Funny Munny

Looking For the Festival of Frugality?

2006-04-17T22:06:00.000-04:00

If you're looking here for the Festival of Frugality, then you're in the wrong place! A few carnival pages haven't updated their links, but Funny Munny is now Punny Money and can be found at http://www.punny.org. Be sure to check out the Festival on Tuesday morning!

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carnivals

Punny Money Hosting Festival of Frugality on April 18th

2006-04-09T12:39:00.000-04:00

Yes, this blog has moved! The new name is Punny Money, and the new location is http://www.punny.org.

This will probably be my last entry in the old blog, so please be sure to update your bookmarks and feed readers. I really don't want to lose anyone in the transition!

Canadian Capitalist, one of my favorite personal finance bloggers, will be hosting the edition of the Festival of Frugality scheduled for Tuesday, April 11th. Submit your frugal news to one of the best carnival-hosters around!

The Festival of Frugality will be in my neck of the woods the following week (April 18th), so please check out this blog at its brand new location (http://www.punny.org) for all the details.

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carnivals

I'll Trade You This Fine Block of Cheese For Your Stinky Old House

2006-04-05T16:50:00.000-04:00

(WARNING! WARNING! If you're reading this, then you're still looking at the old site! Update your bookmarks and links to point to www.punny.org and your feed readers to the new RSS feed or, even better, the Feedburner feed! Thanks!)

I think that's the sort of offer you'd see if the housing market were exactly the opposite of its present situation. While a chunk of gouda may not get you a gooda house, many signs are finally pointing to a cooling housing market. How cool are we talking about here? I have yet to see two financial analysts make the same prediction about where housing prices will be a couple years from now, but some indications of a small to moderate decline are already popping up. An article at Kiplinger's Personal Finance hits on what I'm already seeing in this area.

The days are over when you can slap any home on the market and sell it for more than asking price. Now you have to find the pricing sweet spot and work harder to reel in a buyer.

Bad news for the many homeowners looking to sell a year or two from now, mixed news for homeowners looking for assessment drops to lessen their property taxes, and definitely good news for people like me who will be looking for a house soon.

While single-family homes and townhouses may weather the storm well, condo prices are sure to take a dive. For evidence, you can look about 1,000 feet from our apartment at a poor little end-unit condo that's been on the market since we moved here six months ago. Constructed in 2002, it cost its current owners just over $220,000 to buy then. Half a year ago, the list price was $450,000 for 2 bedrooms and 2-and-a-half baths. A while later, the price dropped to $415,000. Still no takers. As of today, it's sitting with a mouth-watering "Reduced!" sign at an asking price of $390,000. Now maybe the owners were crazy for asking for $450,000 when slightly smaller townhouses across the street are selling for that much, but at least there hasn't been anybody foolish enough to fork over that amount.

My curiosity is eager for that bad boy to sell and show this town that the days of insane housing prices are over. I predict a final sale price of $375,000... if it sells in the next few months. If not, then the floor's the limit!

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housing

Reason #241 Why I'm Done With Blogger

2006-04-03T22:40:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed the lack of new articles on Funny Munny in the last week. I assure you, it's not for lack of trying...

Apparently my blog has the characteristics of a splog, at least according to Blogger.

That's okay; I get the message. I know when I'm not wanted.

Please update your bookmarks, blogrolls, and financial reliquaries and join Punny Money at its new home...

punny.org

I'll post a few more updates here, but I've updated my FeedBurner feed to point to punny.org, and that's where all the action will be going down from now on.

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Personal Update: Financial Funk, Credit Slam Dunk, and Unloading Some Junk

2006-04-03T19:37:00.000-04:00

Another largely uneventful month for our personal financial situation. The big arrow o' money is still pointing in the up direction. It's worth noting that I had an interview for a position at a different location in my company. My manager (and his manager, and his manager) asked me to give the place a shot, but I didn't even wait for an offer after the interview to say "hell no." My current place is happy to keep me (and I'm happy to keep my six-minute commute), and there were just too many negatives about the other position to make it worth consideration at just about any pay rate.

Our net worth went up just under 7% (+$2,621) for March. I'm still kinda shocked that I even make that much, let alone that much plus what it costs to live. I guess that college education is paying off very well. Stay in school, kids. And drink your Ovaltine.

One minor adjustment I made this month was to my W-4. Yes, I finally updated the darn thing to reflect that I'm married. So instead of getting a massive $6,000+ refund at the end of the year like last year, I should be seeing about $100 extra each week in my paycheck. (Sure enough, I am!) While I'll miss the feeling of seeing my net worth go up by a big chunk every February, I won't miss giving the government an interest-free loan, and I will definitely like seeing my weekly paycheck take a considerable jump.

Some happy news on the credit card front. We added the Citi mtvU Visa, Chase Cash Plus Rewards MasterCard, and Discover Platinum to our lineup this month. The Citi mtvU card, which is in Tegan's name, is infamous for its student-only status but is well worth it for the 5% cash back at restaurants, bookstores (including most Amazon.com purchases), and movies. The Chase Cash Plus card will be used for its 5% back at grocery stores (which we'll go to if these stupid storms ever end!), and the Discover will sit around and wait for a good "Get More" rebate deal (the current deal is 5% back at various automotive stores).

Tegan and I will be driving a car-load of junk up to my dad's house on Saturday. They have a garage sale twice a year, and we still have a ton of stuff we'd like to unload. Don't worry, I'll be setting aside some stuff that I'd like to eBay, so you all will have a chance to own one of our priceless treasures. Priceless until I put a price on them, that is. Then they're a dollar each or five for $4!

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Bloggin' On Up, Part 3: Picking the Perfect Domain Name

2006-04-03T17:44:00.000-04:00

Yup, I'm switching up the order of posts I had planned here because it's taking me a bit longer to get the new website looking how I want it to look. In the meantime, I can share with you my strategeries for choosing an awesome domain name to complement your fantastic new website.

Domain Names: Why You Need One

Before you start thinking about what your new domain name should be, you should convince yourself why you need one. Fortunately, the reason is simple. All the disk space and bandwidth in the world won't do you any good unless people actually find your site. How do they do that? Likely many of your visitors will find their way to your blog or website through links on other blogs or websites. And while you might draw in a big crowd for a particularly juicy piece of content, you're probably hoping that many of them will return. But how will they remember you? How will your existence to them be more than a fleeting memory? If you're lucky, they'll bookmark your site or add it to their RSS feed reader and visit it again later.

Compare the problem of attracting repeat visitors to that of companies trying to draw in repeat shoppers for their products. When you have 37 different kinds of laundry detergent to choose from, how does a company get you to keep choosing theirs over the others? Part of it is quality--people will stick with products they know work. Similarly, people will revisit websites with quality content. But what if all 37 different kinds of laundry detergent work just as well? In some cases, it could very well come down to a name. Assuming equal quality and price, are you going to pick a detergent called Zip! or one called Laundry Detergent Formula? Given the choice, the majority of people would go with Zip! It sounds more exciting, and they'll buy it hoping that Zip! will make a difference in their otherwise dreary lives.

In the same manner, you will find that your domain name quickly becomes your "brand name." When a person thinks about your website's content, they'll associate it with your domain name. And the easier your website's domain name is to remember, the easier it will be for them to make that association. That's why subdomains under a free host don't work; when you're blogging from ILovePorkAndBeans.blogspot.com, you've got two "brand names" working there--yours and Blogger's. If someone runs a competing website at ILovePorkAndBeans.com, they will automatically come off as more professional even before you consider the content of their site.

Granted, there are many fantastic websites hosted by Blog*Spot.com (see the links menu for just a few of them). Domain names aren't free, either; you'll generally have to pay five or ten dollars a year for your own .com address (sometimes far, far more). But it's a good investment because having your own domain name helps build and strengthen your brand image.

How to Pick Your Name

Selecting your domain name can be extremely simple or groin-grabbingly hard. If you're lucky, you can just follow these steps and you'll have your new domain name.

Think of your website's name. (If you already have one, like a Blogger blog you want to move to a paid host, this should be simple.)

Add a .com to it.

That's how easy it is for some people who decide to leave their free hosting service and explore the option of hosting their own site. There are many cases, however, where you can't or shouldn't follow these steps. Perhaps YourName.com is taken. Or maybe your website's name is something long like "Hi, This Is My Website and It's So Freakin' Cool" so YourName.com would be obviously impractical (more on long domain names in a minute). Or maybe you're starting a new site or willing to ditch your current title and you need a new name. If any of these apply to you, you'll be looking to start fresh. And if that includes you, there's just one rule to remember for picking a domain name...

Rule #1: Your domain name should be your website's name with a .com at the end of it.

You're on your own coming up with a name for your website since you best know the subject of your website. (That said, feel free to ask me for suggestions if you have a site in mind and need a good name.) You should try your absolute best to come up with a title that describes the content of your site and/or provokes the interest of your readers. Once you have that name for your website, you should register that name (or part of that name) with a .com at the end of it. If the .com is already taken, you will probably want to come up with another name. There are, however, exceptions that make .org (and .net or .us to a lesser extent) an acceptable alternative.

Rule #1a: Failing Rule #1, your domain name should be a .com related to your subject.

Maybe you're absolutely set on a name but it's either a long one (say, more than 10 characters) or it's already taken. That's okay; you have an alternative. While YourName.com would be ideal, you can also try YourSubject.com. If your website is called "Tasty Vegetable Recipes," then carrots.com would not be a very bad domain name to have at all.

Rule #1b: Failing Rule #1a, your domain name should be a short .com.

(Yeah, I'm kinda stretching that "one rule" thing I said earlier.) As with the situation in Rule #1a, you might have a great name for your website but it's either impractical or impossible to register its .com equivalent. It might also be hard to find a related word to .com-ize. In these cases, you might be best off coming up with a new name. Alternatively, you can settle for something short. If your site will be called "Bob's Blog of Bananas," go for something like bbb.com or bbob.com. While people may not immediately connect the acronym with your site's name, a short, seemingly unrelated domain name will be easier to remember than a long, definitely unrelated one.

