Best of Blogs for Week of February 28th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

PlanetMoney gives us Four Decades Of Taxes And Spending, In 2 Graphs

They also tell us 74,476 Reasons You Should Always Get The Bigger Pizza

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Credit Card Rewards for 2013 = $817

In 2013 we made $817.70 in rewards and bonuses from our card cards.  
 
Our main credit card has been the American Express TrueEarnings card through Costco.       Most of the rewards and spending was through that Amex card.   However the Amex card barely earned over 1% overall and our better rewards where through promotional 5% deals and a $200 signup bonus with a new Chase card.   I've been trying to watch for and better use the 5% promotional rebates with our cards.    We used our Citibank and Discover cards some mostly to take advantage of 5% deals.  I also got that new Chase card and we used it some both to meet the minimum purchase requirement to earn the $200 sign up bonus and to take advantage of their 5% deals.

Here is how our rewards were earned per card :

American Express :$439.21
1-3% cash back on various purchase categories.  Mostly 1%
+$25 credit from a Amazon.com promotion
Citibank : $25.57
Mostly 1% bonus but also $1.84 from 5% bonus at Home Depot
Discover Card : $80.43
Almost all 5% bonus for online shopping in Q4.
Chase Freedom : 27,249 points = $272.49 cash
I got a $200 sign up bonus and the rest was primarily shopping at Amazon for the 5% bonus.


The amount we earned was pretty good in total.   I'm happy with $817 in extra money for sure.   However I am sure we can increase this through use of other cards.    I've been considering getting the Amex card through Fidelity which pays 2% into a Fidelity account.   That would nearly double the $439 + $25 we earned on our Amex Costco and Citibank cards since that was mostly all 1% spending.   I've also decided to watch for and sign up for more promotional deals like that $200 bonus from the Chase card.   I figure it would be no problem to sign up for 1-2 new cards a year just to cash in sign up bonuses.   My credit score is over 800 and can easily withstand a hard pull once in a while.


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What Percent of People Historically Receive a Refund versus Owe Taxes

Most people get a refund on their taxes in any given year.    Generally speaking around 80% of people filing taxes get a refund.

I found the historical IRS tax data going back to 1950 showing who gets refunds versus who owes taxes.

Here's a chart of the trend from 1950 to 2011 from the current IRS data set :

I am sure there are various things that drive the longer term trends.    IRS tax withholding processes have undoubtedly evolved over the decades.   Things like more dual income households may impact it as well.    The introduction of earned income tax credits may have increased refund rates as well.

The green line indicates people who get neither a refund nor owe money.  I'm assuming thats mostly for people who had no money withheld but owed nothing.   Maybe people like retirees on social security and minimal other income.

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There Will Be NO Student Loan Bailout

No.  Its not going to happen.   Stop expecting it.   Whatever you do .... DON'T make financial plans around it.   There is not going to be a student loan bailout.   I thought this story had died out months ago but just recently I saw someone still talking about the prospect for a bailout of student loan debts. 

The government isn't going to just write off over $1.2 Trillion in debts because some people would benefit.  There are many people who do struggle to repay student loans, this is true.   But most people are certainly willing and financially able to pay their loans back.     In either case we can't expect free money to come from the government any time soon.   Honestly a student loan bailout is just a misguided pipe dream.


The bigger reason that there isn't going to be a bailout is that we've already had bailouts.    For people struggling with their student loan debts there are already government programs to help them and get at least partial forgiveness of the debts.

There is the new Pay As You Earn Repayment Plan  which has 20 year forgiveness.   Which is added to the existing Income-Based Repayment Plan (IBR) which includes 25 year forgiveness plan.   And if you go into public service then there is the  Public Service Loan Forgiveness  which has 10 year loan forgiveness.    These programs aren't simple blanket loan forgiveness for the entire nation as some people delusionally expect but they are certainly a very big helping hand for those who really need it.


