#budgeting post

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

Overdraft Protection and Courtesy Pay (aka More Ways to Spend Money You Don’t Have).

Folks, it has come to my attention that I must be crazy.

Let’s back up a little, shall we?

After much procrastination, I finally went down to one of the local credit unions and opened an account. I’ve mentioned my love of credit unions before, but one of their few disadvantages is that unlike big banks they tend to be regional instead of national. I did have some shared branching options in my new area that would have allowed me to make deposits or withdrawals, but I wasn’t enthused by the prospect of having to phone up my old branch and jump through hoops if I ever needed to do something like replace a card or open a new savings account. So, I closed my accounts right before leaving town, and once my internet here was (finally) installed, I got to work researching some of the local options. I’m honestly not that particular about who I go with - interest rates aren’t a big concern of mine since I don’t keep much sitting in checking or savings, so I just opted for the closest option that had free checking and good member reviews.

Setting up an account was, in and of itself, a relatively simple process. I handed the nice lady my ID and the check I wanted to deposit, she had me sign a couple of forms, and suddenly I was the proud owner of brand new checking and savings accounts. She printed me off a debit card, and then went over all the wonderful benefits my checking account came with. A couple of those benefits happened to be courtesy pay and overdraft protection services, which I promptly asked to opt-out of.

Apparently that’s ridiculous, because she looked at me like I had three heads.

I have to assume that people don’t often ask to opt-out of these services, because when I first opened an account at my old credit union I actually had to argue with the representative for close to five minutes before they gave up trying to make me sign the forms to enroll in overdraft protection and courtesy pay. I think must have been the first person in the history of their organization to actually want my card to be declined if I didn’t have enough money to cover a transaction. Oh, how insane I must be to not want to pay $35 for the privilege of spending money I don’t actually have.

Oh, Courtesy.

For those of you who have no idea what services I’m talking about (which is probably like, one of you, but whatever) allow me to review. Overdraft protection is a service that automatically transfers money from your savings account to your checking account if you don’t have enough to cover a transaction (for a fee, of course). Courtesy pay is a service that allows you to overdraw your checking account instead of having a card declined or a check returned (for an even bigger fee). The actual charges are going to depend on your financial institution, but in my experience the transfer fee is usually between $5 and $10, and actual overdraft fees range from $25 to $35.

In theory, these services are supposed to be a good thing. They’ll spare you the embarrassment of holding up lines if your card gets declined, and let you avoid NSF fees for checks that would otherwise bounce. These are, in fact, the points that the representative at my first credit union made over and over and over again when arguing why I should enroll in those services. Personally, I’m not buying it.

Back when I was a young and fiscally-irresponsible thing basking in the glow of my first bank account, I took advantage of these services. I took advantage of them a lot. I could never keep any money in my savings account because it was soooo easy to simply spend it via my checking account, no trip to the bank or online login required! I lost at least $35 every paycheck because I sucked at keeping track of my account balance and inevitably ended up overdrawing on little purchase I was sure I had enough to cover. While it was great for a while, I eventually started to get pretty pissed every time I realized I was out thirty-five bucks because of some tiny miscalculation, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

A while back I actually had this decision validated. Some big jerk stole my debit card information and tried to put through a bunch of charges on my checking account. Unluckily for them, there wasn’t much money hanging out in my checking at that time in my life, so all the charges got rejected. I did, however, have a decent amount in my savings account. If I’d had courtesy pay set up, they would have gotten all of it. Now, banks generally reimburse you for fraudulent charges, so it’s not as though that money would have been lost forever. However, it was still nice to be able to alert my bank, get a new card sent out, and not have to go through twenty-million steps or a long waiting period to get those funds back.

There’s Probably Money In It.

