Accountant by Day

A new way to build a stock portfolio You may have noticed a new investing platform–Motif Investing–popping up all over the personal finance blogosphere over the last few months. It has received a lot of press thanks to a generous bonus offered to existing customers who get new customers to sign up, as well as being an innovative service. Since most everyone who’s talking about it is hoping you’ll click on their affiliate link to sign up, it’s hard to find objective information.

I am working my way through all the posts of 60kProject.com, a lovely, inspiring blog that follows the progress of Sarah and Mike as they attempt to pay off $60k of debt in one year. At the beginning, they needed to pay $5,000/month to get to 60k paid off in one year. At this point, they are so far ahead of schedule that their remaining monthly payments needed to hit 60k are closer to $1,000/month.

June is budget repair month for AccountantByDay! We are almost halfway through 2011, and I have completely blown my budget, thanks to some unexpected vet bills, going over budget on eating out, financing the building of a new fence around our house, and a shopping trip for dog agility equipment. Find the easiest costs to cut first Like a nerd, I am applying some principles I learned in management class in high school: the first place to fix is the place that is EASIEST to repair and has the largest IMPACT.

And it tastes delicious! Ermm … at least I hope so? So I thought that May would be my “slow” month. The time between audit busy season and tax busy season. Well, I kicked off May with a client project that I had to work on over the weekend - i.e. the client wanted it ready and reviewed Monday morning, but I didn’t have the data to begin until Friday afternoon.

Well, the home purchase is moving along. I’ve had my inspection, the seller has agreed to do some (but not all) of my requested repairs, and the loan paperwork has been sent off to the underwriters. Of course, buying a home in the middle of busy season is ridiculous. My father agreed to have power of attorney for me, so that he can go to the closing if I can’t get off of work that day.

Help! My land lord has just handed me a lease to sign, expecting it back immediately! I am very unhappy with certain parts of it, so I need to decide how to proceed.   photo by shho @ sxc.hu Here’s the back story I moved into the house I’m living in now at the end of November last year (2010.) At the time, the house was owned by a couple N and J, but my roommate L had signed the whole lease herself in September, and then found R, our other roommate, and myself to move in and split the rent.

The Durbin Amendment kicked in on October 1st and now, the fees that retailers chuck over for debit card transactions are nearly half of what they used to be. There’s no doubt this cuts into a bank’s bottom line, but is that really the reason for imposing such excessive fees for debit card usage? Bank of America sent a strong message when they announced their new monthly fee. Instead of levying a more palatable fee of just $1 or $2, they tell us it will be a big fat fee of $5… an amount so high, that it’s outright offensive.

I decided to get a bike sooner, rather than later, since we are getting some Spring weather here, which is the perfect time for bike riding. I didn’t want to wait a couple of months to get one, only to find that summer is already here, and it’s too hot to be quite as enjoyable. I know that craigslist is a good place to get a bicycle, but to be honest, I didn’t spend too much time looking there.

What are you more afraid of? Losing your memory towards the end of your life, or death itself? An article from the New Yorker (July 29, 2013 edition) says that more baby boomers are scared of the former than the latter. Then again, humans may just be bad at answering that question, since I’ve also heard the statistic that public speaking is the number one fear that Americans harbor in their hearts, and that death is only ranked second.

Payment: 1,751.83 Principal: 250.97 Prepayment: 575.00 (interest savings generated = 829.30) Interest: 365.16 Escrow: 560.70 The “interest saved” number is satisfyingly high this early on in the mortgage life. Escrow is annoyingly high, because I accidentally didn’t get the exemption due to me on property taxes last year, so the monthly payment was increased to cover the shortfall. I’m hoping this will go down to under $425 in March when this is readjusted.