Speaking of short domain names, I generally like to keep my domain names under eight characters anyway (preferrably under six). Under no circumstances should your domain name exceed 20 characters since you can probably come up with a shorter, easier to type subset of your name to .com-ize instead. While most repeat visitors will be clicking a bookmark to come to your site, some people may not use bookmarks (or not have theirs handy) and will need to rely on their memory and ability to type and spell to find your site. If your name exceeds even 15 characters, you're probably start missing out on visits from manual typing of your name.

Rule #1c: Failing Rule #1b, go with Rule #1, #1a, or #1b but substitute a .org (or maybe a .net or .us) instead.

There are very few reasons you should go with something other than a .com extension for your domain name. Even if you're a non-profit organization or from another country, you should try to stick with a .com if at all possible. There are a few exceptions that make it okay to go with another extension. The first is if you have a domain name in mind that meets all three of the rules above but the .com is taken. In this case, you may still want to think about looking for a new domain name. But if the .com is either not in use (but still owned by someone else) or completely unrelated to your subject, then going with the .org is okay. Why .org over .net and .us? Simply, .org sites are generally more closely associated with providing content (like Craigslist, The Internet Archive, and The Open Directory Project) while .net and .us sites are usually services (like MS Passport, Comcast, and ImageShack). Still, if both the .com and .org are taken, don't let me stop you from yoinking the .net or .us. Absolutely stay away from all other domain extensions. Period. Exclamation point!

If you're looking for more information on what .coms other people are registering, Dennis Forbes has an in-depth analysis of all the .com addresses currently registered.

Where to Register Your Name

Once you have your name picked out, you've gotta spend a few bucks to grab it. Unlike the web hosting itself where quality can vary wildly from host to host, most of the big-name domain registrars will give you the same quality of service and selection of tools as every other registrar. If you simply must go with a "top" domain registrar, here's a site that lists them by registrations sold. For the most part, you just want a domain pointing at your website without a lot of bells and whistles. In that case, you'll probably end up at since they dominate the registrar industry.

Beware of web hosts who offer free domain registrations with your web hosting package. Sometimes the domain registration is only good for one year and then the host will charge you more than the average registrar price for subsequent years. You always have the option of continuing to host with them and transferring your domain to a different registrar, but people often don't bother and just settle for the higher price to avoid the hassle of transferring. While you should take the free year if it's offered, try to overcome the status quo when the second year's bill hits you.

FunnyMunny.huh?

At this point, I've got my new domain name picked out and registered. While I'm going to hold off revealing it until the new site is ready for business, I will mention that it falls under Rule #1c. I grabbed a .org because the .com was taken (though not being put to any real use) and I really liked the name. No, it's not FunnyMunny.org (even though FunnyMunny.com is taken by someone else).

As a side note, a couple people have asked me what "kweee" means. It's the handle I usually go by on the internet. It doesn't really mean anything (though I do give it a meaning when asked), and I registered this blog before I knew what I'd do with it. I do own kweee.com, but it just points at this Blog*Spot blog for now. The new site will have a new name and a new domain, and I promise that both will totally rock your computer box.

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blogging

You Don't Want Our Credit Card? You Must Not Speak English!

2006-03-27T18:35:00.000-05:00

Lately Chase has been sending me credit card offers of average quality but in massive quantities. They must be absolutely astonished that I haven't responded to any of their offers! In fact, they're so shocked at my lack of interest in their cards that they've determined I need a translator...

Sorry, Chase, but I'm only fluent in Awesome, and you're not speaking my language.

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credit

Bloggin' On Up, Part 2: Hello New Host!

2006-03-23T20:01:00.000-05:00

Bloggin' on up! (Bloggin' on up.) To the east side. (To the east side.) We finally got a deee-cent website.

In the first part of this series, I shared my raging disgust with Blogger and my desire to move Funny Munny to a quality web hosting service. I shared my reasons for moving (including the need for better quality and cooler web toys) and my reasons for not moving sooner (like the cost issue and the whole trouble of setting things up). Today, it's time to start with step two of the conversion process: procrastinating for a few weeks and then giving up on the whole thing. Hahaha, just kidding. Step two involves finding a good hosting service that can handle the sheer awesomeness that is Funny Munny.

Super-Hard Terms You Should Know

While you can learn just about all the technology terms you'll need to know from this Weebl & Bob cartoon, I'll give you a few more just to get you started on the road to web hosting honor and glory!

Disk Storage. Usually given in Megabytes (MB) or Gigglebytes (GB), this is the measure of how much total garbage quality content you can fit on your blog. If you're planning a mostly text blog, you might be able to last years on just a few dozen MB. But if you want to include fancy things like pictures and podcasts and decorative woodworking, you'll want a whole bunch more MBs or maybe even some GBs.

Bandwidth. It's one thing to have a website sitting somewhere on the internet, and it's a whole 'nother thing for people to be able to view your website on their computer boxes. When people access your content, they are using your bandwidth. Bandwidth is usually measured in the same MB and GB units as disk storage, but you'll typically need a whole lot more bandwidth if you intend to have more than one viewer.

MySQL. MySQL? YourSQL? OurSQL? Whatever you call it, you will probably need this. It's the platform on which your website's database will run. What's that? You don't think you need a database? Okay, so maybe you're not planning to inventory your socks and ties, but databases are what keep the internet from becoming a mess of text files. Your blog software will likely require a database in which to store all of your information--your blog post text, your categories, your links to Funny Munny, etc.

POP/IMAP/Webmail. There are many names for it, but they all mean the same thing: e-mail. If you'll be running your site on www.mysuckywebsitename.com, you'll be able to set up e-mail accounts like loser@mysuckywebsitename.com and big_loser@mysuckywebsitename.com. Note that e-mail forwarding is different--it only forwards e-mails destined for your website addresses to another address you specify. You'll probably want at least one @yourdomain.com addresses because it helps you look more professional than using a GMail or Yahoo! or AOL e-mail account.

Domains/subdomains. A lot of cheap web hosting services limit the number of ways you can subdivide your allocated disk storage and bandwidth among different domain names. If a hosting service says you can host three domains with one account, that means you can split up your resources and pretend you have three separate accounts. Alternately, there are subdomains which allow you to do things like mydumbsubdomain.mysuckywebsitename.com. My advice: find a service that provides you with the option of hosting multiple domains in case you ever decide to start a second or third or fourth website; that way, you can just use your existing space to host it at no additional cost (except for the new domain name).

Perl, PHP, CGI, SSI... The funny looking acronym parade begins! Most of these are either web programming languages in which blog software is usually written (PHP is probably the most commonly used) or various protocols needed to support those languages (like CGI and SSI). Any webhost worth its salt will have all of these along with pre-installed scripts that will make it easy for you to generate a basic setup. You'll want Perl because there are some really nifty scripts out there written only in Perl.

FTP. If a web host does not allow you to upload to your website via FTP (File Transfer Protocol), run--don't walk--to another service. You will absolutely need this to get started. While sophisticated blogging software will provide you with automated web-based forms to help you upload your content (including text, pictures, and various multimedia), FTP is the easiest way to get access to your web storage. If you see "anonymous FTP," this isn't something you need unless you have plans to allow anyone to upload stuff to your webspace. There are people who use anonymous FTP, but we're not one of them.

UNIX shell. It is increasingly common that you'll see this is an available feature in web hosting packages. While you can run a highly successful website without ever once using your UNIX shell access, it can be extremely helpful for more advanced purposes. The UNIX shell provides you with a command-line interface to tons of useful tools for monitoring and tweaking your website. Again, you can do everything you'll need with FTP and web-based scripts, but a UNIX shell just gives you a bit of extra power over your web hosting experience.

There are plenty of other terms you'll see web hosts throw at you, but these are the ones you should really be interested in.

What To Look For in a Web Hosting Service

Now that we understand the vocabulary, let's apply it to our search for a web hosting service. So just what does our future web host need to have in order to support our cool-tastic website?

Stuff that lets you do what you need to do. If you're looking to set up a blog on your own hosting service, you'll need to make sure it has the basics. You'll need disk storage (even super-cheap services come with 100+ MB nowadays, but you may wish to secure a few GB or more for the future); lots of bandwidth (while you won't know just how much you'll need until you really need it, I'd recommend 10 GB a month minimum with the ability to increase if you need to); acronymic tools like PHP, MySQL, FTP, CGI, SSI, POP/IMAP, and maybe UNIX; multiple hosted domains (subdomains wouldn't hurt, either); and a web-based control panel to help you run everything (the most popular being Cpanel, but there are many nice ones available). If you have these things, you'll be able to accomplish just about everything you can imagine doing with your website.

A domain name. Many web hosting services will include a free one-year domain name registration with your web hosting purchase. That's because domain names are dirt cheap now. Even if your host doesn't give you a domain, you can purchase one from somewhere like Yahoo! or GoDaddy for just a few bucks a year. Do not settle for a website address like yourname.yourwebhostname.com. All the fun toys in the world (your website) won't help you become friends with the neighborhood kids if your house (your website address) is an ugly piece of junk borrowed from someone else.

Quality service. Most services provide only e-mail support for your questions and problems, and that's probably the best you can hope for without spending a ton of extra money. That e-mail support should be 24x7x365, though even if a host advertises this, you'll have no way of knowing their turnaround time and helpfulness until you experience your first problem. Or maybe you do! Trying Googling for reviews of your potential web hosting service and check out the online forum for discussing webhosts at WebHostingTalk. Keep in mind as you're reading reviews of web hosting services that most people generally only post "reviews" when they want to complain about a service. Every web hosting service in the world will have issues; but for every person who complains that they have the world's worst web host, there are probably ten people who have absolutely no problems with it. Be sure to read their specific complaints and look for patterns that might point to a real problem with the web hosting company.

A good price. How much should you pay for your web hosting? You can use the calculator found at FindMyHosting.com to compare various plans and their prices. Some decent plans start as low as $1 a month, while dedicated services can run hundreds of dollars a month. While a ridiculously low price can indicate shoddy service, you won't want to pay more than you need to for your hosting. Most blogs of mild to moderate popularity can get by with a service that costs under $8 a month. I've personally used services that cost anywhere from $2 a month (and still do!) to $15 a month (but that was years ago when hosting was really expensive).