Call me jaded, but I have a sneaking suspicion that these services are less about helping you, the consumer, and more about making the banks (or credit unions) money. And why would you want to give them any more money than you have to? Oftentimes these services are presented as potentially saving you money, for example by allowing checks to clear so you don’t have to pay an NSF fee. I’m a little confused by this one though, because from what I’ve seen an overdraft fee is generally higher than an NSF fee, so unless you’re planning on having the same check be returned more than once, you’re not saving anything. And it’s not as though it’ll cost you anything but a little bit of pride to have your debit card rejected.

If I’m being honest, these services just strike me as one more thing that subtly encourages a culture of overspending, much in the same way the encouragement to buy things on credit does. And just like credit, all you’re really doing if you use these services is borrowing from your future self, and paying for the privilege of spending money you don’t have. What a racket.

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

I <3 Costco (and Free Samples).

Folks, let me tell you something: I love Costco. My father, the frugal fellow that he is, has had a membership for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up there’d be one weekend a month when we would all pile in to the car and make the long, long drive to the nearest warehouse. (To be clear, we weren’t taking a road trip just for Costco - we lived in the middle of nowhere. Going anywhere was kind of an event.) My dad loved it because bulk goods were cost effective, and (at the time) I loved it because of all the free samples.

After I grew up and moved out of my parents house, I didn’t go to a Costco for years (save for that one time me and a friend snuck in specifically for frozen yogurt at their snack bar). Apartment living wasn’t really conducive to bulk buying, and I could never justify the $55 for a membership when I didn’t think I’d be able to pick up enough to make it worth it.

Then, a couple years ago, my husband and I upgraded to a house, and for the first time in my adult life buying in bulk seemed feasible. We talked and talked and talked about getting a Costco membership, but we are both expert procrastinators. Then, father to the rescue. My dad came to visit a few months after we had moved into our house, and I off-handedly mentioned that oft-discussed, never-realized plan for a membership. It turns out that my dad was only taking advantage of one of his two available membership cards so, being the awesome guy that he is, we went down to the Costco, they snapped my picture, and suddenly I had my own pass to roam free through the giant warehouse of awesome. I was in heaven.

Then…not so much.

What the F*@# Do You Buy?

The first time my husband and I ventured into Costco to stock up on bargain-priced bulk goods, we had no real plan. Oh you know, I had thought to myself, bulk stuff. We’ll get some paper towels or dry/canned goods and we’ll just avoid anything that isn’t a good deal. The problem, it turned out, was that I had no idea what was a good deal.

Since this first adventure took place before I had really started tracking my grocery spending, I couldn’t have told you how much I paid for most things at the regular grocery store. I must have spent five minutes staring at the eggs, trying to gauge how certain I was that I normally paid less than $3 for an 18-count carton of eggs. This paralyzing uncertainty hit again minutes later, when I was trying to figure out whether $5 for a gallon of coffee creamer was less per ounce than what I usually paid for whatever the volume of a normal-sized container was.

We fumbled through that initial trip blindly, making less-than-educated guesses, and in the end the amount of money we spent was nothing short of ridiculous. As it turned out, some things were cost-effective (the coffee creamer), and some things were more expensive at Costco than my regular store (eggs). Some things were reasonably priced novelties, but things I would never have bought, or been able to buy, at another store (a rack of the glass-bottle Coca-Colas, made with the real sugar).

This can’t be right, I thought. This was supposed to save money.

Do Some Research.

Given the sticker shock that came with our initial bulk-buy experiment, it took some time for us to work up the nerve to try again. Luckily, this was about the time that my penchant for meticulous planning was reaching full swing, so I spent a little bit of time looking in to what was actually a good deal, and what was just going to cost us more money. After much research, careful planning, and a few successful shopping trips, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

Bulk buying produce is a terrible idea (for us). While a lot of people vouch for Costco’s produce, there’s just no way for my husband and I to make it cost effective for the two people in our household. If we had kids, or did a lot more involved cooking, it might work out. If you have a lot of freezer space, you can try cutting up and freezing fresh fruits and veggies for later use. Personally, freezer space is the one thing I lack, and I have a bad habit of letting regularly quantities of produce go bad in the fridge, so I skip it.

