How To Save Money When Moving House

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The following article is by MPFJ staff writer, Miss T from Prairie Eco-Thrifter. If you want to learn how to live your dream life in a sustainable, healthy, and money savvy way, check out her site here.

Moving house can be traumatic, tiring, and expensive. Good organization and forward planning can help to make the process easier and simpler, and there are also strategies that can save you money when moving house.

I’ve done it several times, and I’m not sure it’s one of those things that gets easier the more times you do it! However, I have learned a few tricks along the way that might be able to help you cut the costs of moving.

Money-Saving Idea # 1 – Start Early! 

The first thing is to start early. As soon as you know you will be moving, even if you don’t have a moving date yet, start making plans and getting organized. The first decision is who is going to move your household from one address to another? The sooner you start to gather moving quotes, the better chance you have of finding the best deal. Not that the cheapest quote is necessarily the best deal, but if you aren’t rushed into choosing a moving company, you at least will have time to compare quotes and make the right decision.

Make sure all the quotes you get include the same things, so you can make a fair comparison. Remember to factor in insurance; some moving companies include this in their quote, but you have to organize your own with others.

Money-Saving Idea # 2 – Can You Do the Move Yourself With the Help of Friends and Family?

Of course, if you really want to save money when moving house, you should consider moving yourself. Hiring a truck, roping in a few beefy friends, and moving your own stuff will work out much cheaper than hiring a moving company. Take into consideration your fitness and energy levels, the time you have to do the job, and the loyalty of the friends you would ask to help. You won’t save any money if you end up so exhausted you need to take two weeks off work after the move! Check out the prices from several truck hire companies and make sure you ask whether they supply a hydraulic lift with the moving truck. This piece of equipment will save you loads of time and muscle in loading and unloading heavy pieces.

Money-Saving Idea # 3 – Try to Find Free Moving Boxes Before Buying New Expensive Ones

Packing boxes are an essential part of moving house. These can be purchased from a variety of outlets, but they are quite expensive. Look online and in local newspapers for people who have used packing boxes available for sale. These are much cheaper than new boxes, and you could even find someone who is giving them away for free. This will represent a huge cash saving. When you have finished with your boxes, you can pass them on to someone else who is planning to move house. You will need different sizes of boxes to accommodate different types and weights of items. Just remember to pack heavy things, like books, in smaller boxes so you don’t lose the bottom out of a box in the middle of the street – it has happened! 

Note from Jacob: Another good place to look for free boxes (that I have personally used in my 3 moves) is liquor/beer/wine stores. They receive tons of great moving-sized boxes with their products, and always are happy to give them away for free to get rid of them.

Money-Saving Idea # 4 – Don’t Move Unwanted or Broken Household Items

Everything you need to move will cost you to transport it. This is why it is a great idea to get all family members to have a clean-out and de-clutter well before moving day comes around. You can save money by not having to move items that are not needed or are broken. Better to throw them out or give them away now, rather than pay to move them and then throw them out.

Money-Saving Idea # 5 – Pack Each Box Carefully

How you pack the moving boxes also has the potential to save you money; a badly-packed box could end up costing you money if there are breakages and you need to buy replacements. Always pack heavier things at the bottom, lighter things near the top, make sure everything is carefully wrapped in newspaper or tissue and leave no gaps. Use towels and linen as a soft buffer around the sides and top of boxes of fragile things. Anything really precious could perhaps be transported by car, rather than in the truck.

Money-Saving Idea # 6 – Perform the Thorough Move-Out Cleaning Yourself

Many people hire a cleaning company to come in and thoroughly clean their old house after they have moved everything out. This is a great idea, but it is expensive. To save cleaning costs, plan to do it yourself, gradually, over the week or two before your moving date comes around. Start packing in the room that is used the least, such as the guest room or the formal living room. As you pack up the room, move the boxes into the garage and empty the room of as much furniture as possible. Move remaining furniture into the middle of the room so you can wash down walls, windows and closets. If you can completely empty the room, all the better because then you can clean the carpets. When the room has been fully cleaned, close the door and put a sign on the door “Cleaned room; keep out.”

The more cleaning you can get done in the weeks leading up to your moving day, the less you will have to do at the last minute. At least try and get the bulk of the cleaning done so you just need to go over the floors when the house is empty.