A money-back guarantee. This is absolutely required. At a minimum, your host should offer a full return of your money within the first 30 days (60-90 is much better, though). Every so often, somebody will get really screwed over by a hosting service, and it's usually obvious within the first week or two. A money-back guarantee with no strings attached is a must no matter how reputable your hosting provider is. I've never needed to use such a guarantee, but it's reassuring to know it's there. These come pretty much standard from most hosts now, so pass by anyone who doesn't offer one.

Room to grow. Hopefully your website will become a big success before long, but that means you'll probably need things like extra storage space and especially extra bandwidth. You'll want a host that will upgrade your account to a bigger (though more costly) hosting option on demand. A few hosting services now go as far as to automatically increase your account's limits over time. Just be sure that you have a way to expand if you need to so you don't necessarily have to pack up and move to a new host when you hit the limits of your old one.

The depth of their own website. It pains me to say this, but anyone with half a brain can run their own web hosting service. In fact, there are many people with only half a brain that do! You can tell the real professionals from the wannabe resellers by the quality of their own website. Navigate through your potential host's pages. Look at their design and the tools they offer. Does your web host have its own public support forum? (This is a major, major plus in my book since it offers current hostees the opportunity to share their experiences with those shopping around.) Also take a look at their jobs/careers page. If there isn't one, you're likely looking at a one-man reselling operation which can have iffy quality (depending on who the real hosting service is). If there is one, check out what they're offering their employees. Heck, make a fake job inquiry if you like! If your web host has happy employees who are paid well and enjoy their job, this will benefit you a thousand times over if you host your website with them.

There is one other extremely important thing to consider when selecting a host--something the hosts themselves won't mention to you... until they're shutting you down for it. Since your web hosting space will reside on a machine used by many other hostees, you'll be sharing the machine's resources with others. No hosting plan will mention a limitation on CPU usage, but it's one thing you can't have unlimited amounts of unless you're on your own server. CPU is a little trickier to measure, and while most hosts have a limit on how much you can use, very few will actually tell you what it is until you reach it. One host I'm looking at likes for each of its hostees to stay below 60 CPU minutes per day. That means your webpages, scripts, and whatever else you've got going on should not be keeping the server's computing component busy for more than 1/24 of the time. Unlike disk space and bandwidth which you'll know how much you're using based on how big your files are, you won't know how much CPU your stuff uses until it actually runs. Both fortunately and unfortunately, most hosts take a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach to CPU-intensive hostees. If you have a script running in your space that's tying up the CPU, you can stay well under your disk and bandwidth limits and still have your website suspended for CPU usage. While most hosted sites will never have to worry about overutilizing the CPU, if your site gets taken offline because your host says you're using too much CPU, you're in for a world of hurt because it can be very difficult to find the culprit.

I'll talk more on avoiding CPU overutilization in an upcoming part of the series.

The Contenders

I've gone through about a hundred potential hosts looking for the things I mentioned in the list above. Some didn't have the basics down. Others had too many bad reviews or obvious problems with customer service. Some may have been terrific services, but their own websites turned me off for one reason or another. In the end, I picked out the three web hosting providers who will compete to become... America's... Next... Top... Model... I mean... Web... Host.

A lot of personal finance bloggers swear by these guys (though I sometimes question their motivation for doing so; more on that in a bit). Does their service really live up to the name?

The Good

Price. If you visit Dreamhost's website, you'll see that their basic plan starts at just under $8 a month. I suspect, however, that very few people actually pay that amount their first year of hosting with Dreamhost. That's because there are numerous e-coupons around that knock the cost of your first year of hosting to nearly nothing.

So much stuff! The basic Dreamhost plan comes with 20 GB of storage and 1,000 GB of monthly bandwidth. In addition, Dreamhost automatically increases your storage by 160 MB and monthly bandwidth by 8 GB every week! They also include all the required tools a blogger will need, and they even throw in a free one-year domain registration and allow you to subdivide your space into an unlimited number of websites. This is easily one of the best price-to-stuff ratios I've seen from a webhost.

Their website. The basic front page of Dreamhost's own website is, well, basic. The really good stuff lies deeper in the website; they have their own support wiki that anyone can edit as well as a public discussion forum. They also seem to give their employees a nice place to work.

Lengthy money-back guarantee. It's worth mentioning in its own bullet point that Dreamhost offers a 97-day money-back guarantee. This is about triple the standard money-back period. From what I've read, people have had little or no problem getting their money back from Dreamhost when they wanted to.

The Bad

Price. Oops, I'm crazy! No, you're not misreading; I put "Price" in both the good and the bad. While you might get your first year of Dreamhosting for next to nothing, the second and subsequent years will likely cost you at least $120/year. That's because there are no known coupons for hosting renewals. Some people report success with free domain registration renewal, and a few people have gotten gift certificate codes ranging from $10-40 when they threatened to leave Dreamhost, but you should plan to cough up the regular price from the start of year two onward if you stick with Dreamhost.

Sneaky referrals. This is a good thing once you're actually hosted by Dreamhost, but it's really bad when you're outside looking in. Many web hosting providers allow hostees to make money by referring new customers to them. Dreamhost makes the referral process too easy. Anyone with a Dreamhost account can generate a plain-English coupon code that will get a new customer X number of dollars off their first year--money that goes straight to the referring web host. Rarely do I see such generated codes come with the disclaimers that 1) the code belongs to them and will automatically make them a big chunk of money if you use it, and 2) it's not even the best code out there! Indeed, the 777 code (a non-referral code given out by Dreamhost itself) yields the best discount.

So much stuff! Okay, I've really got to stop duplicating my good items in the bad list. When you consider all the stuff that Dreamhost offers, you can see two problems. First, if everyone hosting with Dreamhost used every last MB of space and bandwidth, Dreamhost would go bankrupt overnight. They are offering all that stuff to you in the hopes that you won't use very much of it! Second, all that stuff for so little money suggests they might not be using the best quality equipment and communication services on their end. Still, this is all speculation, and you really can't know about the service unless you talk to people who use it...

Reviews. As you can expect, there are plenty of people with bad things to say about Dreamhost. The two big criticisms seem to reflect recent disappointments with their customer service and operating speed. Browse through Dreamhost's own forums and you'll find plenty of people upset that their troubles have not been handled for hours or even days. There are also plenty of people who will point out that Dreamhost is likely overselling their services. That means they're trying to cram as many customers into their hosting resources as possible (and them some!).

A little bit newer than Dreamhost, Lunarpages is the shared hosting spin-off of web services goliath Add2Net.

The Good

Quality of service. Out of the three candidates, Lunarpages' customers seem to have the most positive things to say about their experiences. These guys also have their own public support forums. These forums seem a little more interactive and friendly than the other web hosting forums I've read. In short, it looks like Lunarpages has a lot of very happy clients.

Their website. Absolutely the best website of the three candidates. Information is presented in a very organized, attractive manner. I'm a little disappointed by their job listings page, but the Lunarpages employees who have posted on the forums seem to be happy where they work.

Their stuff. Lunarpages' basic plan offers a more realistic but still generous package of space (5GB) and bandwidth (400 GB/month) along with just about all of the standard tools. Telephone support during regular business hours is included on all Lunarpages plans (something Dreamhost's basic plan sorely lacks). A few features are noticeably absent from Lunarpages' basic plan including ASP and JSP support (though that's not something I or most bloggers would need) as well as one critical option that's worth its own bullet point in The Bad section below.

Price. At $6.95 a month, a first-year plan with Lunarpages will run far more than one with Dreamhost. Starting with year two, Lunarpages' price drops below Dreamhost's regular price, so the difference would even out after a few years with Lunarpages. To me, a steady price over the life of service says that Lunarpages is looking more to service existing customers than to snatch up as many new ones as possible even at the risk of overselling.

The Bad

The DDoS attacks. A few months ago, Lunarpages experienced some devastating deliberate denial of service (DDoS) attacks that severely impacted their web hosting services for lengthy periods of time. Lunarpages says it has since installed extra protection against such attacks, and it does seem that the DDoSes have instead turned to other web hosting services. While not Lunarpages' fault, it still leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Shorter money-back guarantee. You only have 30 days to ask for your money back if you're not satisfied with Lunarpages' services. While you would think that's plenty of time to evaluate a web host, you'd be surprised what kind of problems can crop up in months two and three.

No UNIX shell!!! This is a big minus for me. While I don't need access to a UNIX shell, I really want the extra control over my web hosting experience that one would provide. I can understand why Lunarpages doesn't provide one--it's a security risk, so extra (i.e. more expensive) measures must be taken to operate one.

A relatively new player on the web hosting field, Hostgator has quickly earned a reputation as a top service provider.

The Good

Reviews. I've read a lot of reviews by customers who are thrilled with their Hostgator experience--at least as many as I have for Lunarpages.

Brains. From reading Hostgator's support forums, I got the feeling that they have a lot of brainpower on their staff. The responses I've seen to people's questions and problems have all been intelligent and thoughtful.

Top-notch phone support. One-upping Lunarpages, Hostgator offers 24x7x365 phone support as well as the ability to obtain support through the conventional methods (e-mails and trouble tickets) as well as less conventional means (AIM messaging, for instance).

The Bad

Their stuff and price. If you take a look at Hostgator's hosting plans page, you'll see something a little upsetting. Their most basic plan, called "Hatchling," only runs $6.95 a month; however, there are a few things missing from this plan that makes Lunarpages' $6.95 plan stand out more. First, the uptime is only promised to be 99.5%, so an outage of up to 3.5 hours per month would be acceptable under this plan. Second, this plan limits you to hosting just one domain per account. If you're planning to subdivide your space (as I am), this is a big limitation. Hostgator's next plan up, called "Baby," runs $9.95/month. It tops Lunarpages by offering unlimited domain hosting per account (Lunarpages' limits to 10 per $6.95 account), but it doesn't crack Lunarpages' space and bandwidth offering.