Pantry staples are where it’s at. Rice, olive oil, oatmeal - these are things that I really save money on. I’m a little freezer-poor, but I’m cupboard-rich, which makes storing these types of things easy. They also last a long time, so it doesn’t particulary matter that I’m often fickle about cooking regularly. And the savings are obvious - you can get a huge bottle of olive oil at Costco for close to same price you’d pay for a normal size bottle at the grocery store. I paid $10 for ten pounds of basmati rice that would have cost $2.50 for a one pound bag where I regularly shop. If you’re a sucker for pre-cooked bacon like I am, you can get a huge package for only $2 more than the pathetic little boxes they sell elsewhere.

Household stuff is hit or miss. I haven’t found paper towels or toilet paper to be any better than what I can get elsewhere, but dishwasher detergent is a great deal, as are trash bags. Last time I was there, I picked up a six-pack of my deodorant for the price of two sticks at my local Walgreens. Again, this is one of those situations where you’ll really have to know what you usually pay to gauge whether or not it’s a good deal.

Sticking to the list is a must. One of the things that killed my husband and I on our first shopping trip was being suckered in by everything that looked like a good deal. Some of it we used, but a lot of it was stuff we would never buy on a regular shopping trip. Now when I go in to Costco I force on my blinders and try not to look at anything that isn’t on my list.

If You Have Storage Space, You Can Definitely Save Money.

I know it’s sort of a cop-out that my dad is paying for my Costco membership, since it does eliminate the question of whether or not the money I save is worth the $55 membership fee. However, I can say that if for some reason he needed the second membership card for his own household again, I wouldn’t hesitate to go shell out for my own.

If you have the room to store things in bulk, you can definitely save more than $55 with a Costco (or comparable bulk-buy) membership. I’m fairly certain I’ve saved that much on olive oil and bacon alone over the last year. Plus, you know, there’s free samples.

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

Pick a budget, any budget.

Recently, it has come to my attention that not everyone is quite as gloriously type-A as I am. In fact, it seems some people actually cringe at the idea of organizing their entire life in great detail. I can’t say that I personally understand it - I’m pretty in love with knowing that my entire life has been well-regulated by a solid productivity scheme that takes all the guesswork and mental energy of my day to day obligations - but to each their own, I suppose. While a lot of budgeting systems claim to be the best, the truth of the matter is that the best budget system is the one that you’ll stick to. So, in the spirit of acknowledging differences, I though that I’d take today to review a few different budgeting methods for different personalities.

Type A? Try Zero-Based Budgeting.

If you’re like me - high-strung and overly excited by lots of detail - then zero-based budgeting is probably the best option for you. The basic principle behind this budgeting philosophy is that the inflows and outflows in your budget balance out to zero dollars. The YNAB system is one popular example of this kind of budgeting, as evidenced by the rule ‘give every dollar a job.’ The envelop system popularized by David Ramsey is another example of zero-based budgeting - in his cash-based system, you use a variety of envelopes labeled with categories to manage your money. So, you’d have one envelop with the cash meant for your groceries, another with the cash for your entertainment, etc, until your entire income is accounted for.

Zero-based budgeting will give you total control over every dollar spent. Some systems recommend more or less flexibility (YNAB encourages it, while David Ramsey seems to be less of a fan), but they all require more time spent planning and tracking. While there are a few different systems out there meant to help you account for every dollar, it doesn’t really matter what you use. Envelopes, the YNAB software, an Excel spreadsheet, or even good old-fashioned pen and paper are all possibilities. What matters is that you make sure you’re planning where each dollar goes, and using some method to track your spending accordingly.

Type B? Reverse Budgeting Will Get You There.

If you’re completely unlike me and the idea of spending your valuable time crunching numbers and planning your spending in detail makes you feel more nauseous than aroused, you’ll be happy to know that there are simpler options. If as a general rule you’re one who likes to let the chips fall where they may, you might want to think about using reverse budgeting to manage your finances.