I know that student loans are a burden to many people who have high debt levels and lower paying jobs.  But thats what the income based and pay as you earn repayment plans are setup to help with.   Now unfortunately those plans do not work with private lenders and many of the people in the worst situations are burdened with high private loan debts.  I don't expect any major changes or aid for people with large private loan debts.    Personally I think it would be a good step if they would force private lenders to all offer a income based system at least.  As it is you can't get rid of student loans in bankruptcy so you're stuck with the private loans for life, and I don't see what harm income based system would do there.

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Best of Blogs for Week of February 21st

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

MyMoneyBlog finds the answer to  Can I Really Withdraw My Roth IRA Contributions At Any Time Without Tax Or Penalty?

MyMoneyBlog also has a Tax Prep Guide 2013: TurboTax vs. TaxACT vs. H&R Block Online

TheBigPicture shares The best investment advice you’ll never get

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Total US Auto Loan Debt From 1943 to 2013, real, nominal and % of GDP

Haven't you always wanted to know how much the citizens of the USA owed in auto loan debts in 1978?   Well today's your lucky day!   The answer is approximately $83.5 billion. Can't get enough of historical debt figures?   Well then read on!

I got the data off the Federal Reserve site : Consumer Credit - G.19 - memo - historical data
The inflation data is from the BLS CPI.   To make it a little simpler I just pulled out data for January of each year.    I assume that there aren't any major changes month to month really and if so they're likely seasonal in nature.

Here's the graphic :

(click image for full size)

Our auto loan debt has gone up pretty steadily over the past 70 years.    Even when adjusted for inflation the values have climbed pretty quickly.

In hindsight it seems pretty clear that the "Great Auto Loan Bubble"burst in 2005.   I mean just look at that red line up there!   pop!    I'm glad we all made it through that one.

I think its also always good to look at large financial figures like this as they relate to GDP.   So I got the US historical GDP figures from the BEA and plotted auto loan as % of GDP below.

There the change is less drastic as we bought more cars as our economy grew.  But still auto loan balances grew over the decades.   In the 1950's we were around 3% and then it peaked in now we're just at 4.9%.

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My Roth IRA returns for 2013

In 2013 my Roth IRA had investment return of 28.0%.    The S&P500 returned 32.39% with dividends reinvested.   So I saw great growth but not as good as simply betting on 'average'.    And from that perspective I did poorly.  Its easy to feel happy about getting 28% but I could have gotten 4.39% more by simply buying a generic index fund.

Apparently I didn't figure my return for 2012 so I'm not sure how I did that year.     I don't have good records for that period but I've got one data point captured in Dec. 2011 and then I know how much I had in Dec 2012 so I can at least estimate based on that period.   At least from Dec to Dec I was up about 10%.  The S&P500 was up 16% for the year total.  Thats not perfect but close enough.   So it looks like I underperformed the S&P that year by 6%.
In 2011 I beat the S&P by1-2% so that wasn't bad.

Back in 2010 I doubled the performance of the S&P500 by getting 30.1% versus 15.06%

So for 4 years I'm  at +15%, +1%, -6% and -4%.    That puts be about 10% above the S&P500 in total for the 4 years.   Not bad I guess.   But the latest trend in the past 2 years isn't good and I'm really just riding the success of 2010.

	Me	S&P500
2010	30.10%	15.06%
2011	3.70%	2.11%
2012	10%	16%
2013	28%	32.39%
net	90%	80%

I've gotten away from my old dividend stock investing strategy due to lack of time and attention and I've now mostly switched over to investing in general index ETFs.   However I do have a preference for dividend focused ETFs.   Over 85% of my Roth account is now split between DVY, VTI and VYM.    DVY and VYM are dividend focused and VTI is just the total stock market.


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$30+ worth of Gift cards and subcriptions at Gathr for $20

The site Gathr  lets you bundle monthly subscriptions for gift cards and services.

You can create your own bundle of gift cards for $20.  

You get to choose one item from 4 categories :

#1. bonus item - choices include :  Amazon, iTunes, Ticketmaster or Starbucks = $10
#2 credit item - choices include :  Fandango, Groupon, Dominos, Barnes & Noble, ToysRus or Zappos = $10
#3 subscription item - choices include : : month of Pandora, ShopRunner, also several magazines, etc
#4 service item - choices include : Livingsocial $10 or Amazon video $6 or other misc from #3

So for example I could do #1 - Amazon $10,  #2 - Fandango $10, #3 Pandora, #4 Livingsocial $10 and get $30 worth of credits plus a month of Pandora for $20.  

