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April 2014 Month in Review: Money
Taxes made our month kind of wacky! We paid the rest of the federal tax we owed (after our estimated tax payment from January) and finally brought “home” our EPF income from 2013. We were waiting on transferring the EPF money out of its account because we hadn’t done our taxes yet. Now that we have, we pulled over our net profits and divided it as we always do: Part to taxes, part to giving, … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
What Do You Wish You Had Discussed before Marriage?
I have two questions for you today and I really want to get your answers in the comments! I’ve been thinking a lot recently about premarital preparation as I have a lot of friends who are engaged or newlyweds or are on their way to engagement. Because I believe that if you agree with your partner about your money you agree about your life to a great extent, I think that really hashing out in detail … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage
Grad School vs. Blogging vs. Career vs. Money
It’s finally time to give you all a life update! As I’ve hinted a few times recently, there have been some big changes in our plans. Grad School Last week, my advisor made the official announcement that he is moving to another university at the end of the summer. He first alerted us to the possibility back in January, so I’ve had a few months to assimilate the news. At that time, he and I discussed it … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging, career, grad school, income, savings
Blog Statistics Update March – April 2014
I actually stuck to my decision from last month to reduce my posting schedule even though it’s been really hard. In the last four weeks I’ve written six articles and done one roundup, when it used to be twelve and four. I miss writing as much as I used to and I definitely miss the greater volume of interactions with my commenters. But it’s actually really good that I made the decision to post less … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging, month in review
Virginia Sent Me to Collections for Dodging Taxes
That sounds like an exaggerated, sensationalist headline, but it isn’t! The commonwealth of Virginia thinks that I failed to pay the income tax I owed in 2009, and last month they sent my information over to a debt collector, who renewed the efforts to track me down. Me – the personal finance blogger and tax reporting enthusiast – accused of not paying my taxes! In this post I will detail this experience, which from my perspective … Read entire article »
Why Harvey Mudd College Tops the Payscale ROI Rankings
… and why prospective college students should ignore the rankings. Payscale.com comes out with a yearly ranked list of the colleges that produce the highest-paid graduates. My and Kyle’s alma mater, Harvey Mudd College, has topped the list (some permutations of it, anyway) for the past few years. And while I love that Mudd gets nationwide press coverage every time the new rankings come out, I don’t recommend that prospective college students use them to choose … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, college, grad school, income
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comment Late March 2014
Hi everyone! I’m sure you noticed that the blog has been much quieter. I decided a couple weeks ago to reduce my posting schedule and it has been really hard! I miss interacting with you all more frequently. I think writing only 1-2 times per week might be more difficult than writing 3 times per week because posts topics and execution are not as front of mind. This roundup post is going to cover the rest of March after my last weekly update. In the future I’ll post these on the first Sunday of the month covering the entire previous month. Thankfully Kyle and I have another online project we’re working on so my time usually spend on EPF and in the PF blogosphere has been devoted to developing that project. … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
March 2014 Month in Review: Money
Kyle commented to me this month about how our budget really doesn’t have any fat in it. He was trying to convince me to pay an extra $5 for blog hosting and he was grasping to equate it to some other typical throwaway purchase that we have, like a $5 coffee – but he realized he couldn’t think of any examples on that scale. Our budget really is tightly constructed in the sense that we … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
Incentivized Viral Advertising
A few weeks ago, one of my (remote) Facebook friends who has a PhD linked to a training program for data scientists. As you know, I’m incredibly undecided about what my first post-PhD job will be, so I’m always kind of on the lookout for ideas for how to leverage my PhD. I checked out the link and it actually sounded like a really great deal. The training program is new this year and is a … Read entire article »
Filed under: career
How to Enter 1099-MISC Fellowship Income into TaxACT
This post is the second in this series on how to convince tax software to accept grad student fellowship income – last week was TurboTax, this week is TaxACT. I’ll refer you to sections of that post so I don’t have to repeat the information but you also don’t miss it. Please read two words of caution regarding my qualifications (none) and the wisdom of using tax software to begin with. Also, please again ignore the … Read entire article »
Filed under: grad school, taxes
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