Reverse budgeting focuses first and foremost on what is often considered the main point of any budget - saving money. With many budgeting systems, you might take a look at your income, subtract your regular expenses, and then determine how much you can afford to put into savings. Instead of following this approach, reverse budgeting takes the mantra of “pay yourself first” to heart, and jumps right to prioritizing your savings account. Instead of taking all that time and energy to create budget categories, allocate funds, and develop spending plans, you would simply earmark a certain amount of your take home pay to savings, and not worry about the rest. A general rule for how much would be assigned to savings is 10% of your regular wage and half of all bonuses and extra income.

This can option can be especially appealing because it doesn’t require you to track anything - you can automatically set up a certain percentage of your paycheck to get transferred into a savings account, and know that the rest is yours to do what you will with. No fancy software, spreadsheets, or notebooks required! (Just make sure the bills still get paid.)

Somewhere in Between? There’s Something for You, Too.

If the idea of micromanaging every dollar seems a little like overkill, but you’re looking to take a little more ownership of your finances than reverse budgeting allows, you’d probably like the 50/30/20 method. This particular system accounts for the three major portions of a budget - household expenses, discretionary funds, and savings - without getting fussy about specific categories. With this system, you break your income into three parts and follow the prescribed percentages: 50% towards household expenses, 30% for discretionary spending like hobbies and entertainment, and 20% to savings.

While the name would be less apt if you don’t follow the prescribed amounts, you could of course opt to break the percentages down differently, say 10% to savings, 10% to discretionary spending, and 80% to your household expenses. Or, if you’re extremely frugal about your living expenses (or rolling in the dough) you could assign less to the household and more to savings. Either way, you’ll still have a road map for where your dollars go, without getting weighed down by decisions like whether your weekly espresso fix should be categorized as a dining expense or a household good (because it’s totally, totally essential, I swear).

Go Forth and Budget.

Of course, if none of these options work for you, you could always try your hand at developing your own system by mixing and matching. Maybe you want detailed categories for your household expenses, but not for your discretionary funds. Maybe you want to start with your savings goals and then break down what’s left into percentage categories. Maybe you’ll only use cash in envelopes for discretionary spending, but pay all the bills from a checking account. It can’t be stressed enough that the truly important thing about choosing a budgeting system is to pick the one that’s going to work for you.

And hey, if you have developed your own super snazzy budgeting system, I’d love to hear about it!

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

YNAB is Free for Students!

Hi, folks! I know it’s been a bunch of quickie posts lately, but I promise (yet again) that I’m going to have something substantial for you up in just a couple of days. It’s in the works, and I’ll have it up for you Friday. In theory, that will mark the beginning of more regular posting again. I feel like kind of jerk taking my sweet time, but things have been crazy while I try to pack up my house and struggle to find a new place to live (the rental market in Portland is ridiculously competitive). I’ve also been doing some freelance projects for a little extra cash - more on that later - and it was a bit of challenge figuring out how to balance that with my personal projects.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you something that I am late discovering: You Need a Budget is free for college students! Since I talk about it all the time, I know you’re all just dying to give it a go. Maybe you even already checked out the free trial and fell in love, but were put off by that $60 price point.

Fortunately, if you’re a current student you can wipe away the tears, because YNAB is free for students for a full year. (I’m not quite sure how I didn’t know this before - shame on me.) The link above will take you to their page where you can all about how it works, but the short version is that you email [email protected] with proof of your student status (PDF of transcript, picture of your student ID, etc.), and they’ll send you a license key good through the end of the calendar year. If you’re still a student at the end of that period, just email them again and get another key.  

Hear that college students? No more excuses! Now shoot them an email and get budgeting.

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

TV Providers Hate This One Easy Trick!

First off: I apologize for the awful click-bait title. I really couldn’t resist.