Shorter money-back guarantee. Like Lunarpages, you only have 30 days to get your cash back from Hostgator if you're unhappy. Really, for their prices and quality of service, I don't think either Lunarpages of Hostgator should have any trouble matching Dreamhost's 97-day promise.

No UNIX shell!!! Again, you don't need it, and I don't need it, but I want it... a lot. For $9.95 a month, Hostgator should have thrown this in for free.

Their website. It's not ugly or anything, but it's the least attractive of the three candidates' sites. It is functional and gets the job done, but some people are impressed with pretty designs. I'll try not to let this affect my decision too much.

The ULTIMATE CHAMPION OF THE WEB HOSTING UNIVERSE!

I actually changed my mind between all three of these hosts at least twice just while writing up this article. In the end, I had to go with Dreamhost. While it seems they may be overselling their services, I've seen no such evidence of that from the other bloggers I read who I know are hosted by Dreamhost. And while I would've liked some sort of telephone support like Lunarpages and Hostgator offer, Dreamhost's full UNIX shell is too much for my inner geek to resist. I've seen some positive efforts in the forums by Dreamhost's tech team to improve connection speeds for those who have had problems. So I'll give Dreamhost a try confident that I'll have no problem getting my money back within 97 days if I'm unhappy.

In case you're curious, Lunarpages is my first runner up should Dreamhost not be able to fulfill its duties as Miss USA. (Heh, I can picture a little server wearing a tiara and an evening gown. That's kinda hot, don't you think?)

Off I go to place my order! Next time, I'll share my experiences with setting up shop at my new host. In a later part of the series, I'll also post my strategies for domain name selection. Oops, I guess I better start thinking about one of those. I wonder if NickIsTheAwesomestGuyOnTheWholeFreakinInternet.com is taken...

Bloggin' On Up, Part 1: So Long Blogger!

2006-03-20T23:09:00.000-05:00

Well I'm bloggin' on up! (Bloggin' on up!) To the east side! (To the east side!) To a deee-luxe web server in the skyyyyyyy.

While Funny Munny is only a few months old, I feel that it's already outgrown Blogger. Ever since I read Jonathan's story about moving MyMoneyBlog from Blogger, I've been debating the move to a paid web host; but now the arguments for the move outweigh the arguments against. Just what are those arguments? I'm not going to tell you!

Hmm, this post came to a rather sudden conclusion...

Okay, then I am going to tell you! You're so lucky!

Why Should Funny Munny Move to a Web Host?

Because Blogger = Pffft! Once Google acquired Blogger, the consensus was that Blogger would receive the Golden Touch of Google and it would become the most awesome piece of bloggy goodness in the whole wide world. That was three years ago, and Blogger has yet to be touched by the angels of Mountain View, California. For goodness sake, it doesn't have basic blogging concepts like categories and trackback support. On top of that, blogs hosted at Blog*Spot have the nasty habit of breaking whenever somebody sneezes. Of course, what do you expect of free, ad-less blog hosting? Still, the quality of Blogger and Blog*Spot, even at no cost to me, is just too low below my junk tolerance threshold to be ignored any longer.

Professionalism Demands It! While I'll admit this blog is not quite the epitome of professionalism, it is the epitome of awesomeness, and such awesomeness needs lots of open space, fun toys, and a balanced diet of cool stuff in order to thrive. As kweee.blogspot.com, I just can't help but feel a little trapped. Sure there are a ton of high-quality, professional bloggers who use Blog*Spot, but for each one of them, there are 50 more "LIKE OMG I SAW A CUTE BOY 2DAY AND HE SAID HI TO ME AND OMG OMG OMG" right beside them.

I Need Cooler Toys (And A Bigger Toy Chest). Blogger's customizable layouts are pretty nice, and I was perfectly happy with mine until the last couple of weeks. I tried adding a couple of extra features to my sidebar and I couldn't get them working in Blogger. It was simple stuff that should have worked effortlessly, too! Then I started doing a few posts with HTML tables; don't even get me started about what Blogger did with those tables. And for reasons unknown, my sidebar contents now hang out at the bottom of the page in Internet Explorer. In short, I need a flexible web host that will let me do the cool things I can do with Perl, PHP, Ruby on Rails, and all the other nifty stuff that makes the internet so pretty.

Other Projects. I've been running websites that I built from scratch for years. I'm no stranger to HTML, CSS, and all the different web programming languages out there. At present, I have a number of websites hosted by a number of different free and paid services. I'd like to consolidate all of them into a single service that gives me a big chunk of space and bandwidth that can be divided into many different websites (each with its own URL). Having such a setup might also convince me to start a few projects I've been putting off for a while.

It's Now Or Never! If I stay with Blog*Spot much longer, it would become increasingly difficult to transition away from it in the future. And while I may not have reached the commonly used threshold for leaving Blogger (whatever that threshold may be), once I do reach that level, it might be impossible for me to leave without starting over completely.

With all of these reasons for leaving Blogger behind, you must be curious why I haven't done it already!

Why Shouldn't Funny Munny Move to a Web Host?

It Costs Money. Bingo! Reason numero uno why people are using Blogger and Blog*Spot instead of any one of the thousands of top-notch web hosting services out there: such services aren't free! In fact, some can be downright expensive. While you can find a dirt cheap web host that will give you a tiny thimble full of space and bandwidth through a straw, it's gonna cost at least a couple bucks a month just to match Blog*Spot's sub-par level of service. Quality web hosting with lots of space and bandwidth accompanied by satisfactory service can run anywhere from $2 to $200 a month, maybe even more! Sure, advertising revenue can help offset the costs, but plenty of people aren't yet at the point where their ad money would completely cover their operating expenses. Still, many people (myself included) are more concerned with providing good content to the general public rather than making a quick buck (though doing both at the same time certainly wouldn't hurt).

More Trouble Than It's Worth? This Blogger blog was relatively easy to set up. It's pretty easy to maintain, and I've added a few nice features without too much trouble. This is perfect for millions of people who use Blogger and Blog*Spot, and it did the trick for me for a while. But now it doesn't, so it's time for me to move on. Moving on, however, isn't as simple as hopping on a covered wagon to the next town. Unless I start over from scratch (which I don't plan to do), it'll take some elbow grease to get this blog transferred over to a different web host. Fortunately, there are plenty of resources available online to help make the transition a little easier, and I'll be discussing some of them as I go along.

So Many Hosts! If there's one thing the world doesn't need more of, it's web hosts. I estimate there are at least 74 different web hosting services for each person in the world. So how is someone supposed to choose from the roughly 444 billion web hosts out there? Is one host better than another? How about customer service? Am I getting the best value for my money? All those questions were enough to keep me from shopping around... at least until now. I'll be dedicating an entire part of this series to selecting a web host.

Even Without Starting Over, It's Two Steps Back. I equate the change from Blogger to a new web host to buying a new baseball glove. The old one may be dirty and falling apart, but you've got it broken in just how you like it. A new glove will take some getting used to, but the change will likely be worth it in the end. My biggest concern with leaving Blog*Spot is maintaining my current audience. I don't want to lose any of you six! Seriously, while there are some simple ways for letting your audience know that you've moved, it often requires some sort of action to be taken by your audience to follow you. Using a service like FeedBurner helps with the move because people who put your blog in their RSS reader won't need to do a thing to find your new feed; you can change the location in your FeedBurner profile and it will automatically propogate to the rest of the world.

Maybe Blogger and Blog*Spot Aren't So Bad... Boy, how many times have I thought these words? Sure, they're not the best free blog host out there, but it did help me start this blog, and it's still here three months later! If you're thinking about dabbling in a little blogging, I'd probably recommend giving this place a try. Just keep an eye on your progress, know when it's time to jump ship, and make sure you have a life jacket handy.

I've already been researching potential web hosting services, and I believe I've reached a final decision that I'll carry out within the next day or so. It'll take a while to transition, so I'll be continuing this series right here at http://kweee.blogspot.com for now. Be sure to join me for the second part of "Bloggin' On Up" where I'll discuss how to pick the best web host for you. (Now where did I put that dart board...)

For now, I'll leave you former and never Blog*Spot bloggers with these questions: Who's your web hosting provider? How's their service? And how hard was the transition for you (if you had one)?

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What $300,000 Will Buy You In... Rockville, MD

2006-03-16T10:57:00.000-05:00

JLP over at AllThingsFinancial commented on the price of homes in Houston, TX--specifically, how much house $300,000 will buy you.

Then Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity detailed what $300,000 gets you in Howard County, MD--just one county over from me! Not surprising, you'll get more for your money in Houston.

So what does $300,000 get you in Rockville, MD, a northern suburb of our nation's capital? Obviously it's the best deal out of all of them: you get a magic invisible house!

Indeed, $300k will get you an empty plot of land in Rockville, MD. And as you move closer to Washington, DC, $300k won't even get you a mailbox.

Automatic Bill-Pay Saves You Time and Money... Until the Knife Slips

2006-03-15T18:53:00.001-05:00

Seeking assistant for world famous knife-throwing act. Earn big bucks for standing very, very still. Excellent benefits including health, dental, and 401(k). BYO life insurance.

Sign up for auto bill-pay today. We'll credit you with $20 if you activate auto bill-pay on your account. We'll automatically debit your checking account each month for the amount of your balance. Never worry about paying your bills again!

At first glance, these two advertisements seem to be completely different. At second and third glance, they still appear unrelated in any way. In fact, you could fill a room with Harvard PhDs and 500 gallons of Red Bull, and weeks could pass before anyone sees the connection between the two ads.

Fortunately for you, I have a PhD in awesomeness. It was granted to me by the University of Cool.

So what in the name of Benjamin Bernanke am I getting at? Quite simple: I might sooner try the knife-throwing job before signing up for auto bill-pay.

I've really gone off my rocker this time, haven't I?! Here come the men in white coats to take me to a "special room." But before you add the label "psychotic" to my RSS feed in your reader, hear me out! Allow me to explain why I equate automatic bill-pay to being at the pointy end of a knife-throwing act.

