Then all interest debt is gone except the house.

$6,000 is paying off the mustang. I’m going to ask for a pay-off quote though so we’ll see how much less it might be.

$775 is going towards paying four more people that donated money to me and my father for our down payment.

The remaining $2900 is going towards my father’s loan (though I have $140 to pay for PA local taxes). I’ll update the amount left on that at the beginning of March when I post my monthly report again. And with the car paid off, my car payments will be going straight to that balance. We might actually have it paid off in June

I may take a little bit and buy some clothes or a book or something, but most of it will be going towards the loan.

Then it’s complete focus on paying back the last donator! Slowly but surely, I’m getting there

In other news, I completely busted my ass on ice tonight while walking out to the car. I mean instant firey pain to my knee the moment I hit. It’s completely numb now from swelling and I have ice on it which just makes it feel even more ridiculous. I don’t know what I’m going to feel like in the morning. I doubt anything’s broken, it’s just not happy.

So I talked to my Aunt about working for the tax company she manages, and we’re going to look into that as a possibly second job -next- year. There is a tax course I have to take in order to prepare to answer questions about all sorts of situations regarding taxes, which I will be taking this fall. My cousin Steph is going to take it with me so I’m really looking forward to that.

Anything to diversify my skill-set and get a leg in the “financial bracket” of the work force That’ll put at least 5 different types of jobs under my belt that I have experience with should I ever need to fall back on one.

Now if I can only get into more programming

I’ve mentioned before that my Aunt works for Jackson Hewitt. She does my taxes every year, and manages three separate Jackson Hewitt offices.

This year she’s pretty short-handed, and I’m thinking of asking if I can help out on Saturdays (and some Sundays, but not every Sunday). This would be a small extra income, and also get me some experience in the tax/financial bracket.

We’ll see what she says anyway. The extra income would be put towards my fathers loan so perhaps we can get the $5k paid off even sooner than September like I originally anticipated

Obviously I couldn’t work during the week, due to my current full-time job during the day, and my personal activities in the evening.

It is the start of my current favorite time of year…tax season. I’m surprisingly not being sarcastic here. To me, tax season is like the financial showdown of the year. You get to review how you’ve done for the year, and usually you get your tax money back that you’ve paid through the past year, and hopefully apply it to something that benefits you.

At least that’s how it is for us lower class americans. Upper class probably has less fun with this time of year.

This tax season will be slightly different for me, because I will probably be itemizing some items due to buying a house. Any interest I paid towards my mortgage can be written off in my taxes and considering the beginning of all mortgage payments are mostly interest anyway, this is a good thing. Apparently settlement fees can be written off as well.

I’ve never itemized before, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect. I’m hoping my Aunt can help walk me through the process since she’s the one that always does my taxes because she works at Jackson Hewitt.

I’ll also be writing off my Grove donations this year for the first time. Each year I make a monthly pledge to the Grove, and for 2008 I pledged to donate $30/month. I exceeded my goal, not by much, but I’m just happy to have met it given how this past year has gone. I haven’t quite figured out how it works, but I know I can also write off gas expenses driving to and from the Grove since I am an officer of the Grove. But how do you calculate something like that? I don’t put just enough gas in my car to drive to the Grove and back, I always fill my tank up. Do I have to do some crazy financial equation here that figures out how much I use every time I drive down and calculate that with how many times I actually did go down? I’ll have to talk with Will about that.

So a couple thousand in interest payments for the house, a small amount written off for the Grove, the $7500 first time home-buyers tax credit, and then my usual qualifications of head of the household and 1 dependent…. I’m predicting between $8-$10k back. Hopefully closer to the latter, but I don’t like getting my hopes up.

This money is allotted for:

• $5900 towards paying off the mustang, most likely less because I’ll be asking for a pay-off quote
• $300 towards paying off 3 more people who donated money towards our down payment
• $1500 towards my dads loan (or whatever is remaining up to $1300)
• And the remaining balance towards the final people who donated money towards our down payment.

With the car paid off, I will be adding $320/month towards my dads loan, for a total of $500/month payment (plus any extra money I get throughout the year) we’ll be using to snowball my dads loan. I suspect it to be completely gone in September, where I will change our snowball payment of $500/month to dads medical bills which (I believe) is only $1300, so that will be taken care of in December.

Once all those are clear, I alone will be putting my $320/month into the remaining down payment loan. I believe they have an ING account, so this will be an easy transfer. I don’t want dad to have to pay anymore debts, so he’ll be completely debt free at this time. Any tax money or excess money I get will go towards the down payment loan until it is gone, which I expect it to be fully paid off in 2010.

After that, all that is left is the mortgage in 2010. At that time I’ll be saving up at least 6 months worth of expenses into savings and enough money to buy my next car in cash. And slowly adding more and more to my mortgage payment so it’s paid off faster.

Some items I’m going to have to start preparing for taxes:

• Roth IRA Statement for the Year to show interest gained
• 401k Statement for the Year to show interest gained
• All of my ING Account statements for the year to show interest gained, though they deliver their own 1099 tax forms at the end of January (Total Interest: $186.87)
• W-2′s that I’ll get in February
• Bank account information (routing # + account #) for the direct deposit
• Settlement fee information for buying the house
• January mortgage statement to show interest paid in 2008 for writing off, as well as whatever form it is that the lenders send out that show this as well.
• Bring my own statement from Microsoft Money for all accounts, just in case there are any questions or additional things I can write-off that I don’t know about

I sent off my first mortgage payment today, even though it’s not due till November 1st. It was actually very painless. I’ve already got two months of mortgage payments saved up in a separate savings I have for mortgage, so I just put it into my checking and had ING mail off a check for free. And I’ve already got next months mortgage payment sitting there, so that suits me just fine.

I convinced my grandfather not to charge me the full month for the storage trailer, since we only had it for 6 days in October, so that saves me some money as well.

I also paid off what was left on my credit card from house supplies because the interest on the credit card is higher than the interest on my savings account. I figured instead of making payments, it’d make sense just to get rid of the bill entirely. That also feels good.

Today was payday at work and I had an extra $55 on my paycheck due to being switched to PA taxes instead of MD. I guess they take out less taxes up here, which is fine with me. The extra money will be useful

I’m sorta anxious for tax season now, as I want to get the car paid off ASAP. That’s going to be such an amazing feeling. I can’t wait. I’ll literally have no debt except the house and what’s left of my friends loans after that. Granted I’m going to start taking on my fathers two debts after that, but they aren’t -my- debts.

My total Debt:
Car Balance: $6,923
Friends Loan: $5,775
Mortgage: $159,344 (not counting todays payment, and not really counting this towards “current debt”)

Total current Debt: $12,698

My dads total Debt:
Beneficial Loan: $5009
Medical Bills: $1300 (I don’t have the exact number, but this is around the right amount)

Total current Debt: $6309

Time to start researching 0% APR for 12 months balance transfer cards to tackle my fathers debt.