Amazon, Get Out of Texas!

Whoa there pardner! What in tarnation is this? Texas is investigating Amazon for not paying income taxes because they have a facility in Texas?! WHAT?!

I am a proud Amazon Prime user. Amazon is my first choice for whatever I want to buy. My last three purchases on Amazon were dog toys, lightbulbs, and toothpaste. I order everything. A printer, a water bottle, a video game, a pepper grinder, a vacuum. I rely heavily on Amazon's reviews and competitive prices. Why? BECAUSE AMAZON CHARGES NO TEXAS SALES TAX!

I hate taxes. I already pay enough taxes in my life up here in the 33% bracket. If I can avoid my ridiculous over 8% local sales tax, I will! So, whose brilliant idea was it at Amazon to set up a facility in Texas??? I don't even know what that facility does. I order a lot from Amazon, and I have stuff shipped out of Kentucky, Nevada, and Oklahoma. I've never seen Texas, and I was grateful to Amazon for that because I didn't have to pay taxes because they didn't have a facility in Texas (so I thought).

So, Amazon, if this is true, move those Texans to Oklahoma or Nevada or wherever else it is you can employ people. Close that facility!

I Have Found the Weakest Link

We've been better on our spending. I haven't bought any clothes, we're done on furniture and junk for the dog. But we have an obvoius weak spot.

I'm just going to say it. We eat out way, way, way too much. It's an incredibly expensive (and enjoyable!) hobby.

These are our credit card charges in the last 1.5 weeks:
$42 forever stamps
$130 power bill
$61 bar tab
$17 toilet paper & paper towels
$62 groceries
$45 shoes (his)
$76 sushi dinner
$15 book
$52 cajun dinner
$22 thai lunch
$19 underwear, 3 pair
$70 sunglasses (mine, stepped on old ones)
$40 haircut (his)
$26 hostess gift
$116 tapas dinner
$42 bar tab
$45 video game
$12 car wash

This snapshot of spending shows that we're not that bad except for the glaring eating out or food and bar expenses. Well over $300 in the last 1.5 weeks. Some of these were "gifts" to spend time with friends. Some were just expensive--I have a bad sushi habit. Without all the eating out, we really spent very little in the last 1.5 weeks.

Finally Got An Accountant

Fiance's business has been too much to handle for us for a while, but we wanted to wait until after tax season to find an accountant. We asked everyone we could think of until we found someone THRILLED with their accountant.

She's a former auditor for a big accounting shop, but she quit last year to have a baby. Her husband does some kind of day-job still. So, she takes care of her baby and works at home. She does small business taxes and bookkeeping at home. You just email her what she needs, maybe talk on the phone a little, and there you go! That's a pro-woman, low-overhead business model I support!

Fiance and I spent four hours organizing statements and scanning receipts. We were a mess. There was business stuff mixed in the personal accounts (thankfully nothing personal in the business accounts!).

A week later, she put it all in Quickbooks and turned around a report of profit/loss (obviously loss this quarter), fixed the messes, and she billed $50 a hour for only five hours! A bargain indeed for a whole quarter.

I don't understand why schools don't pitch accounting as a female-friendly industry. This kind of low-volume bookkeeping sounds like the perfect job for a woman who needs flexibility (and can send her kids to Grandma's at tax time). I'm so proud of my accountant for just making it work. It's not easy out there for moms sometimes.

Goal!

I just finished a huge project at work. I got it from a guy who had been doing my job for years longer than me, so it was often an uphill battle. I asked for help a lot from anyone who would talk to me about it.

Though my boss technically "did" the project and gets all the credit for the project, he rewarded me as well. I got a 5K bonus (well, more like 3K after taxes). He hand-delivered the check to me and said, "Dog, you know, I wasn't sure you could do [the project]. But you did a really good job. I'm going to make sure this goes in your reports."

I'm not sure what is worth more to me: the respect of my boss, the 5K, or the good review. Now, off to celebrate! I'm taking Friday off!

Fat Cats at ADP

Over a month after I cashed out my ADP-run 401(k) from my old job, I finally got a statement from those jokers. They charged me $50 for closing the account.

Nice. Those fat cats charged me $50 to cut a check to Vanguard (the wrong corporate Vanguard entity, even), which they sent to me, and I had to send to Vanguard. Nice. Now that I'm a more educated consumer of financial products, I don't tolerate nonsense like that.

That ADP 401(k) was the lousiest I have seen. The expense ratios were all above average, and there weren't that many funds to choose from. I'm just glad to be done with them. I'm grateful to the Bogleheads book and to the PF blogosphere for showing me how pathetic those choices were. Back then I didn't think anything of expenses and just picked the one with the highest recent returns.

Paying Off Credit Cards = Higher Credit!

I paid off my credit cards back in March. I mean mid-statement, not-a-penny-outstanding, paid them off.

I didn't post about it at the time because I didn't think it was that big of a deal. It was just nice--relief--to pay off all the vacations and furniture and bar tabs I couldn't afford.

I had no idea it would bump my credit score up this much! 70 points!

This picture is the Experian FICO tracker from my Washington Mutual card. I don't use this card anymore because of a lousy customer service experience, but it's nice to easily see my FICO free. I wouldn't recommend this card, but the FICO scores are a nice feature if you already have it.

Why I Am Proud of My Negative Net Worth

I'm back in the red. I almost blew a gasket calculating this month's net worth. No more credit card debt (yay!). But the start-up business costs and the new car put me in the red for the first time since October 2007. I could feel my heart racing as I wrote out the three big debts:

Car 1: 9K (13K last month)
Car 2: 30K
Business: 10K

That's a lot of money, 49K in debt. Negative net worth again. But it's not that bad. The negative net worth is mostly an artifact of the very conservative way I calculate net worth. I don't include non-cash assets. So, that means the 50K in cars (conservative) is not valued, and the 25K in business assets and inventory (also conservative) are not included.

Not so long ago, I was staring at 80K in student loans out of grad school. That was truly terrifying. This time I have the stuff to back it up!

Today, every debt I have correlates to a thing that could be sold for far more than I owe. I feel like I've come a long way.

I choose to focus on the positive, and the positives in my negative net worth are really quite staggering:
* all debt is now secured in stuff with substantial equity
* at 25 and 26, we have 45K in retirement, which is quite a lot, even in PF blogs
* business debt is the (small) price we paid for fiance's freedom in self-employment
* we donated a 5K car and lots of smaller amounts, more this month than all of last year

So, I'm proud of my negative net worth!