The Tragedy of Jill: The Woman Addicted to Auto Bill-Pay

Consider this hypothetical situation involving a young woman named Jill. Jill rents an apartment in the city and has a nice job. She used to pay her monthly bills the old-fashioned way--a check, an envelope, and a stamp. Then one day Al Gore invented the internet and she found that she could pay all her bills online. At first, Jill set up a manual bill-pay system with her bank so that she could input the values from her paper bills by hand each month and have her bank handle the payments. Then Jill got promoted at work and suddenly found herself short on time. Seeing an opportunity to save 30 minutes a month, Jill signed up for automatic bill-pay for all of her bills. Now everything would be automatically debited from her checking account. For the sake of simplicity, let's say these are her accounts and that they're all set to auto bill-pay somewhere near the end of each month...

Payee	Monthly charge ($)	Fee structure
Rent	1,500.00	Fixed
Car lease	400.00	Fixed
Home phone	40.00	Base + long distance minutes
Cell phone	50.00	Base + extra minutes
Gas	~150.00	Varies
Electricity	~150.00	Varies
Water	~20.00	Varies
Credit card #1	???	Varies
Credit card #2	???	Varies
Gym membership	30.00	Fixed

On an average month, Jill will have $2,340 plus her credit card balances automatically debited from her checking account. In a situation like this, unless Jill meticulously monitors her accounts (which she just doesn't have the time to do), she stands to get burned in one of several ways.

Way Jill Loses #1: Keep the checking account loaded with money. Most people have low- or no-interest checking accounts for their everyday use. So if Jill puts $1,000 in a checking account that earns zero interest, it's going to stay $1,000 unless Jill adds her own money or remove it. Any money Jill puts in such an account is really losing interest that it could be earning in a high-yield savings account (>4.00% APY). Jill can pretty much ensure her bills will be auto-paid with no problem by keeping, oh, $10,000 in her checking account at all times. While there are a few higher-yielding checking accounts out there, Jill probably doesn't have one. So Jill probably misses out on $400 or more in interest each year when she keeps her checking account balance that high.

Way Jill REALLY Loses #2: Ballpark the checking account balance each month. Remember that Jill needs an average of $2,340 each month to pay her non-credit card bills. Perhaps Jill pays slightly more attention to her spending and adjusts her monthly checking account balance accordingly. If Jill estimates she put $1,500 on her credit cards this month, she might transfer only enough to her checking account to bring the balance to about $4,000. That should be enough to cover all of her bills.

But what if Jill's math is a little off? What if there's a particularly cold month that doubles her average gas bill, and she goes on a short trip and greatly exceeds her cell phone minute allotment, and her rent goes up $100 but she forgot it started this month, and she forgot about that $250 charge to her credit card she made on her trip? Jill ballparks her checking account balance based on the previous month but underestimates by, say, $300. Depending on the order in which her bills are debited, she faces at least a couple of overdraft fees from her bank that will set her back $10-30 each. And if Jill doesn't have overdraft protection, she instead faces eviction, repossession, utility disconnection, dings on her credit report, and flabby arms due to a cancelled gym membership.

Chances are that situations #1 and #2 can be avoided by taking the middle road. If $4,000 would just barely pay the bills and $10,000 would always cover them, Jill could simply keep her balance at $7,000 or so and both her her risk of running the checking account dry and her missed interest earnings drop.

Way Jill REALLY REALLY Loses #3: Auto bill-pay is always on time, even if you're not. Jill only half-learned her lesson from situations #1 and #2. She now keeps her checking account balance around $5,500 a month just in case. Sadly, Jill doesn't bother to reactivate her gym membership, and she quickly becomes out of shape. She puts on 100 pounds and one day gets hit by a bus that she just couldn't outrun. She makes it through okay, but she's stuck in the hospital for about five weeks. Her family flies out to visit her, but nobody thinks about her finances since she'll only be away from them for a little over a month. "She has auto bill-pay," Jill's mother comments. "Everything'll be just fine!"

Jill leaves the hospital and returns home only to find her car gone, all of her utilities off, and Fair Isaac himself standing in her doorway with a baseball bat ready to bust her credit score down to 400. As it turns out, she was in the hospital for two cycles of auto bill-pay. The first went through just fine, but only the rent got paid at the end of month two. Or maybe Jill set up overdraft protection, and while everything was paid, she now has $300 in overdraft fees.

Way Jill Loses For All of Eternity #4: Getting your bills paid until the end of time. Flash forward 30 years. Jill retires with a comfortable nest egg, and with the advent of the super-duper-internet, Jill's bills will never go unpaid because the auto bill-pay finds her money no matter where it is. On her 148th birthday, Jill dies unexpectedly... but nobody notices. You see, all of Jill's friends and family are already in cryogenic freezing, so when she passes away in the quiet of her apartment, there's nobody around to miss her. Not even her auto bill-pay misses her as it effortlessly continues to draw money from her bank account to cover her rent and other bills month after month, year after year. It's not until her bank accounts hit zero 43 years later that anyone bothers to come looking for Jill. She's buried on the moon where her gravestone reads, "Jill, 1975-20??, FICO 250."

And if you think something like situation #4 can't happen, think again.

Is Auto Bill-Pay Right For Me?

To me, auto bill-pay doesn't seem to be worth the seconds or minutes one might save. What if, for example, you ran across some fraudulent charges on your credit card or calls you didn't make on your cell phone bill? You might be expecting your auto bill-pay to take $30 out of your checking account, but a few fraudulent charges and you could end up with a bill many times larger than normal. If you're using a manual bill-pay system, you'll have a chance to go "Wait, why is my phone bill $1,300?" before you actually pay that amount. With auto bill-pay, unless there is some sort of control system in place that alerts you to larger-than-usual bills, you'll have to deal with the company to get your money back after they already have it.

Let's go back to the knife-throwing assistant metaphor. Just like many knife-throwing assistants who last their whole career without a single split hair, you might go your entire life on auto bill-pay without experiencing any of Jill's troubles. Or you might have a small auto bill-pay mishap here and there that won't affect you too much, much like the retired knife-throwing assistants out there who continue to lead normal, fulfilling, eight-fingered lives. But why risk a slip of the knife--a $1,300 auto-paid cell phone bill that could cause bounced checks, missed payments, and credit nightmares?

Still, I can see the appeal in not having to deal with bills each month. I know some people who take an entire day each month just to handle their finances, and bill paying can easily take up half that time. In theory, auto bill-pay should be okay for strictly fixed charges--rent, mortgages, and anything else where the price won't fluctuate due to extra usage.

Just make sure to have a friend check up on you every so often.

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bills

You Can't Spell "Carnival" Without "Personal Finance Advice"

2006-03-13T17:03:00.000-05:00

...Okay, so maybe you can, but you definitely wouldn't be able to link to this week's edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance without it being hosted by Personal Finance Advice. Jeffrey Strain took an interesting and amusing approach to this week's carnival, and I have to say that it made reading the whole thing an absolute pleasure. Seriously, if you're gonna do a carnival, you need to have amazing attractions like bearded ladies, fire eaters, or colorful text!

An extra special thanks to Jeffrey for giving me some red, bold lovin' with his write-up of my submission, Verizon Is One Sneaky Telecommunications Corporation!

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carnivals

The Blogger Net Worth Index: Making the S&P Look Like Garbage

2006-03-10T16:06:00.000-05:00

The NASDAQ was down 1% for February and the S&P barely broke even, but my favorite index was up 3.4% for the month. Is it something new and innovative from T. Rowe Price or Vanguard? Nope, I'm talking about the BNWI. Sure, that link might say there's no such index, but I'd invest every one of my hard-earned dollars in the Personal Finance Bloggers' Net Worth Index... if it were actually a real fund.

Sadly, the BNWI is the creation of the editors at Moneysmartz and tracks the net worth of various personal finance bloggers including yours truly. You can check out how the index fares with Moneysmartz's monthly updates. And while you can't really invest in the index, you can always send me a check and I'll invest it in the Funny Munny Fund (currently returning approximately -100%).

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The $39 Free Sample Experiment

2006-03-09T14:44:00.000-05:00

Via digg comes news of a noble experiment conducted by ordinary citizen Tom Locke. His goal was simple: send 100 letters to various companies to obtain free samples of products. The total cost of his experiment was just $39 in stamps (plus a few bucks for envelopes) and he has already received over $75 worth of stuff.

It's interesting to see some of the samples that companies are willing to part with to an average person who writes in requesting one for no real reason. White Castle, for example, sent Tom a booklet of the best kind of coupons--ones for tons of free burgers with no purchase requirement. It's also equally interesting to see which companies flat out refuse such a request. Office Max gave Tom a big fat "no" for his 39-cent efforts. Of course, his letter to Office Max was a little... yeah...

Dear Sir or Madam:
I recently started my own small business, and I was wondering if you would be so kind as to provide me with free samples of office supplies that I may need to help me get started. Rubber bands, paper clips, pens, staplers, staples. Anything that you think would help a budding entrepreneur to make it through the busy days! Thank you in advance,
Tom Locke, business enthusiast

Tom admits he had more fun with certain letters than others, and his website includes the full text of each letter sent. Anyone else out there willing to try an experiment like this? Tom initially limited his venture to businesses whose address he could find on products already in his home, so there are many companies he has yet to try. I might send out 100 letters of my own, but every single one of them would be going to Dunkin Donuts which sent Tom five bucks in gift certificates!

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Verizon Is One Sneaky Telecommunications Corporation!

2006-03-08T17:12:00.000-05:00

Why, in this era of supercomputers and flying cars, do I still have a landline phone installed in my home? Is it because I feel more secure knowing I have a phone that connects to a wall that connects to all the other phones in the world with wires? Do I have some sort of illicit passion for phone jacks and RJ-11 hinged locking tabs? Or are landlines such a great bargain that I'd be stupid not to fork over the cash each month to have one?

I can assure you that the correct answer is none of the above. Instead, the absolute only reason there is still a telephone plugged into our home's wall is because of Comcast. You see, my wife and I aren't big television watchers. In a given week, we'll spend a combined total of maybe six hours viewing regular television programming. Our TV gets far more use in conjunction with its attached peripherals--the Gamecube, the PlayStation 2, and the DVD player. As such, we don't have cable or satellite or any other paid service that would give us access to additional programming channels. And since we don't have cable, we also don't have access to the high-speed internet services provided by our local cable company, Comcast. In order to purchase Comcast's internet services without also buying into its cable service, I would need to give them one of my kidneys wrapped in an enormous ball of cash.