Now on to the post. As I’m sure I mentioned before, I spent the last ten soul-sucking months working in a call center for one of the major television service providers. Technically I had pretty diverse responsibilities as far as what I assisted customers with. Realistically, though? I was pretty much just there to throw money at people who were unhappy with the prices. I’d say that accounted for at least 70% of my calls. And, now that I’m unemployed, I thought that today I’d help you all out by spilling some company secrets on how to effectively be a part of that 70%.

To be totally up front with you, I don’t have a whole of sympathy for people who feel like they’re paying too much for TV. (Probably because so many of them were whiny, entitled jerks, and it’s a totally optional service.) However, even if I hated those people, I kind of love you folks, so I’m going to try to help you out by hooking you up with some tips to save money on TV service.

1. Don’t Buy TV Service.

Honestly, this is the best tip that I can give you. Cable/satellite TV is ridiculously expensive, and there are so many other good options. When I was on the phones I’d have people threatening to give us up and just use Netflix, and it was all I could do not to encourage them. Assuming you have a good internet connection, if you’re not a sports fan, and you don’t absolutely have to catch a ton of shows as they air, then paying for traditional TV is terrible, terrible idea.

I used nothing but Netflix and Hulu for years before I started getting free TV through my work, and I never had any problems. The two combined cost me $16 a month, and let me watch almost everything that I needed to watch. Even shows you can’t keep current on with those services, like The Walking Dead, are available through other means. You can purchase the rights to watch the whole season, as it airs, on Amazon for something like $35. It can seem like a lot up front, but it’s still going to work out to be cheaper in the long run. Obviously, the more series you’re dead-set on following in real time, the less cost-effective that last options becomes. But for one or two shows? It’s absolutely worth it.

However, if you still absolutely have to have TV, then…

2. Know the System.

There are a few key things to keep in mind when you call up your cable provider to try and negotiate a lower rate. The one I personally found the most interested was that in the eyes of your cable company, not all customers are equal. Not by a long shot.

Apparently, most TV companies rate their customers based on a variety factors, and that system helps them determine exactly how much they’re willing to invest in you. For most companies those factors are: tenure, service level, payment history, and location. If you’re a fifteen-year customer with a top of the line package, no late payments, and an address in an area with a lot of available providers, you’re going to have a lot more success keeping your costs down than someone who is a year and a half into their contract, with a basic package, a late payment every other month, and an address in an area with little to no competition.

Knowing that isn’t necessarily going to make you feel any better about what you’re paying, but at the very least it should provide a little bit of incentive for you to pay your bills on time.

You should also know that the availability of promotional discounts can actually vary depending on the time of year. In my personal experience, January through May is an awful time to try for any of that. Typically the summer - a time of year when a lot of people are canceling - and the late fall/early winter - when everyone is calling in to save money because the holidays are expensive - are the best times of year to see about discounts.

The third thing to keep in mind if you’re really, really serious about getting your costs down, is that you have to be willing to cancel your service. It’s a little ridiculous, but threatening to disconnect is the best way to save money. If you’ve been a good customer and are in a competitive market, that’s probably going to net you something very comparable to the introductory offers given to new customers (which, in my experience, is really what everyone is after).

Now, what a lot of people will do is call in, threaten to cancel, and then, when they’re still not offered a price they’re happy with the price they’re offered, they’ll schedule their service to be disconnected. That’s a really good move - if they disconnect and go to a competitor, they can get that lower price. Where a lot of them go wrong is that they’re not actually willing to switch to a competitor, which means that a few days before they’re disconnected they call back and accept the price they were first offered, even if they’re not happy with it.

That’s a bad idea. When you do that, you’re letting the TV provider call your bluff. Even if you don’t want to switch to another provider, let the service be disconnected. Come to terms with a week without TV. Why? Because once the service is actually disconnected, there’s a good chance that you’re going to hear back with a better offer. They’ll be calling or mailing you about their great promotions for returning customers, and these are typically very comparable to the new customer offers everyone is lusting after.

3. Do Your Research.

Now that you know you’re nothing more than faceless formula to your TV provider, and you’ve come to terms with potentially canceling your service, the other thing you want to make sure you do is familiarize yourself with competitive offers. Jot down a few notes or keep an advertisement on hand so that you can reference the important details during the conversation. If you’re looking for a competitive offer, you need to know what that looks like.