Money-Saving Idea # 7 – Avoid Expensive Take-Out Meals on Moving Day

It is also a good idea to plan ahead as far as food for moving day is concerned. Buying take-out is expensive, so you need to think about food that you can prepare ahead of time to feed yourselves and your helpers. Remember, you will need lots of fluids during the day to replenish what will be lost through perspiration doing all that lifting and carrying. We usually have a one-dish meal prepared in advance and frozen so we have dinner ready for us when the day is finally over.

I hope these tips on how to save money when moving house will help you keep the expenses down when you come to be involved in this great adventure.

How about you all? How have you all saved money when you have moved? Have you tried any of these ideas above?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://prairieecothrifter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/iStock_000006943487XSmall.jpg

A Detailed Look Inside TurboTax’s Online Tax Preparation Platform – What is Free and What Must You Pay For?

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Tax season is in full flight here in the US. As I mentioned several days ago, if your taxes are very simple, please don’t pay someone $60 to help you fill out a 1040EZ federal tax return – fill it out yourself.

In my mind, an even better option for individuals without a business (if you own your own business, I honestly believe that you should have the help of CPA to make sure you don’t miss anything and to bounce ideas off of) over filling out the tax forms directly are to employ one of the many low-cost online tax preparation platforms available on the market. These platforms ask questions in normal language (read non-IRS talk), and then populate the numbers in to the tax forms for you. A pretty sweet deal in my book!

It’s pretty amazing to see how the online tax preparation business has grown over the past few years. In searching around the Internet, I found around 12 legitimate options currently available. Some of the newer/lesser known options are listed below:

• Free Tax USA
• eSmart Tax
• My Free Taxes
• eTax
• Free File (IRS)
• Tax Slayer
• eFile
• Express 1040
• Rapid Tax

However, without a doubt, the most widely-used online tax prep platforms are TurboTax, H&R Block, and Tax Act. 

Because of the wide spread use of these three platforms, I think it’s important for people to have a good working knowledge about what they offer. However, in my experience helping people with their taxes, the primary thing that my friends get confused about is what these programs offer for free, and what is it you have to pay for. More specifically, I find that they often end up paying for one of the service upgrades being offered, when in fact, their taxes were actually simple enough that they could have just used the free versions.

So, the purpose of this post series is to dissect each of these 3 most popular programs one-by-one to determine what they offer, what is free, and what you need to pay for. Let’s get started, shall we?

TurboTax

TurboTax is perhaps the most well known, oldest, and most respected tax preparation software and online platform. In fact, I can remember walking in to office supply/computer stores when I was 8 years old and seeing TurboTax being sold in the CD-ROM version (maybe even floppy disk, too? haha). As such, it’s the platform we will analyze first:

Shown below is the overall pricing for the various options on offer by TurboTax. In my opinion, this table is a nice overview of the options and is pretty self explanatory/clear for normal folks like us. There are four things that I want to make sure to point out though:

• You don’t actually pay for anything until you officially click “file taxes.” This means you can go through the system and fill in your tax information without worrying about accidentally paying for anything until the very end of the process. 
• The prices in red shown in the below screenshot are only the pricing for filing your federal tax return. What this means is that you will have to pay an extra fee on top of the ones shown in the chart below because you are required by law to file state taxes. Don’t be surprised by this!
• According to TurboTax’s State Tax filing pricing, it costs $28-$37 (price depends on current promos going on) per state to file your state taxes. 
• What this means is that the state tax filing is perhaps where TurboTax makes most of its money…..?
• One of the nice little perks about the paid versions of TurboTax is that they will automatically save and import your previous year’s tax information to the current year. They will also auto-populate your employer details based on solely their EIN. Nice things to have, but maybe not necessarily worth paying for if you are pressed for money..
• Finally, it’s a little confusing in reading the chart below, but if you have a self-employment business/income (including farm business) to report, the only option available through TurboTax is the Home & Business (please note, this is not necessarily the same thing as merely having a 1099-MISC from some random side income you did – more on this will be discussed below in the Income section). 

So, as I mentioned above, this chart is pretty straight-forward and easy to understand. However, the place where it gets confusing and people with simple taxes end up paying for un-needed service add-ons is DURING the process of filing out your tax information as you are going through the various steps in the system. 

Because of this, I feel we need to spend some time discussing places where potential mistakes could occur causing, someone that started their tax filing using the Free Edition (far left above) to end up unnecessarily using the Deluxe (middle, “most popular”) version. This happens quite often, in my opinion, because at almost every step of the way, the questions prompt you to upgrade to one of the paid options.