While we can live without 430 channels of HBO, my plot to take over the world work and hobbies (like this one!) require some sort of non-dial-up connection to the internet. Verizon to the rescue! We're signed up for their $15/month 768/128kbps DSL service. For the less technically inclined people out there, those numbers mean that I can download the entire internet in approximately seven seconds. Of course, with cable internet, that time would drop to three seconds, but I'm not in that big of a hurry.

So what does all this have to do with my having a landline phone? Well, it's because Verizon has this one little caveat to its $15 DSL service--I need to have some sort of landline phone service with them, and not even my cash-wrapped kidney can change that. So instead of paying $40 + $40 + taxes each month for cable and cable internet, we pay $35 + $15 + taxes for a landline telephone with unlimited local and regional calling and DSL internet. Having the landline phone service also allows me to keep my cell phone rate very low since I typically only use it for long-distance calls.

In a few areas, Verizon is starting to roll out its sexy "naked" DSL service. For just an extra $5 a month, this plan would allow you to get Verizon's DSL internet without any sort of landline service... in theory. In reality, you still need a landline; it just doesn't need to be with Verizon. Still, if true naked DSL ever appeared in my neck of the woods, we'd just drop the landline and beef up our cell phone service.

So as the situation stands, Verizon takes our $35 each month and gives us all the calls we want in this general area along with common extras like Caller ID, Call Waiting, and unlimited calls to Mars (though that last one has yet to be useful). But with our latest bill came a tiny flyer that I almost threw away without reading. It advertised Verizon's Freedom package (unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S.) for just $35 a month. "Why am I paying the same price for a plan with no long distance service?" I thought. So I decided to switch my service to this new plan at my earliest convenience.

Fortunately for me, my earliest convenience was after I had a chance to discuss the plan with some wonderful folks on the internet. They kindly pointed out that the $35 version of Verizon's Freedom plan included absolutely no extra features. No Caller ID. No Call Waiting. And zero minutes for me to talk to my future Martian friends! I priced all those options individually and found out that the ones I use the most would add an extra $10-15 to my monthly bill. For that price, I may as well have gotten the full-featured Freedom package. And even with the unlimited long distance, I'd still have to hang on to my cell phone at its current rate for the occasional use I make of it away from home.

Nice try, Verizon, but you're not getting a penny extra from me. And as soon as I finish wiring my massive can-and-string network across Maryland, I'm ditching you altogether!

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Canadian Capitalist's Carnival of Cpersonal Cfinance

2006-03-06T17:06:00.000-05:00

The Canadian Capitalist is hosting this week's edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. It includes a hyperlink (50% more betterer than regular links) to my recent article on the suckiness of February. If you missed the article last time, this is your absolute last chance to read it before the end of this paragraph. Don't miss out!

A reminder that I am hosting the Carnival of Bagels in the Shape of Academy Award-Winning Actresses. So far I have received ten submissions of bagels that look nothing like Academy Award-winning actresses. Perhaps I should stick with the personal finance carnivals...

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carnivals

Personal Update: I Sold Our Cow For Three Magic Beans...

2006-03-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

...But then I traded those three magic beans to someone even dumber for two cows! Heh, you might say I made a lot of moooooooolah on that deal.

February was an eventful month for the financial holdings of Funny Munny Investment Company Incorporated LLC. We enjoyed our semi-annual vacation at the Katsucon anime convention in D.C., but that resulted in a slight hit to our savings. You'll note, however, that my net worth figure jumped from $32,288 to $38,660. That $6,000 is thanks almost exclusively to the government being kind enough to return the interest-free loan I gave it last year. Once I tweak my W-4, that little snafu won't be repeated next year.

Thanks to the savings rate war currently raging between the big internet banks, all of our cash savings are now out of Emigrant Direct's measly 4.25% and into HSBC's manly 4.80% for the time being. If this keeps up, I expect to be earning interest at a rate of one billion percent annually sometime in 2007.

I also diverted $500 into an account at Prosper.com, a new peer-to-peer loan website where people bid on personal loans. I'm still waiting for the funds to show up in my Prosper account after four days; the money must be traveling by stationary rock. I'll be sure to post more about my experiences with Prosper... once I have some experiences with Prosper.

Thanks to a reorganized annual performance cycle, our next raises at work will come into effect this week. A lot of my co-workers have been a little dissatisfied with the amount of their pay hikes, but I'm perfectly happy with my 6% jump especially since I just had a 4% hike in October. I expect to be putting in loads of overtime over the next couple of months as we begin our transition to the next-generation version of our product, so that'll mean some extra dollars in the paycheck. Of course, that also means I'll be curling up with some light reading this weekend--a 700-page software design document. Riveting and pulse-pounding!

And finally, since I'm a goal-oriented person, I've set myself a goal for this month of working more on Funny Munny. That means more frequent updates, more efforts to grow my audience, and more funny stuff shooting out of my head and flying into yours like a big screaming ball of financial hilarity. Here it comes! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH$$$$$$$$$$$!!!

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Forget April--February Is the Cruelest Month

2006-02-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

I think February is the shortest month on purpose--it's simply not as likeable as the other months. April is nice because spring is in full bloom. July and August are warm, sunny, and a great time to take a vacation. Even December outranks February on the awesomeness scale because it throws in Christmas to help keep away the winter blues. But February, it's cold and miserable and the only holidays in it put the spotlight on groundhogs and greeting card companies. You'd think I would be thrilled that February usually ends after 28 days, but its abbreviated length just serves to make February the least favorite month not just for me but for my wallet as well.

To see why February earns the ire of my finances, consider how many monthly bills you pay. Things like gas, water, telephone, and electricity might come to mind. Of those four I just mentioned, which is most different from the others? You'll probably choose telephone if you participate in a fixed-price plan where usage doesn't impact the monthly charge. For all the others, your bill each month depends on how much gas, water, or electricity you crank into your home. These kinds of bills don't really care how long the billing period is; you'll pay the same amount per diem if you're billed once a month that you'd pay if you were billed weekly, yearly, or even hourly!

Those fixed monthly charges, however, usually don't take into account the length of a month. If your rent is due every month on the 1st, you'll pay the same regardless of whether the month is 30 or 31 days long. You'll obviously get the most benefit out of services that charge a flat monthly rate during months with 31 days. But February, geez! Not only do you miss out on the benefit of 31-day months, you lose another two days!

Let's consider a semi-hypothetical situation based loosely on my own finances. Say we have a person whose basic living expenses look like this during the month of April (a 30-day month):

There are plenty of other expenses this person will incur, but these will do for our purposes. For expenses, I included the equivalent per-diem charges calculated simply by dividing the monthly cost by 30. For income, since this person only works Monday through Friday, I calculated his income per diem based on a 22-day work month. You can see that, after basic expenses, this person has about $81 left for other purposes each of those 30 days.

Now let's consider a 28-day February with only 20 work days:

Assuming daily usage remains the same in February and April, this person will have slightly smaller gas, electric, water, and grocery bills. Since rent and telecommunication bills remain the same, their per-diem equivalent charge goes up almost four bucks over April's. When you take into account the slight hit to monthly income from those two missing work days, this person's discretionary income goes down $7.60 a day in February!

To keep this from becoming just another personal finance rant, I'll throw in some advice for dealing with the cruelty of February. Instead of counting your pennies monthly like I'm doing here, consider your income and expenses on an annualized basis. That way, lengths of months don't really matter to your income or expenses... unless you've got one of those crazy leap years. In that case, just take a cue from the groundhog and go back in your hole for six weeks.

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Super-Sizing My Commute: Only If I Can Use the Corporate Jet

2006-02-27T19:22:00.000-05:00

While I was walking from the parking lot into my building at work this morning, I was thinking about how I really love my commute. Just six minutes is enough to get me and my MINI Cooper from our apartment to my workplace, and in the summer I might start walking or biking instead. Five months ago we lived a 90-minute car ride from where I work. Since a commute is a two-way deal, this meant I was on the road for three hours a day, four days a week (I work from home on Fridays, even now). To put it lightly, the commute took quite a toll on me. While my car is quite comfortable and the drive was mostly through country roads, three hours of my day were going to waste. So in October, I said "enough!" and we packed our bags--a lot of bags. The move was grueling, but I can say it was totally worth it. And even the higher rent that we pay now isn't enough to cancel out the bliss of having an extra eleven hours each week.

This morning, I get a call from my manager. He wants to see me. I never like these unscheduled calls, but they've never been about anything bad so far (just raises and promotions). Today's wasn't necessarily bad as it was simply my manager trying to find out who might be interested in working on another project at a location about 45 minutes away. My current manager just took over for my previous manager who is away on maternity leave, but he knows that I just moved to the area a few months ago primarily because I wanted an ultra-short commute. Our meeting was short, and rather than reject the offer outright, I hinted that I maybe possibly could be sort of interested a little I guess.

Even if I accepted an offer at the new location, it wouldn't start for a little while. My current project is beginning to wind down, and our team will soon transition to the next-generation version of the product. And as important as our team's role is on the current project, I have no doubt that they'd want all of us to continue working on the next. My manager suggested that some people may be transitioned to other projects anyway despite the fact that the next-generation project is ten times bigger than the current one, though I can't imagine anyone would forcibly reassign anyone on our team because we're already putting in tons of overtime on the older project while it's ramping down. I also know that if I went to my team leader and mentioned that forces above us are looking to relocate me, he would not be happy since we're going to need even more experienced man-power after transitioning to the next project.

But I have an icky taste in my mouth about this. Will I soon be facing a "relocate or re-employ somewhere else" scenario? Should I have flatly refused my manager's offer? Or should I have jumped at the opportunity ... without even knowing what the opportunity really is yet?

In the end, it all comes down to the commute. Is there anything that could convince me to trade this lovely hop-skip-and-a-jump drive to work for a butt-clenchingly painful one? Maybe...