This can be a good deal if you use the merchants offered.  I just missed telling you about a promo deal they had with a bonus $20 Amazon card that made it a fabulous deal but unfortunately it looks like that deal expired.


They also have other pre-bundled packages.   One that looked like a decent deal : 
Domino's $10, Amazon instant video $6, Amazon $10 and ShopRunner = $15
Thats $26+ worth of stuff for $15.

Important Note :   Gathr is a monthly subscription service, so they will automatically bill you every month.    However you can cancel at any time so if you chose you can get the credits for just one month then cancel.

Plus if you refer a friend and they sign up then you get another $10 Amazon gift card. 

My links to Gathr here are my referral link so if you sign up after following the links here then I'll get the referral bonus.

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Best of Blogs for Week of February 14th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

TheBigPicture reports the Global Gross Gambling Winnings = $440 Billion in 2013

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How Many People Claim Itemized Deductions? What and How Much Do People Deduct?

I got the data from IRS taxstats.  The most recent data on Tax stats site is from 2011.    Specifically Individual Complete Report (Publication 1304), Table 2.1

46,293,834 returns claimed itemized deductions in 2011.  

If you add it all up, theres over $1.2 trillion in itemized deductions.  

If the 46 million filers instead claimed a $6100 single deduction they'd have $282 B in deductions and its likely more than that since many itemizers are married or heads of households.    The standard deductions would be somewhere between $282B and $564B.

Over 2/3 of the amount deducted is for taxes and homeownership.   I broke down the total deductions into major categories and here's how they stack up :

I put the deduction for real estate property taxes into its own category of home/tax as its both a homeowner related deduction and a tax deduction.


Here's the break down first ranked by the total people claiming the deduction  :

deduction	# returns	$ billion
Real estate taxes	40.1	$173
Home mortgage interest	36.0	$364
Cash contributions	34.6	$139
state/local income tax	33.7	$266
Other than cash contributions	22.5	$44
Tax preparation fees	22.1	$7
Personal property taxes	19.9	$8
Unreimbursed employee business expenses	14.7	$77
state/local sales tax	10.9	$16
Medical and dental expenses deduction	10.4	$44
Other limited miscellaneous deductions	7.9	$38
Qualified mortgage insurance premiums	4.5	$5
Deductible points	2.7	$1
Other taxes	2.6	$2
Investment interest expense deduction	1.5	$13
Gambling loss deduction	0.9	$18
Miscellaneous deductions other than gambling	0.4	$2

And next sorted based on the dollar value of the total amount deducted :

deduction	# returns	$ billion
Home mortgage interest	36.0	$364
state/local income tax	33.7	$266
Real estate taxes	40.1	$173
Cash contributions	34.6	$139
Unreimbursed employee business expenses	14.7	$77
Medical and dental expenses deduction	10.4	$44
Other than cash contributions	22.5	$44
Other limited miscellaneous deductions	7.9	$38
Gambling loss deduction	0.9	$18
state/local sales tax	10.9	$16
Investment interest expense deduction	1.5	$13
Personal property taxes	19.9	$8
Tax preparation fees	22.1	$7
Qualified mortgage insurance premiums	4.5	$5
Miscellaneous deductions other than gambling	0.4	$2
Other taxes	2.6	$2
Deductible points	2.7	$1

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Opening a New Credit Card Dropped my FICO by 5 or 13 points

Back in November I reported that my FICO credit score was 816.      Just about the same time I opened a new credit card from Chase.   I just checked my FICO and it is now down to 811. ...

You can see that 2nd note at the bottom says one of the factors is 'time since most recent account opening is too short'    Which means I'm being dinged on my score because I've recently opened a new line of credit which in this case is that new Chase credit card.

However when I looked on my report history it shows my score going from 824 to 811 in the history.

I captured my score in screen shot as 816 back in November so I'm not sure why they're saying it was 824.   Maybe my score went up from 816 to 824 and then went down to 811?   I"m not sure.    I've got an unexplained discrepancy of 8 points. 