First, right off the bat, after you create a new TurboTax account, you are taken to this screen:

Now, I’m not sure what your reaction to this screen above is, but to my girlfriend (who I recently helped with her taxes, which are very simple by the way), she read this screen as meaning that if she doesn’t use at least the basic version, she won’t get ANY DEDUCTIONS ON HER TAXES. Because of this, she has been unnecessarily paying for the Basic or Deluxe versions of the program for the past 4 or more years. I can definitely understand where she is coming from on this, as to someone that doesn’t spend a lot of time with critically evaluating personal finance programs, the Federal Free Edition seems like it offers nothing.

However, this simply is not the case. You can still get many deductions owed to you by using the free edition. So, my suggestion would be that people simply ignore this first table and click the continue button.

Five seconds later, after you enter your personal information (address, email, SSN, etc), you get hit with ANOTHER up sell screen, shown below. PLEASE, IGNORE THIS ONE AS WELL!  The Federal Free Edition is still just fine!

OK, Whew! You made it past those first two wallet-zapping landmines.

What is Free and What Must You Pay for Regarding Income?

The next place that people with random side income (such as my girlfriend) can get caught up is when it comes time to enter the amounts of income received on Form 1099-MISC. 

When you go to enter the amount displayed on your 1099-MISC, you will see the following screen below. The goal of this screen is to determine if the income was random/side income or if it can be considered more of the result of steady self-employed business operations. If it is from self-employed business operations, you are required to pay/upgrade to the $75 Home and Business version of TurboTax to continue. There is now way around it. 

On the other hand, if it was not regular, recurring, and/or self-employed business income, merely having a random 1099-MISC does not disqualify you from being able to use the Federal Free Edition of TurboTax.

If you answer YES to any of the questions shown on the below screenshot, you will however, be required to upgrade to the paid Home and Business version because the income is considered self-employment income.

Regarding income from investments, such as stock/mutual fund sale proceeds, interest, rental property, and dividends, listed below is a summary of what you must pay for and what is included in the Federal Free Edition:

• 1099-INT and 1099-DIV are free/included in the Federal Free Edition. 
• If you have a 1099-B (sale of taxable securities), it does actually require you to upgrade to the Premier version to continue with that section.
• If you have a income from rental property, it does actually require you to upgrade to the Premier version to continue with that section.

What is Free and What Must You Pay for Regarding Deductions?

In the deductions section of TurboTax, they also make it fairly confusing to discern what is included in the Federal Free Edition and what you must pay for.

To even further complicate matters, you have to be able to determine when a screen like the one below pops up, whether or not the upgrade to a paid version is a “recommendation” or if the upgrade is absolutely required in order to proceed with that section.

Can you imagine how confusing this screen above would be to someone who is uncomfortable dealing with their finances/taxes and is already stressed out about the situation? Which box do you think they would click? That’s right, UPGRADE CITY! 

However, I am here to tell you that for all of the deductions I inspected (shown on screenshots below), they are all actually included in the Federal Free Edition. 

Many of them, however, do have suggestion screens like the one above that pop up. But, all you have to do is click NO THANKS and then it will let you continue entering your deduction details. Kind of sneaky, eh? But, it is good business and unfortunately, just the way it is.

Just to drive this point home, all of the deductions listed below are in fact included in TurboTax’s Federal Free edition, but just might have little decoy upgrade recommendation screens that you must click, “No Thanks,” to. 

• Home loan interest paid. 
• Kids.
• Car / property tax.
• Student loan interest paid.
• Medical/HSA contributions.
• Estimates taxes paid (as long as they are not for self employment income).
• Charity donations. 

Conclusions

In my opinion, TurboTax offers a super-reliable, very easy-to-use online tax preparation platform that is hard to go wrong with. Even if your tax situation dictates that you have to use one of their paid options, I would consider it money well spent, and likely, a significant tax savings over the use of live tax professional.

I sincerely hope this post helps you to understand not only a little more about what features TurboTax offers, but to also help you determine what level of services/pricing you actually need to use in their platform to accommodate your personal tax situation.

If you’re interested, step on over to Part 2 of this series where I take a look at H&R Block’s online tax preparation platform!