And, for the love of god, don’t just make things up. If you call in and say you can get a top of the line package from X Company for $20 a month for three years with no agreement, the person you’re speaking with is going to know that’s not true. (I had that happen more occasions than I can count.) Customer service reps have access to info on the other promotional offers, and it’s probably just going to make them think you’re an idiot who’s going to be really unpleasantly surprised when they do switch services. If you make yourself seem like an unreasonable idiot, they’ll still help you, but there’s a good chance they’re going to make it way harder than it has to be.

4. Don’t Waste Your Time with the Small Fish.

I would say the number one mistake made by people looking to lower their bills was talking to me.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a blast to speak with on the phone, and I’m sure I greatly enriched their lives simply by deigning to converse with them. As long as they were reasonably pleasant I’d even do what I could to help them. But there were people I spoke to who ended up accepting $15 off their bill for 6 months from me, when they probably could have gotten twice that amount for twice as long if they’d been talking to the right people.

If you’re looking for serious savings, skip the front line customer service representatives and get on the phone with someone from the retention department. Those are the people who’s sole job is to keep customers from canceling service, and they’re the one with the truly competitive discounts. When you get on the line with that first live person, either just say you want to cancel service or ask specifically to be transferred to retention - either way you should be sent right to them. Some reps might try to make it difficult, trying to get more information out of you so they can try to solve your problem with that measly $15 off for 6 months, but stick to your guns and just keep saying you just want to cancel, or you just want to be transferred.

Once you’re on the phone with the right person, never, ever, accept the first offer. They’re all trained to start low and work their way up. Typically the third or fourth offer is going to be the actual maximum that they can do, so if that one doesn’t do it for you that’s when you’ll go ahead and actually disconnect. Then cross your fingers and hope they call you back with something better the day after your service is shut off.

Go Save Money!

Now, obviously my own personal experience is limited to just one TV provider, but I did have the benefit of working with people who’ve worked for other providers, and the way they tell it the system is the same pretty much anywhere. The only one that these tactics might not help with is Comcast, because they’re awful and they hate their customers.

Also keep in mind these aren’t just limited to TV service - most of this information is applicable to your internet service provider as well (assuming they’re not one and the same).

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

Slow Cook Some Savings.

One of the (few) cool things about my job is that due to the sheer volume of employees, the site I work at provides quite a few amenities, one of them being an employee cafeteria. (My job is so much like high school it’s not even funny). They’re open six days a week and offer a pretty decent variety of stuff - pizza, burgers, chicken strips, salads, etc. - at fairly reasonable prices, and a lot of my coworkers make use of the cafeteria every shift, and for the first several months I worked there, I did the same thing.

I have a long history of not embracing bagged lunches. In high school I’d rummage through my parents’ change jar for quarter to buy whatever I could at school instead of packing a lunch. When I moved on to the working world, I’d inevitably hit up the closest fast food place when my lunch break rolled around. Occasionally, if I had some particularly savory leftovers lurking in the fridge I’d pack them up and take them with me, but it was definitely the exception, not the rule.

Unfortunately, as delicious as deep fried goodness is, buying lunch every day is apparently not a very cost effective option. When I finally started budgeting, I realized that the four or five dollars a day I was spending on lunch was one of those things that didn’t seem like much at first, but added up over time - that was about $100 a month I was spending buying lunch every day. So, I played around with sandwiches and other typical lunch foods, but I still found myself craving an actual hot meal most days.

So what did I do? I broke out my slow cooker.