Things I Might Take In Trade For A Much Longer Commute

Interesting, enjoyable work. I like my current project, and the next-generation one will be even more challenging and exciting. But a new opportunity could be even more interesting, and I might find that I enjoy it even more than what I do now. A job I like is a pre-requisite that cannot be ignored, so this comes above all else.

A hefty pay hike. A new assignment means the opportunity for a new salary. If I'm going to lose 90 extra minutes a day to driving, I expect bags with dollar signs on them to be sitting in the passenger seat to keep me company. But if this were the only incentive to relocate, how much of a raise would be enough to "buy" me? 10%? 20%? 10,000%? I doubt I'll know for sure until I see the offer.

More telecommuting. It's quite fortunate that I still get to work from home on Fridays even after moving to within stone-throwing distance of my workplace. There are still mornings, however, that I'd rather not put on pants and just curl up on the sofa with my laptop and do my job from there. My current project is one that works very well with telecommuting. But what about this new project? Would I need to be in the office 40-60 hours a week? Could I work Fridays from home? Or would I be able to work even more from home--say, three or four days a week? Allowing me to do the majority of my time from home would help offset the extra commute on work-at-office days.

Advancement opportunities. Staying put, I don't really need to worry about opportunities to grow and advance in the organization because this is the biggest location with the largest projects. The new location is smaller, but the project is newer and there may be some room to quickly climb the ladder. I don't think I'd get a promotion right off the bat since I just got one a few months ago, but if the long-term outlook is better than in my current location, I'd be more open to seeking those opportunities in another location.

No other choice. In the two years I've been here, I don't think anyone in this location has been laid off. In fact, there's an impending talent crisis over the next decade as our baby-boomer senior staff members start retiring. There's even a special program for developing leadership skills in younger employees that I've been tapped to begin this year. On top of all that, we are transitioning to a larger project with a particular need for my set of skills. So I'm not worried about my continued employment with this company. That said, should the situation be presented to me as "move or be removed," I'll bear the heftier commute with a grin ... and keep my resume up-to-date.

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Ten Red Flags That Will Definitely Get Your Tax Return Audited

2006-02-23T16:13:00.000-05:00

We've probably all read the lists of common red flags to watch out for when filling out your taxes that could trigger an IRS audit, but most of them are things you can't change. If you gave $100,000 to charity this year but only made $100,000, you must be one awesome guy or girl, and the IRS should reward you for that instead of drilling you for days like a cavity-riddled tooth.

What the IRS won't tell you about are the red flags that, no matter what else you do, will get you audited for sure. Now while I don't work for the IRS, I can still promise you that any one of the following is almost sure to get you flagged for an audit:

Love IRS Audits? Try These!

Use creative media for your "paper" returns. While the IRS has strict guidelines for the weight, dirtiness, finish, porosity, gloss, and size of paper used for individuals printing their own tax forms, it does not go as far as to define "paper." The American Heritage Dictionary defines paper as "a material made of cellulose pulp, derived mainly from wood, rags, and certain grasses." Thus, according to the rules of the IRS, it would be perfectly acceptable to send in a tax return printed on a dirty old rag or even ground up marijuana. I also couldn't find any regulations on the color of forms filed with the IRS, so maybe give neon pink a try... or perhaps black ink printed on black paper!

Deny your existence. The IRS can't tax someone who isn't there! So when you're counting exemptions, be sure to omit yourself, and don't state that someone else can claim you. In fact, just send in a blank return with your address but no name.

Pay your tax bill in non-standard currency. Generally the IRS prefers United States dollars when you send them payment for taxes you owe at the end of the year. But at the same time, you prefer keeping your United States dollars in your Made in China pocket book. Keep in mind the purposes for which your tax dollars are used: feeding the poor, funding our military, protecting endangered species, etc. So instead of sending the IRS a check or paying by credit card, pay your taxes with coupons for free food (remember, one Jr. Frosty equals $1), spare ammunition you have sitting around the house, or any endangered red-speckled tree toads you may have stashed away in your closet. You'll save the government the hassle of converting that currency into services, so I'm sure they'll give you a break on your tax bill.

Amend like there's no tomorrow. Some of you may be familiar with IRS Form 1040X--the form you send after you file a 1040 if you'd like to make a correction. You might file this if you forget some deductions or your filing status changes. Typically you'll wait for the 1040 to reach the IRS and be processed before sending in a 1040X. But that's no fun! Instead, start the year off with an amendment to a return you haven't yet filed. Then file the actual return. Then file another amended return. And then, just for kicks, become your own non-profit organization, file another amended return, and then file three more amended returns claiming each of the three children you forgot you gave birth to a few years ago.

Your adjusted gross income: infinity. The IRS tax tables have one minor flaw: they only work on finite numbers. Indeed, how can you take 25% or 33% of a number you can't even see 100% of? Simply fill in your AGI as infinity, ask the IRS to compute your tax for you, and watch as their tax calculator enters an endless loop while determining your tax.

Encode your tax return. Pretend that your 1040 is a top secret government document that could fall into enemy hands. When the form asks for dollar amounts, fill in something like "TRH,OAP." Then, in a separate correspondance, include the decipher key that reveals T=1, R=4, H=7, ... Alternately, use a number-to-number encoding so that a 5 really means 0 and an AGI of $507,291 translates as $4,671. And for you computer geeks out there, since your tax return is going into a computer anyway, save the IRS a step and compute your taxes due in binary. Then gripe when the IRS doesn't cut you a check for $10010110101110101.

File your return ... UPSIDE DOWN!!! When you go to put your tax forms into their envelope, place the pages in upside down. The IRS computers will read everything backwards, so it'll see your AGI as your federal withholdings and vice versa. You'll instantly go from a tax bill of $2,000 to a refund of $20,000!

One way to invite an audit: do it literally. Instead of filing a 1040 this year, break out some of that stationery you have left over from your wedding and compose the following note: "You are invited to attend the audit of Mr. and Mrs. INSERT NAME HERE at our home on April 15th. Refreshments will be provided. Bring your own receipts."

Return the favor of fine print. The IRS wouldn't hesitate for a second to give you an extra 50 pages of instructions to read when filling out your tax return if it meant more revenue for them. You shouldn't hesitate to send some right back to them. Include the following text in the margins of your 1040 in tiny print: "By auditing this return, you agree to pay us the sum of one hundred million dollars, and there's no way in hell we're going to pay a single dime of taxes on that amount."

Tell them where all your money's really coming from. On the line that asks for your occupation, simply write "MacGyver." Then attach your W-2s with duct tape.

And as an added bonus, should you attempt all of these activities in a single tax return, not only will you get an IRS audit, but you'll probably also receive a visit from some nice men in white jackets and a trip to a lovely room with padded walls. Just be sure to scream "I'm counting this as a medical deduction!" as they haul you away.

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taxes

Follow-Up to $1 Domain Sale, Or How to Make A Lot of People Hate Your Company

2006-02-15T21:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I mentioned that Dotster.com would be holding a one-hour, $1 domain name sale. February 14th at 4pm EST came and went, and I'm willing to bet that very few people got their $1 domain names. Why? Because Dotster followed a fabulously evil formula to get some cheap advertising. I've written the formula in more general terms so that any evildoers out there can duplicate it.

Sell an item for twice its price elsewhere. In Dotster's case, that item was a domain name registration. Dotster's regular price for one year of registration is about $15. Competitors like Yahoo!, GoDaddy, and RegisterFly regularly sell their domain registrations for half that or less.

Advertise a drastic discount for a very limited time. Dotster announced it would sell all domain name registrations for $1 (a mere third of the cheapest normal price around) ... but only during a 60-minute window.

Watch news of the sale spread across the internet, and even help it spread, too! News of the Dotster sale made most of the big deal sites as well as Digg and the most important and awesome blog in the entire world, Funny Munny.

Do nothing else. Don't try to shore up your web server or request more bandwidth from your host. In fact, if you are your own web host, you should move your online storefront to a smaller server and cut the bandwidth a few minutes before the sale starts.

Sit back, relax, and watch the server timeouts. If you did everything else correctly, you'll have thousands of people simultaneously connecting to a website meant for no more than two or three visitors an hour. Anyone who manages to get the front page to load will still have to struggle with a checkout process which you should have expanded from the usual two or three pages to ten or twenty pages. And just in case anyone should make it to the last page of checkout, recode the final Submit Order button so that it calls a script that doesn't exist.

Indeed, I have spoken to just one person who managed to complete the order process during Dotster's Hour of Evil. It took him the entire hour just to get through one domain registration.

Had Dotster been truly evil, it would have gone ahead and registered any domain names customers attempted to purchase during the sale hour. Then it could kindly offer to sell them the domains for the usual $15/year registration fee. Maybe Dotster was visited by the Ghost of E-Commerce Failures Future and had a change of heart.

Still, Dotster got a lot of advertising out of this ploy, and it won't take many domain name registrations to make up for the handful of $1 domains customers mananged to grab. I, however, won't be making any purchases from Dotster for one simple reason: you just have to wonder how reliable a web hosting company is that can't keep its own website up during heavy traffic.

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$1 Domain Name Registration

2006-02-14T16:01:00.000-05:00

Via Digg, here's a great deal for anyone who's been holding out on registering a domain name. At 4pm EST today (about five minutes from when I'm writing this), Dotster.com will have a "happy hour" during which domain name registration will be on sale for just $1.

It might only be a few bucks saved off the usual Yahoo! and GoDaddy prices, but this is an especially useful deal if you're looking to pick up a whole bunch of domains at one time! How many domains can you register in just an hour?

read more | digg story

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deals

Don't Be Afraid to Use Your Credit Card When Dining Out In A Group

2006-02-12T23:21:00.001-05:00

How many times in your life have you gone out to a restaurant with a group of people--say, four or more--and when it comes time to pay the check, everyone throws some cash on the table. Whether everyone pays for their own food or the bill gets split evenly among everyone, a group meal typically results in a big pile of assorted bills.