Either way I know that that new credit card caused my score to drop 5 or 13 points.


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Keep Alaska Air Miles From Expiring for 49¢

UPDATE :   I don't think the 49¢ cent trick worked.    I would test a purchase of $1 or more to see.  Anything of at least $1 should give a mile.

I've accumulated a lot of miles with Alaska Airlines over the years.   But I haven't flown with Alaska lately and the last activity on my account was in June 2012.   After 24 months Alaska miles will go inactive so I only have a bit over 4 months to earn some more miles before they are inactivated.   If the account goes inactive you have to pay a fee to reinstate your miles.  In fact the Alaska Miles Benefits Q&A  says that the fee is $75.

You can earn miles by shopping at various online merchants at the Mileage Plan Shopping  site.   I figured if I make a cheap purchase through a merchant then I could get a mile or two and keep my miles active.   I've used this trick before with my United miles.     I talked about that a while ago in Two Tricks to Keep United Miles from Expiring.  with United I made a 99¢ purchase at Newegg and got myself 1 mile which kept my account active.

I figured I'd try the same trick with Alaska.   I searched Newegg and found a 49¢ item for a Max Payne 3 online game code.   I don't actually want the game code and in fact have no intention of doing anything with it.   But I picked it since it was cheap and the purchase is immediate plus it won't waste anyones time and money by shipping me something I really don't want.     I went ahead and bought the item.     They say that miles are usually credited to your account 3-5 days after the purchase but it can take up to 45 days.    I hoped that an online purchase like this would be fast.  

Follow up :    It took about 4 weeks for the credit to appear on my United account.
2nd Follow up:   When Alaska credited my account I got 50 miles.    Looks like they incorrectly counted the 49¢ as $49.99.   Then they removed the 50 mile credit a few days later.    I'm still waiting...

2nd follow up :    I still only have the +50 and -50 records.   It doesn't appear this worked.
I tried a 2nd 49 cent purchase and did not see any activity.   I'm thinking that they don't credit a full mile for 49 cents and probably round cents to the dollar?   

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Rental Comp Data for February 2014

I last reviewed rental comp prices for our properties 6 month ago in  Rental Comp Data for August 2013

Here are the new numbers for February 2014 :

	A	B	C	D	E
	3bed	3bed	1bed	1bed	3bed
	house	house	apt	apt	house
10%	$700	$700	$390	$400	$950
20%	$795	$778	$425	$438	$950
median	$985	$900	$485	$478	$1,097
80%	$1,100	$1,050	$525	$533	$1,225
90%	$1,195	$1,150	$575	$610	$1,295
# prop	22	38	23	50	53
dist	0.4	0.8	0.6	1.5	0.4

And the trends:

	A	B	C	D	E
Nov-11	$895	$875	$495	$495	$1,095
Jan-13	$900	$995	$510	$460
Aug-13	$905	$925	$500	$480	$1,095
Feb-14	$985	$900	$485	$478	$1,097
6 month change	8.8%	-2.7%	-3.0%	-0.4%	0.2%

(note that Rentometer changed methodologies between January 2013 and August 2013 )

Unfortunately it looks like the rents are trending downward in most locations.    B,C & D are all negative.    E is pretty flat.    The one house 'A' is up 8.8% which is a pretty hefty increase and thats actually pretty good for us since its quite possible that one will be vacant before too long since we've had problems with that renter not paying rent in a timely manner.


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Best of Blogs for Week of February 7th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

Bargaineering asks Can you really heat a room for 15 cents a day worth of tea lights?
Spoiler : The answer is NO.  

MyMoneyBlog gives a New myRA Retirement Accounts Quick Summary

PlanetMoney tells us Where Do Most International Homebuyers In The U.S. Come From?
Another spoiler : Its not China.