How about you all? Have you ever used TurboTax to do your taxes? If so, did you ever find yourself paying for a upgrade to the online service when you really didn’t need it?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

Do Bank Overdrafts or Payday Loans Charge Higher Fees for Short Term "Lending?"

Let’s take a look at this in a little more detail:

For obvious reasons, payday loans are definitely not the type of loan situation you want to find yourself in, especially considering that credit card interest rates, at 20%, are even considered pricey! However, before we pass judgment too far on these, let’s also take a look at how the fees associated with bank/checking account overdrafts compare with this:

What is the Cost of Overdraft Fees for the Same 1 Month Time Period?

According to the CISI study above, main-stream banks charge overdraft fees totaling an APR equivalent of up to 53,099,884%. Talk about expensive! Does that really say 53 million percent?! That’s and outstanding business return!

Because this sounded pretty wild, I also wanted to check this APR reported with US banks to see how it compares. Below is what I discovered:

• According to Bank of America’s overdraft fee section of their website, they charge $35 per overdraft transaction on the first day the overdraft occurs, and then another $35 every 5 days until the overdraft transaction amount is paid off/you have a positive balance.
• Assuming 30 days in 1 month, this means you will be charged a total of $245 ($35 x 7 total charges) for the one month.
• Since these overdraft charges are on a per transaction basis, this means that the lower the value of the item you are using the overdraft to pay for, the higher the representative APR will be.
  • For example, if you had a 1 month overdraft on the 100 GBP / $151 mentioned in the payday loans section above, you would be charged the same $245. This would equate to a $2940 fee on a yearly basis, or an APR of 1,970%.
  • On the other hand, if you had the same one month overdraft on only a smaller $50 purchase, this would equate to an APR of 5880%.
  • As a worse (but maybe not very realistic) case, for a $1 purchase, this would equate to an APR of 294,000%. What this means is that in order to generate the 53 million percent figure mentioned above, they likely figured it using a purchase of only a few cents. Like I said, maybe not totally realistic, but possibly more effective at driving home their point…

What we can conclude from this is that even though there are better ways to pay for unexpected expenses (emergency fund ideally or even a credit card since it has a lower APR), if the single transaction/purchase you are taking the loan out on is quite large (>$200), it is actually cheaper to use bank overdrafts. However, if the balance is smaller, payday loans are technically cheaper.

Another interesting thought I considered while writing this article was potential reasons for why bank overdraft fees don’t really have the same bad reputation that payday loans tend to carry, despite the fact that they have similar APR’s. Perhaps it is because most of the time, when bank overdrafts happen, they are paid off very quickly, and so do not end up costing the full one month of fees modeled here. 

How about you all? Have you ever over-drafted your bank account? If so, how much did it cost you?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5093/5566653522_7edf8846f1_z.jpg

Is Debt A Deal Breaker for Marriage?

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following post is by MPFJ staff writer Travis. Travis is a customer blogger for CareOne Debt Relief Services, and also appears weekly at Enemy of Debt.  Travis candidly shares his personal journey to pay off $109,000 of credit card debt and the tips he’s learned along the way. As a father and husband, he provides a unique perspective on balancing debt, finances, and family.

The Meaning of Marriage

Debt Is (can be) a Temporary Situation

Overspending is a Behavior

Conclusion:

Share your experiences by commenting below!

Jacob’s Thoughts – I think I am in the same camp of belief as you on this one Travis. Someone merely having debt would not be a deal breaker for me, provided that they are doing their best to pay it off and have or are correcting any spending behavior problems that may have lead to it. Of course, if they still had the spending behavior problem in the first place, I likely would not have been attracted to them during the dating stages anyway…

***Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Discover it vs. Chase Freedom Visa – Credit Card Boxing Series – Match # 1

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Let’s face it. Sometimes, reading about personal finance can make for some pretty dry reading. Annual fee this, interest rate that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Are you still awake?

So, in an attempt to spice things up a little bit, I’ve decided to start a series of MPFJ called, Credit Card Boxing. In each match, two credit cards (of the same general category of credit card) will be compared side by side in an attempt to determine which reigns supreme over the other.

In this, the first match of the series, we’re comparing two general purpose credit cards.

In the left corner, we have weighing in at a hefty 5.23 g (weighed in the scale in my lab), my favorite credit card that I use for almost all of my purchases, the Chase Freedom Visa Card.

In the right corner, we have weighing in at a respectable 5.2 g, the new Discover it Card. I haven’t personally tried out this card yet, so I was curious to learn a little more about it.

