See Me On The Tee Vee

Check this out! They actually didn't use very much of my footage.. but I'm glad they pronounced my name correctly. :) And they didn't use any of the shots of the guinea pigs which I think were definitely way more interesting than me talking.

Taking the big plunge

Today I filled out the paperwork - effective as of my payday at the end of April (since I get paid once a month) I will have about 86% of my salary deducted pre-tax and put into my retirement accounts. I have plenty of money in liquid savings, and will have more by then, so I know logically it will be perfectly fine even if I don't bring in another dime from CashDuck for at least six months, but it's still a little scary to only draw $500 of salary a month! (That is, before my deductions for my insurance premium, gym membership, and FSA.. that's why it's not 100% of my salary.) So I might only bring home $200 a month. I went in to my TIAA-CREF account and put in some allocations for it - I am hoping that the gibberishly named account that doesn't have any money in it is the 457. (All the other gibberishly named accounts have deposits from which I can figure out whether it's my involuntary contributions, voluntary contributions, or the Roth.)

I also signed up with Citi to get the $50 signup bonus (read about it here) but I forgot to put in the code. I was supposed to take out the code that was there, and enter another. Oh well, I can always use more bank accounts. :) I wonder what the original code was supposed to get you.

Yay!

TIAA-CREF found my thousand dollars. All is well again.

I'm more heavily thinking about sinking most of my salary into the retirement plan.. I am going to pay SO MUCH in taxes this year that I am trying to stick as much of it into tax-sheltered accounts as possible. (Still filling the Roth though, since I can't retroactively fill it five years from now when I am in a lower tax bracket.)

Life is just chugging along. I am really incredibly busy with CashDuck.. and of course I am not making it any easier for myself by advertising so much and getting lots of new users, and working on new site doodads. :)

Now is the time for the twiddling of thumbs

It seems like the days right before the 15th, when I get the bulk of the money and can start making payouts and transferring money and ordering cards, are longer than other days. The 15th is always a busy day for me - all the cards get ordered, and all the checks are written. So I'm looking forward to that.

Unfortunately, the other thing that goes on just before payouts are reversals - usually though if I don't feel that the member did anything wrong, I don't reverse the member's credit. So far this month I have gotten at least 10 Foreclosusre.com reversals and 4 Advertising Web Service reversals, and lots of CallWave signups were put "under review".. hopefully there won't be too many more reversals, but the bulk happen between now and the 14th, when the invoice is finalized.

O where o where has my thousand dollars gone

So I upped my voluntary retirement contributions for February, and they were duly taken out of my paycheck. However, they didn't show up in my TIAA-CREF account. This is bad. They always arrive at the same time as my work's contribution and my involuntary contribution, but this time something seems to have gone amiss and I am missing $1000. I notified TIAA-CREF and they are looking into it, and I notified my HR department and did not get a response. Let's hope one of them finds something soon.. I'm a little disappointed that I missed the really low stock prices day - TIAA-CREF said that when they credit the money, it'll buy shares at whatever price is current that day, not the day it was supposed to credit. (Dangit.)

Me And My SEP

So I just set up an SEP-IRA for myself, partially because then I can contribute for last year, and knock a good chunk off the taxes I owe, and because I came across this wonderful bit of logic from Five Cent Nickel:

As I noted above, you can contribute to your SEP-IRA as either the employer, the employee, or both. In the case of the latter, it counts against your annual IRA contribution limit, so it reduces the amount that you can contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA. But in the case of the former, there’s no effect on your annual IRA contribution limit. Thus, it seems that you can use employer contributions to your SEP-IRA as a way of legally exceeding the IRS contribution limits.

Brilliant!

See, an SEP can't be set up as a Roth, but you can still deduct it from your taxes, and you can contribute up to 25% of what your business makes each year. So I can contribute my money to either the SEP or into my workplace accounts, and it doesn't make any difference. This is attractive because depositing into my workplace accounts can't exactly be done when I have a bit of spare cash - I have to fill out a form and hope they process it before my next paycheck. ALSO, I could roll it over into a Roth whenever I pleased, and I'm not limited to waiting until I leave this job. So I could have my 403b, my 457b, my Roth IRA, AND my SEP IRA.. drool. (I'm definitely in the savings-is-addictive club.)

Gonna be on the tee-vee

So about two weeks ago, I was contacted by a journalist who was looking for someone to be interviewed on camera about the new ING checking account. Apparently, I was the first person to say yes. A camera guy came to my house and filmed me talking about the account, at my computer using it, and then about 15 minutes of footage of me feeding the guinea pigs (including a couple minutes of extreme closeup, where his camera was almost touching the cage and they were eating a piece of celery right in front of the lens.) No idea how this will turn out, but I hope that gets in. :) This story is essentially going to be sold to a bunch of smaller networks, who will have their local news anchor read the copy and dub it over, so hopefully it will start appearing on the Web in late March. I'll post one if I find it.