The slow cooker was a wedding present, and I’m ashamed to admit that up until several months ago I’d used it maybe four times since  I got hitched five years ago. Apparently, that was a stupid, stupid move, because that thing is freakin’ amazing! I’d been looking for an easy way to prep lunches for the week without having to put too much time or effort in to it, and the slow cook definitely makes that possible. Every Sunday I’ve been taking a few minutes to load up the slow cooker, and then BAM! - I have a week’s worth of tasty lunch all ready to throw in a tupperware container and take to work. I was initially worried about variety, but slow cooker recipes are incredibly easy to find, and I’ve managed to come up with a reasonable rotation to keep things from getting too boring - chicken and dumplings, enchilada casserole, macaroni and cheese, salsa chicken and rice, and more. I’ll admit, it can get a little tedious eating the same thing for a full week, but if you’ve got extra freezer space (unlike me) you can always start throwing a couple extra portions in the freezer each week, and before long you’ll have a variety in there that you can pick and choose from to keep things from getting too monotonous.

I’m honestly not sure why it took me so long to come around to slow cooking. I went from spending $5 a day on my lunches to less than $5 per week, on average. If you don’t have a slow cooker handy, I highly recommend picking one up. Even if work lunches aren’t a concern, it can also be great way to eat cheap and healthy if you’re on a busy schedule or a tight budget.

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

Death and Taxes.

Mostly  taxes, in this case - the death part is pretty exclusively referencing the little part of me that dies every time I realize I once again have to endure the nightmare that is filing taxes.

As much as I wish that I could offer sage-like wisdom on completing the filing process, I’m not really that knowledgeable on this particular subject, nor am I interested in being to blame when someone gets audited and the results are…not good. I also realize that it is a little late to be dolling out advice on tax season, seeing as how there’s only about a week left to file. In spite of all that, I figured that if you’re a procrastinator like me (who just finished my own) then maybe I could at least offer some info on where to file.

In past years, I’ve used Turbo Tax to do both my federal and state tax return. To be honest, I kind of hate them - in the beginning they always tell me it will be free to file, and then halfway through they tell me I need to upgrade to a paid version of their software. They also charge about $40 to submit a state tax return alongside a federal, which is a prospect that I find less than thrilling. This year was no different, except that in the end they wanted me to pay about $100 all together to file for a refund of less than $300. Apparently for 2014 my taxes were extra funky and I had to upgrade to their Turbo Tax Ultra Special Comes with Unicorns and Rainbows Edition, or something. (Pro-tip: if you want to keep your taxes simple, don’t get married.)

Of course, they didn’t provide all of this exact information until I was almost to the very end of filling everything out; I expect they were banking on my being too frustrated and burned out by the end of the process to put up a fight. In previous years, they probably would have been right, but since these days I’m working on being a stingy motherfucker, I stared that screen down and said to myself ‘not today’. It seemed possible that at the very least there would be an option for filing my state tax return without having to pay an extra $39.99, and it turns out that I was exactly right.

(A side note: the federal government, and most states, have free file software you can use to complete your taxes - you’re never required to pay money to someone like Turbo Tax. However, a lot of those options require submitting forms by mail instead of e-filing, and that’s where your options get limited.)

As it turns out, the Idaho State Tax Commission was kind enough to put together on their website a list of options for free electronic filing.(If you’re an Idaho resident, you can check it out here.) Most of them are only free if you’re below a certain income level - the cutoff seems to start around $50,000 a year - but since I definitely don’t make that much money I could have chosen any of the options. In the end I went with H&R Block, mostly because I recognize the name and their website was about the only one that didn’t look ridiculously untrustworthy, even though all the options were supposedly vetted.

And you guys, it was magical. Even though I had to start from scratch, the H&R Block software was fairly simple to navigate, so reentering everything I’d already filled out wasn’t too excruciating. And not only did they not try to upgrade me to a paid version of their software (even with all the same funky stuff that Turbo Tax wanted extra to do), but somehow I ended up with a refund that was about three times as big! I was able to file my federal and state returns together at no cost, and I got a bigger refund - definitely a win-win.

So, if you aren’t rich, you haven’t filed yet, and you’d been thinking about Turbo Tax, I would definitely recommend heading over to H&R Block’s site instead.