Shown below is a screenshot from CreditCards.com (the first place I go for looking up information on credit cards) listing all of the pertinent details for the Chase Freedom Visa Card.

• Chase Freedom Visa Pluses
• There is no annual fee.
• A very nice $100 bonus for signing up.
• 5% cash back in rotating categories every quarter. From personal experience, I can tell you that these categories are actually quite useful. They are not highly specific like with some cards. For example, right now, they are doing 5% cash back for gas stations. I think pretty much anyone can relate to the benefits of getting cash back for gas purchases. They have also done grocery stores in the past, although discount stores like WalMart, Sam’s, and Costco do not qualify for this.
• 1% cash back on all other purchases.
• Chase Freedom Visa Minuses
• Requires excellent credit history, which can be a deal breaker for some folks. 
• 3% transaction fee for all transactions completed in a foreign currency. This can add up quickly! 

And, shown below is a table listing out all of the pertinent details for the Discover it Card.

• Discover it Pluses
• No annual fee
• Won’t increase your interest rate if you pay late once or twice. 
• No foreign currency transaction fees. 
• 5% cash back in rotating categories throughout the year. 
• 1% cash back on all other purchases. 
• Discover it Minuses
• Because it’s a Discover card, it may not be accepted everywhere like Visa/Mastercard. Because of this, you’ll likely always have to carry another card in your wallet/purse in addition to this one. I also am not sure of how widely Discover is accepted outside the US either.
• While the Discover it Card does offer 5% cash back in rotating categories throughout the year, they do not appear to be very broad/general. 
• According to the Discover it rewards calendar, the current categories are restaurants and movies. Unfortunately, I do not currently spend much money, if any, on restaurants and movies, so for me, this wouldn’t be that helpful. 
• The other categories throughout the year are “Summer Fun,” “Home Improvement,” and “Holiday Shopping.” Unfortunately, they don’t specify the details yet of what will fall in to this category. However, the Summer Fun and Home Improvement categories don’t seem like they would help me that much compared to general categories like groceries, gas, etc.
•  Requires excellent credit history, which can be a deal breaker for some folks. 

Who’s the Winner?

Although I honestly wouldn’t be ashamed of having either of these cards, I would have to say that for my money, the winner here is the Chase Freedom Visa Card.  What made me lean towards this one was because the Chase Freedom Visa Card offers more general/robust 5% cash back categories and is also more widely accepted than Discover.

How about you all? Do you think the Chase Freedom Visa or Discover it Card sounds like a better deal?

Do you personally carry either of these cards?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

Is Mystery Shopping Right For You? – Lessons From Personal Experience

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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If you’re like me, you probably have heard the term, “mystery shopping,” for quite some time. You probably were also pretty skeptical about what exactly it entailed and if it was a scam or not. At least, those are the assumptions I was operating off of.

However, I am here to tell you that mystery shopping is in fact a legitimate thing, as I have recently partaken in a mystery shop and successfully received payment for it. But, by the same token, I am also here to tell you that it is NOT “easy-money,” as from what I’ve experienced so far, the Dollar/hour payout is quite low given the time it takes to complete a mystery shop. More detail on this later in the post.

What is Mystery Shopping & How I Got My Renewed Interested in It

My renewed interest in mystery shopping was sparked after reading a very interesting article over at ThePennyHoarder.com about how Kyle (site owner) makes $500 per month conducting liquor audit mystery shops.

Essentially, what happens is that companies hire him through the mystery shopping intermediaries to purchase alcohol at local stores and then report back on whether or not he was asked for age verification/ID. In a nutshell, this is what mystery shopping entails. Big companies need to collect non-biased customer viewpoint data on their local stores so they can make tactical decisions on their business. So, they contract the mystery shopping companies as the middle men to find the independent auditors (shoppers), collect the data, and issue payment to the individuals.

Regarding Kyle’s specific article about liquor audits, he states that he gets paid around $18 per alcohol purchase (in addition to getting reimbursed for buying beer), that the shops only take 5 minutes to do, and that he can string together 10 of them in one trip around town to make a nice chunk of change.

After reading this post, I said, “That sounds awesome! I’d like to get a piece of that action!” And, knowing the good reputation of the site owner, I figured that it was likely a very legitimate opportunity/thing. So, I proceeded to look in to it.

