Accountant by Day

I’m sure to people setting up offices, cubes are a great idea. You can put a bunch of workstations in a big space without having to build interior walls or block out windows. You can easily rearrange the layout of office. Your employees are never far from the prying eyes and ears of the rest of your staff, so conceivably, they may even work more. But cubes just feel wrong.

Yay! Got the letter about my escrow adjustment for the upcoming year. I predicted last month that my escrow payment would be adjusted down from $560 a month to about $425. The actual adjustment will bring the escrow amount down to $410! Plus, due to the slight overpayment this year, they will apply $9/month of overpayment to next year’s monthly payment. The reduced escrow amount will only come into effect March 1, but I am looking forward to having $150 extra per month.

Our tax busy-season is almost over. I have been working as slowly as possible on my final return today - because it’s not even really due on Monday, but I do want everything to be over with by the end of Monday. In the past week I’ve gone vacillated between firmly deciding to quit my job, to looking forward to next year, when I’ll know so much more. Friday was stressful just from being tired, not from actual problems or deadlines.

I made a few trips to the grocery store this weekend, but managed to not get anything to take for lunch this week. I decided to stick it out until next weekend anyway, since I had some cans of soup, and I have bread. It’s not my favorite, but I can be happy with that for a week. However, we don’t have a can opener at work, so I packed mine to use with my soup today.

I’m pretty unhappy with the way BlueHost handled my domain change. First, they were very unclear about how the process would happen, so I ended up having to scramble to get it done on time. Then, they moved all my files from my old domain to my new one, which destroyed what I had saved on my new domain, plus, I couldn’t restore the old domain properly so I lost all of that… and yeah.

I need to figure out how to word an email to this guy who used to work for our client, because his relationship with the client is terminated as of today, but he still hasn’t signed the tax return and sent it to us… but the client doesn’t have any other representative in the country who can sign it. “Dear Sir, I know you probably don’t give a rat’s a** about this return being filed on time, but do you think you could please sign it and send it back today?

When folks a couple of decades older than I am talk about their parents, they often talk about how their parents were a product of the Great Depression, and even once the economy was going strong, they never really started to spend much money anyway. Their frugal habits were too ingrained to break. What kind of economic crisis would it take for our nation to once again produce a generation that averse to spending money?

This video has a funny take on the tips people give you for interviewing. This is my first sponsored post, so yes, I am getting paid for putting this up. But I really found this video to be entertaining, so I promise, it’s worth it to take a look!

When the mortgage agent quoted me a monthly payment, I hoped it had all the costs included - since that’s what I asked him to quote me. I think he told me $750/month for a $130,000 home. I ended up offering $136,500 on the house, which is a bit more, but when I got the final paperwork, it turns out my actual monthly payments will be $950! Here’s how you can estimate your own mortgage payment to determine how much you can really afford:

Here’s the theoretical situation - you have a coworker that you consider to be at the same experience level as you or below. However, this coworker is being paid more than you, and you feel that the coworker is recognized as more experienced than you. You go to your boss to voice your concerns, and your boss agrees that you have more experience - which would you prefer to receive in response to your meeting with your boss: