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Category: Useful Stuff

  • Simple way to prevent identity thieves from stealing your tax refund

    Decrease your withholdings so that you owe money at the end of the year. No refund, no fraud.

    Use the IRS Withholding Calculator to figure out what numbers to enter in Form W-4.

  • What to do now that Heartbleed is forcing you to change all your passwords

    Two-thirds of all sites have potentially been bleeding your login and personal information. If you’re like most people, you’ve been using the same email address and password for most sites, so now you’re really screwed. Now seems like a good time to take some steps to protect yourself.

    Use More Than One Email Address

    I have a longer post that I wrote several years ago ( Five Email Addresses), but basically you need an email address for people, for work, for money, for shopping, and then everything else. That way a hacked account on some third rate site won’t immediately put your bank and credit card accounts at risk.

    Use a Password Generator and Keeper

    There are a bunch of these like 1Password and LastPass that will allow you to generate strong passwords (20+ characters made up of mixed-case letters, numbers, and symbols) and remember them for every single site. You can sync them across multiple computers and devices, so you really don’t have an excuse for using the same weak password for every site.

    Start changing your passwords, but judiciously

    Since the news broke a number of sites have already patched the vulnerability; others were never at risk from this particular hole. Still, there may be sites out there that are still vulnerable to Heartbleed. Changing your password on any of them would still leave your account vulnerable. Check to see if your favorite sites are on Mashable’s hit list or test them yourself at http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/.

  • Loopholes

    Loopholes

    Here are some loopholes you can use to get out of paying taxes. These really work! I’ve been using them for years.

    • Buy a house using a loan – Don’t pay taxes on all your income like some kind of low-life renter; subtract the interest you are paying from your income as if you had never earned it.
    • Get married – Only sinners pay full taxes on two incomes; legitimize your relationship and benefit!
    • Have kids – Other people should not only see and hear your children, they should take on some of the tax burden, too.
    • Get health insurance through your job – Only the foolish buy their own health insurance using after-tax dollars; be wise and get yours pre-tax through an employer.

    There are other loopholes, I’m sure, but these are the big ones. Try these first and see if they work for you.

    Image CC BY jpellgen

  • Pack a power strip

    Whether you’re at the airport or on jury duty, busting out the power strip can make you look like a genius. The non-geniuses are the ones walking around hunched over, laptop and power cord in hand, desperately looking for an open outlet that just doesn’t exist. Power strips are also handy for dealing with the ridiculously short length of Apple’s iPhone USB cable.

  • Rent vs. Buy

    Somewhere along the way people lost their common sense when it came to real estate. Houses that used to sell for $250k started looking attractive at $1m because everything else was selling for $1.1m. But while the prices of comparable houses in a submarket gives you some indication of the market value of a house, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should buy that house. The cheapest overpriced house is still an overpriced house.

    One thing I like to look at is a simple comparison of rents and mortgage payments. Calculate the mortgage payment for a property you are looking at, then compare it to the rent of a comparable place. This can sometimes be difficult when trying to evaluate a large single family detached house, since there may not be too many comparable rentals in the area, but for a smaller house or a condo, you shouldn’t have a problem.

    In my neighborhood, I’ve seen plenty of condos that are being offered as rentals for $2000-3000 a month. Assuming an interest rate of 5.25%, this payment would translate to a mortgage of $362,000-$543,000. Assuming a 20% down payment, this results in a house price of $453,000-$679,0000. Comparable condos actually sell for $550,000-750,000.

    Looking a little wider, 2 bedroom single family detached houses are renting for $3000-4000 a month, translating to a house price of $750,000-$900,000. The asking price of these houses are still $1m and up.

    This simple calculation doesn’t even take into account the additional recurring costs of homeownership: property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Nor does it take into account the time or transaction costs involved when you happen to find a great new job and have to extend your commute or sell your house. Nor does it put a price on the risk of falling housing prices.

    But never mind all that. Just keep it simple and look at the rent vs. mortgage payment as a starting point. Purchasing a house is a big emotional as well as financial investment, and emotions run pretty high when you’re talking about owning a piece of property with your name on it, providing a shelter for your family, and possibly regretting the biggest financial mistake of your life. By starting simple, you might be able to run a sanity check: Is the pride of homeownership worth a $100,000 premium on that small 2-bedroom condo? If you saved the $1000 difference every month in an ING Direct account at 1%, what could you do with the $61,500 you would save over 5 years?