Finding and Signing Up as a Mystery Shopper with Legitimate Mystery Shopping Companies

As I found out in my research on mystery shopping, a golden rule to remember is that NO LEGITIMATE MYSTERY SHOPPING COMPANY will require you to pay money upfront for any reason. Those that ask for money up front are a scam – simple as that.

Luckily, in my case, in his post mentioned above, Kyle recommended the names of 3 mystery shopping companies he uses, so I proceeded to sign up for those. I figured that I would sign up in the systems of 3-4 mystery shopping companies to start with and see if I enjoyed the experience and it was indeed worthwhile.

Listed below are the mystery shopping companies I have signed up for:

• Corporate Research
• TrendSource
• Sinclair Customer Metrics 

And, listed below are several additional legitimate mystery shopping companies that I figured I would enroll with if I found the whole process worthwhile with the first 3 I tried:

• Second to None
• Best Mark
• Hauser Track
• Sassie Shop
• Intelli-Shop
• Cirrus Marketing
• Ritter Associates
• ICCDS
• Confero
• Insular Research
• In Touch Shoppers

Upon signing up to these programs, some of them require you to take a short quiz. However, it is really not that hard nor time consuming, and likely is just designed to test your procedural reading skills.

What Type of Opportunities Do These Mystery Shopping Companies Offer?

• Sinclair Customer Metrics – 
• For the 1 month period I have been enrolled in Sinclair’s system, I think I have only seen one mystery shopping opportunity listed. It was a purchase at a local shop at the mall.
• It sounded like a pretty good opportunity, but the payout was only about $4-5, so I really wasn’t that interested because I wasn’t planning to go to the mall anytime soon.
• Corporate Research – 
• There is a pretty consistent stream of mystery shopping opportunities through this outfit in my area, mainly for a local sit-down pizza restaurant and gas stations.
• The commissions for these opportunities are quite low, ranging from $4 to $10 maximum.
• In order to even view what is required for the gas station inspections/shops, you have to take a HIGHLY detailed test. I would rate this test as very hard and extremely specific/annoying. Essentially, you have to remember every little detail about the specific areas of a gas station.
• Moreover, from these qualification tests, I discovered that the gas station inspection that allows you to get the $10 payout is so detailed that it would likely take me an hour to do, and it also involves talking to the station manager after identifying yourself as an inspector. This sounds too much like real work to me. No thanks! 
• TrendSource – 
• TrendSource also has a nice, steady stream of mystery shopping opportunities in my area, mostly involving the evaluation of a local pizza take-out / delivery joint ($5 payout plus reimbursement for the pizza) or talking at length with employees at a local national chain technology store about products ($10 payout).
• Since the tech store gig sounded like it would also be a little more involved than I would be looking for in a little fun side project like mystery shopping, I decided to give the pizza delivery mystery shop a try first.
• After taking the 20 minute qualification test, I signed up for a pizza delivery shop with high hopes. I figured, hey, they bring the pizza right to my house, I get paid $5, they pay for the pizza, sounds easy-breezy, right? 
• Well, I soon found out that you pay a price, especially the first time that you do one of these pizza mystery shops.
• First, they give you a 3 page set of instructions on EXACTLY how they want 3 pictures to be taken of the pizza. Truth be told, there are so many little minute details that it felt more like a job than some fun side project. 
• Second, they give you a 6-ish page set of instructions for other details they want to collect about the mystery shop, such as evaluating whether or not the delivery person smiles, reads back your total, or that the person on the phone that takes your order tries to up-sell you. Again, this sort of took the fun out of the pizza. 
• Third, once the pizza arrived, I kept making small mistakes in the pictures (such as taking the top shot at an 85 degree angle instead of a 90 degree angle, which they called me out on..ridiculous). Because of the mistakes and retakes, the pizza was cold when we actually started to eat it. Sigh…haha
• Granted, if I were to do another pizza delivery mystery shop with this same company, I could probably take these pictures in 1/3 the original time because of the learning curve. 

Uploading the Receipts/Reports and Getting Paid

Conclusions – Is Mystery Shopping Right For You?

So, having gone through all of this, it brings us back to the question we started with in the post title – is mystery shopping something that would be a good fit for you?

Assuming that everyone reading this has sufficient mental capacity to handle the requirements for mystery shopping, I would say that it basically comes down to having/wanting to commit a good chunk of time to trying to make some extra money. In addition, you have to be willing to commit the time to do mystery shops repeatedly in order to take advantage of the initial learning curve involved with executing them.