[theyearofsavingdangerously]

Adventures in Hair Care.

Over the weekend, I had a realization. I realized that I am kind of a sucker.

It happened like this: I was in the hair care aisle, shopping for hair gel. Very specifically, I was after the L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel. (Yes, the same kind my brother used in his hair when he was twelve and didn’t know what was good for him.) I’ve been working on letting my hair do its natural curly thing, and the frizz has been getting out of hand; this gel comes very highly reviewed, and doesn’t have any of the twenty-million ingredients it’s better to avoid if your hair is curly. My point here is that I had a very specific idea of what I was looking to purchase there in the hair care aisle. And luckily, it’s something you can buy just about everywhere. I was starting it in the face, right there in the Albertson’s, and for only $1.99 that gel could be mine!

So, let’s just review. I had made my way into the hair care aisle, specifically in search of the L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel. There, in the hair care aisle, I found the L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel. And there, in the hair care aisle, I could see plain as day that the L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel could be mine for less than two dollars. I think we can all agree that the logical next step would have been for me to place the L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel in my cart and move on with my life, right?

That is absolutely not what I did. I picked the gel up. I reviewed the ingredients. I thought to myself, ‘Gosh Rina, look at all this gel you get for only two dollars.’ I marveled at what a great deal it was.

And then I put it back on the shelf and proceeded to spend ten minutes perusing all the other gel options.

 I looked at the Herbal Essence Set Me Up Gel. I looked at the Garnier Fructis Style Pure Clean Styling Gel. I looked at the Aussie Tizz No Frizz Gel. I looked at a lot of gels, not one of which was cheaper than $4.60.

Somehow, I ended up leaving the hair care aisle not with my L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel, but with the Garnier Fructis Style Pure Clean Styling Gel in my cart. At that moment, I could not have told you what exactly inspired that decision - only that it was the gel I ended up wanting more. It’s fortunate that there were still other things I needed from the store, otherwise I would have gone straight to the checkout line and brought that Garnier Fructis Style Pure Clean Styling Gel home with me. Instead, what happened was that as I circled the frozen food aisles for french fries and cheap pizza (because I am very, very health conscious), that more expensive hair gel stared me in the face and my new found spending-conscience started to make me feel pretty darn guilty about spending three more dollars on hair gel than I needed to.

Initially, that guilt only got me trying to rationally justify said decision to myself. ‘Garnier Fructis is a better brand. It’s good for the earth - there’s even a tree on it, see!?’ Except that none of that really held up, because I certainly don’t have any strong opinions about hair care brands (in fact, I’ve tried a different Garnier Fructis gel in the past and was pretty underwhelmed), and while I care about the environment in that abstract way, I’m not very convinced that weird chemicals in a plastic bottle is going to be environmentally friendly, no matter what the packaging might say. And then, as I circled back towards the dairy aisle for the coffee creamer I’d forgotten on my first pass-by, I realized that the packaging was exactly the issue.

After all rational explanations for choosing a product that was exactly not what I had intended to buy, I had to admit to myself that there was a perfectly irrational reason for my choice. There had to be, because in choosing between two products that I have absolutely no experience with, what rational reason could possibly exist for choosing something that cost twice as much, included about a third as much product, and was completely unvetted (even if only be internet strangers - my sole source of information on the option I originally intended to buy)? Apparently, it all came down to aesthetics.

Perhaps this shouldn’t have been quite a shocker - it’s only what marketing and advertising executives have obviously known for years. The way a product looks is going to impact my purchasing decision. It’s one of those things I had known, but always sort of assumed didn’t apply to me. Of course I could appreciate cute packaging, but I’d certainly never thought I’d be suckered into choosing something - and paying more for it - just because this looks better than this.

So, it turns out I’m a sucker. I did, in the end, go back and swap the gel in my cart out for my L.A. Looks Sport Xtreme Hold Gel (which has been working beautifully). This just means that I’ll be constantly second-guessing my motivations for purchasing decisions for, oh, the rest of my life probably.