DoughRoller has A Review of TurboTax Home and Business
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Easy Trash Disposal DIY, Saved $100

Our trash disposal stopped working this weekend.     When we would push the button it wouldn't do anything.  We were about to call a plumber when I remembered something about a reset button on the disposals.    Underneath the disposal is a red reset button.  I tried hitting that and then tried the disposal again.  Now the disposal would make a humming noise.   But it still wouldn't do anything.    Again we figured best to call in someone to look at it.  I figured we'd be in for a $100 service call bill.   Oh well, at least a disposal is something you can live without until its fixed.  I decided to take one more stab at troubleshooting it and looked up the manual for the disposal.   We have an insinkerator model disposal.  I found the actual service manual for the model in question and it said to try turning a manual crank on the disposal to clear a jam.   Insinkerator has a page with basic information on how to fix a broken a disposal. I had to find the little wrench for the disposal but once I found it and used it to turn the crank I could feel it grinding through something.   It was tough to move for the first turn or two but then it seemed to clear up.   After that I turned it back on and presto it worked again.

Now I'm not the first person to fix a trash disposal in this way and I'm sure many of you already  know these tricks.  If you don't know how to do this then you could probably look it up on the internet fairly quickly.      I did a Google search for "how to fix a trash disposal" and the first couple results were Youtube videos which walk you through the process.

Note: You do need to be careful when working on something like a trash disposal.   Make sure to follow proper safety precautions.

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How Much Does It Cost To Leave Our Door Open in The Winter?

I have some frugal habits that are pretty ingrained in my personality.    One of the habits is not to leave the door open when its cold outside.   Sometimes I see people who do not always close a door quickly when it is cold out.    Anytime anyone has a door open for longer than a few minutes in the winter I start to get uncomfortable about it.      And 'uncomfortable' is the right word to use too, it kind of makes me a little upset to be honest.  Its almost as if someone just lit a $10 bill on fire for no reason.   But it has occurred to me that I don't really know how much heat this wastes.   I mean I know it wastes heat, that much is common sense, but I don't know HOW MUCH heat is wasted.  

There are frugal things that I do and don't do based specifically on how much they cost.   So if I"m going to get upset about an wasteful habit then I should really at least have an idea of how wasteful it is.   I mean if it wastes $1 in heat every time someone does this and they do it every other day then that is $15 wasted heat a month.   But if it only wastes 0.1¢ then I'm getting upset about nothing really.   So the actual cost is pretty important to keep things in perspective. 

I couldn't think of a good way to calculate the heat wasted on my own.   I searched Google and came up with a site that had done the math   (I'm not sure if that information is from Questline or Rocky Mountain Power or both).    They figured the amount of air that would move over an 8x10 opening based on different inside and outside temperatures.   I'll look at the example for 40F outside temperature since I live in the fairly mild Northwest US and that is a more common winter temperature average for us.

Their figures are based on natural gas at $1.20 a therm and an 80% efficient heater.    Our heat is a bit cheaper than that actually I figured that our heat would be about 75% of their costs.    So when they figure that an open 8x10 door would cost $1.88 an hour our cost would be more like $1.41.   Furthermore they are using an 8x10 door and our door is only about 3' x 8'.   Our door is only about 30% as large.   The $1.41 cost for a 8x10 door would be proportional to a 42¢ /hr cost for our 3x8 door.    Translate that into a per minute cost and you're looking at 0.7¢ per minute for our front door and our heating system.

Bottom Line : It probably costs only about 1¢ per minute to leave our front door open.

That seems surprisingly low to me.   Is this right?   Did I make a math error?    I'm seriously asking... Assuming its right, then thats not nearly as bad as I'd have thought.

This actually helps me feel better about it.   I am not going to get all bent out of shape if someone occasionally wastes a couple pennies by lingering at the front door.   

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Unemployment Rate by Nation

Our current unemployment rate is 6.7% as of December 2013.   Thats a lot better than it was a couple years ago but its still not a great number. 

I got the list of countries unemployment rates from Wikipedia as of January 2014.  The data there is subject to change and the rates quoted are from slightly different time periods per nation.
I pulled out just the OECD nations

Here's the chart :

click for full size

You can see there that the USA is right around the middle.   In fact we're a bit better.  The median is 7.3% and the average is 9%.   And you can see theres quite a range.  Greece is all the way up at 27.4% and Switzerland is only 3.1%.

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