If you're like me, you don't usually carry a lot of cash in your wallet. When you eat out alone or with one other person, you use your credit card, especially if it's a reward card that you pay off every month. But when you'll be going out with several friends or co-workers, you might make a quick trip to the ATM on the way so you can contribute to that pile of cash that inevitably forms at the end of the meal.

Of course, you could pay for your part of the meal with a credit card; but when everyone else is flashing the green stuff, you may feel compelled to do the same. Is it the peer pressure? Is it because of the stigma that comes with being a "credit card user?" Whatever the reason you might have to keep the credit card in your wallet, it's a bad one. With reward cards like the Citi Professional MasterCard that give 3% back on restaurant transactions and tons of other cards that offer 1% cash back on everything, paying cash at a restaurant is like paying extra sales tax. So forget what other people may think when you break out the plastic to pay for your food. (Oh, and watch out for people who might short-change the pot--there's one at every company.)

While you've got that credit card out, why not put everyone's bill on it? Just say you don't have the cash on you and offer to "simplify" things by using your reward credit card to pay the bill. If everyone agrees, pocket that pile of bills on the table and think to yourself that you'll be getting a percent back of the total bill.

Consider this example. Say you and nine of your friends go out to eat and the final bill is $100 including tip. If your part of the bill is $10 and you use a 3% cash back reward card, you'll make three bucks if you take the cash pile and put the whole thing on your card. In essence, you're getting 30% off your own meal. Heck, if you're really daring and don't embarrass easily, why not go from table to table at the restaurant offering the same service to unwitting cash-payers?

Now what do you think would happen if a bunch of personal finance bloggers got together at a restaurant? Once thing's for sure: you would be able to hear the sound of plastic hitting table from outer space.

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Inside My Wallet: Please Please Please Be A Million Dollars ... Dang

2006-02-07T17:05:00.000-05:00

It's been a popular topic as of late, so I figure it might be amusing to explore the contents of my own wallet. Or, if not amusing, then at least incredibly boring.

In the billfold

$16 in cash. Two fives, six ones.

Receipts. Both for credit card purchases. One is for gasoline (thought I had lost this one). The other is for dinner last Saturday--Cheeburger Cheeburger; I ate the 20 oz. burger and got my picture up on the wall. I still feel it in my stomach.

In the card slots

Credit cards. I just keep my Citi Shell MasterCard and Bank of America Visa on me.

Club cards. Safeway and Giant at the front since they get used the most. Sam's Club and Super Fresh are in there, too. I'll probably ditch them both since there is no Super Fresh around where we moved and I don't intend to renew the Sam's Club membership.

Gift cards. I think all of them only have a few bucks left on them. Two for Target, one for Outback Steakhouse, and one for Bed Bath & Beyond. There's also a Dave & Buster's game card with a few bucks left on it.

Metro farecards. Two of them. Each has 30 cents left on it. They're from our recent day trip to Washington, D.C. They'll get used soon enough, I'm sure.

Movie theater cards. One for United Artists, the other for AMC. You're supposed to get free popcorns and drinks if you use them a bunch of times. I don't think we've ever gotten anything like that, but we rarely go to movie theaters anyway.

Insurance cards. Optimum Choice for medical, EyeMed for vision, and Delta Dental for toothy goodness. Had two cards for GEICO; one was expired so I just threw it away.

In the picture holders

Driver's license and change of address card. I look really angry in my license picture. Oh, maybe it was the three-hour wait!

Pictures of Tegan. Five of them, though I just noticed none of them are from the last few years. I've got the first one I ever took of her, another in her cute little blue swimsuit that's my favorite, two of her in dresses at various dances (one from before I even knew her) and the last of her wearing a blue wig. No wedding picture!!! I need to correct that!

I should note that I did clean out my wallet a few months ago. It was much worse back then--lots of little scraps of paper with outdated information, expired cards of all sorts, and even a picture of an ex-girlfriend (oops!).

It's probably also worth mentioning that I'm one of the few people I know who carries his wallet in his front pocket instead of the back. It's easier to secure that way (now pickpocketers just grope my butt) and I don't have to sit on it all day.

Maybe I'll take an inventory of Tegan's wallet. I just can't let her find out about it until I'm done!

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personal

Tax Return Time: It's Like the Exact Opposite of Christmas

2006-02-04T15:50:00.000-05:00

With all of the necessary W-2s and 1099s and NCC-1701-Ds finally in my documentation bucket, I sat down last night and this afternoon to set them all on fire. Then, with the documents that refused to burn, I did my federal and state tax returns. What follows is the sad tale of a young couple, some tax software, and three bottles of inexpensive wine.

Chapter The First: Preparations For Battle

The last of six needed tax documents arrived in the mail on Monday. It was my 1099-INT from Bank of America. At first, I wondered why they were sending me one since I had just opened accounts with them in November and had earned a total of 13 cents interest with them. "Don't forget that $50 account opening bonus," the 1099-INT politely reminded me. I told the 1099 where it could go, but it stayed on my desk instead.

The other documents had arrived in weeks previous and included...

My W-2. I elected to receive my W-2 electronically, so it was available online by mid-January. Just under $58,000 in wages. The federal government had already taken $10,000 of that, and Maryland snatched up $4,000.

Tegan's W-2. These arrived next-to-last. Since she had just started at the end of the year, her wages totaled just $1,300 and her taxes withheld were minimal.

ING Direct 1099. Yup, got a $50 bonus from them, too.

Wachovia 1099. I need to close these accounts sometime. They paid me just over $100 in interest. Had my deposits been in ING or Emigrant the entire year, that amount would have been about seven times higher.

Tegan's Tuition 1098-T. Say that three times fast. Tegan returned to school a couple weeks ago, but since her tuition was paid in December, we could count it in our 2005 tax credits. This 1098-T quickly became my favorite tax document.

Even though the majority of our savings were in Emigrant Direct, they only got to ED in November and December and didn't quite make the interest needed to generate a 1099.

Chapter The Second: Attack of the Federal Government

I had already downloaded the 2005 edition of the awesomest tax software in the world: TaxACT. While downloading TaxACT, I was aware that H&R Block's TaxCut software was also available for free download. I chose to stick with TaxACT because I had already used it in 2004 and 2003.

Even though I downloaded it back in December, I waited to install TaxACT until yesterday. The installation process was painless, and I had the program up and running in no time. To start, it asked some basic questions and queried me as to whether I had data from TaxACT 2004. I did, somewhere on a backup DVD, but since the only thing that hadn't changed from last year was my name and social security number, I decided to start fresh.

The TaxACT interface was unchanged from previous years, but there were many more annoying "upgrade to a more betterer version of TaxACT for $12" interludes between steps. While $12 would get me a Maryland tax return and e-file without any extra work, I declined each time is was offered because I wasn't about to pay for something I could do for free.

I entered our W-2s and 1099s and Tegan's 1098-T fairly quickly, though copying exact numbers from the paper forms was a bit tedious. With wages and interest, our adjusted gross income came to about $59,000. Some magical calculations later, I saw the first sign of my anticipated refund in the corner of TaxACT's window: $4,900. I kicked myself a few times for giving the government such a lovely interest-free loan and promised to update my W-4s soon. I took the Hope credit for Tegan's tuition which allowed me to credit all $700 right from the taxes we owed. So that $4,900 turned into $5,600 just like that. We can take the Hope credit one more time for 2006 and then we'll be stuck with that crappy Lifetime Learning credit that only takes 20% of her tuition away from our taxes.

TaxACT then freaked out a bit. It detected that it was out-of-date, closed itself down, downloaded the latest version, installed it ... and then stayed closed. Why it didn't do all this when I first started it, I don't know. I manually restarted the program and found that it hadn't discarded the data I just finished entering, so I continued from where I left off.

Unlike last year, TaxACT had the option built-in to e-file our Federal return for free. I did so and gave it our bank account number for direct deposit. TaxACT kindly told me I'd be getting a couple of e-mails in the next several days letting me know how things go and that I'd need to send in a paper 8453-OL (Tax Document Permitting the IRS to E-Molest You). TaxACT then tempted me with a preview of our Maryland tax return like it always does. I printed a copy of our 1040, backed up the Federal data, and told TaxACT to take a hike.

Time to complete, from installation to filing: about an hour.

The Final Chapter: Wishing I Lived in Florida

The reason I turned down that $12 TaxACT offer to handle my state return: Maryland's free iFile. Not content to begin with a pedestrian letter like "e," Maryland's iFile is a simple but thorough substitute for Form 502. Like every year, I had to try a few times to remember my password, but once I got it right, all my basic information from last year automatically appeared. Unfortunately most of the data was wrong wrong wrong, so I put in the new address, phone numbers, and wife. It then prompted me for our Federal adjusted gross income and data from our W-2s. A few minutes later, it spit out our taxes owed and told me we'd be getting back $400. A little better than the $5,600 I had given to Uncle Sam, I thought. But when I noticed that our county tax was almost 60% of our state tax amount, I almost cried. I guess that's why Montgomery County is so much nicer than Baltimore County; we pay more for it.

A few button-pushes and some direct deposit information later, the return was sent to some guy in Annapolis who probably makes $10 an hour to push a button granting refunds. I had some trouble printing out a copy of the Form 502 because the PDF version didn't want to download. Fortunately the "text" version wasn't just plain text and looked just like the real Form 502 in full HTML. I printed off a PDF copy of it and shoved it in a folder with the dozen or so other PDFs I had generated.

Time to iComplete: 30 minutes on the button.

Epilogue

So we have about $6,000 heading our way, and that $6,000 will soon be sitting in our just-opened HSBC savings account earning 4.80% until the end of April. Next on my tax to-do list is updating those W-4s so not quite so much is taken out this year. Granted, we'll be earning quite a bit more in interest this year and paying more in tuition, so I'll have to take all that into account.

That refund still irks me a bit. Some people might love getting a $6,000 tax refund; me, I see that as about $200 in interest we missed out on. I thought about making that $200 up by eating sticks and slugs for a few weeks, but then Tegan made a yummy cake and I forgot all about it. Even typing this right now isn't enough to remind me.

And I'll probably forget to update my W-4, too ... especially once I get to those three bottles of wine.

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