As I described above, even though mystery shopping is quite legitimate, I was very surprised at the level of detail and time required to complete these mystery shops. It is not “easy money” as some advertisements would suggest. Quite the contrary, I would say mystery shopping is actually a hard way to earn your money (perhaps I just live in the wrong area and don’t have the right types of mystery shops).

So, to conclude, I would say that mystery shopping is a good thing for people that have a good bit of time on their hands (maybe retirees), but not for people that work a full time day job and already have a side business to keep them busy.

Personally, I haven’t seen any mystery shops that would be worth doing again, so I’m going to hold off for now. But, I will keep looking through the systems from time to time to see if some good deals pop up in the future.

How about you all? Have you ever tried mystery shopping? If so, what type of job did you do and what was the payout like? 

Do you think that overall, the pay was worth the time/effort required? 

Share your experiences by commenting below!

How Do You Analyze Individual Stocks?

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If you’ve been reading MPFJ for a while, you’ve probably heard me mention before that I am not a big advocate of people investing large amounts of their own money in active management, either through the buying and selling of individual stocks yourself, following the advice of a newsletter, with the help of a “professional” investment advisor, or through an actively managed mutual fund.

Why do I shy away from large investments in individual stocks? Simple. Because the track record of individuals (even professionals) selecting individual stocks does not show proof positive that it is worth the cost involved. In fact, 70% of the stock professionals fail to beat out the market, so why would I think I can do this consistently?

Having said that, I do, however, think that analyzing individual stocks for investing using smaller amounts of play money is a fascinating exercise, and it’s something that I would like to believe in. I just haven’t seen proof that it can be done consistently in an efficient manner, but maybe someone will prove me wrong one day and cause me to switch from my current approach of passive investing using index mutual funds and ETFs.

Anyhow, recently, I received an email from a blog reader asking about how I analyze individual stocks and also what my thoughts were on the specific stock, MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (AMEX symbol: MGT). Since other readers may also be curious of what approach I take to analyze a stock for potential investment (or not – using play money only of course!), I figured this would be a good topic for a blog post and to also answer the reader’s question at the same time.

Step 1 – 30,000 Foot Elevation View of the Company and Long-Term Price Performance

To get a very high level overview of the company, I first turn to Google Finance and look up the ticker symbol.

On Google Finance, I specifically am looking at 3 things – 1) the long term price history, 2) the financials, and 3) the company overview/description. I like to use Google Finance for this purpose because all of these items are displayed on a single page, making it very easy to navigate.

Shown below are these three items for the stock that the reader wanted me to take a look at, MGT. From these screens, I can conclude the following things for this specific stock:

• Because of the low stock price per share, low institutional ownership, low market cap, and horrible looking financials, this stock is an extremely speculative play, with a very high level of risk involved. 
• The company seems a little mysterious, as I’m not really sure from reading their description what it is that they do. It states that they have only 9 employees and that they are a holding company that makes investments in order to obtain value-added intellectual property (patent aggregator). So, essentially, it is basically a group of several people investing share-and-bond holder money in to other or new companies/patents to operate.
• The company has been around for a while now, over ten years. It appears that their stock price started off higher during the euphoric times of 2000-2001, but was not able to recover until just recently. 
• Because of this, I’d want to look specifically at what caused the decrease in the stock price in 2002 (if it was related or unrelated to the general stock market bubble), what caused the flat-line from 2002-2011, and what recent event has sparked renewed interest in this company (is it legitimate/sustainable, or just speculation?). 

Step 2 – See How the Stock Fits Within Phil Town’s Rule # 1 Investing Analysis System 

As I mentioned previously in my 6 month test run of Phil Town’s Rule # 1 investing system (which showed that its usage did not deliver a market beating return due to the trading commissions involved), I do not believe that Phil’s system is the “magic formula” for beating the market. However, Phil’s approach does involve some very prudent technical and fundamental analysis which I feel can give me a deeper understanding of how the company would function as a potential investment. 

• Once you’ve set up the indicators, view the 3 month history graphs for the stock you’re analyzing. Three months seems to be a good time period in order to clearly see whether the technical indicators are saying “buy” or “sell.”
• For analyzing MGT, we’ll go through the technical indicators one by one. First, the 10 day simple moving average, as shown below (red line), compared to the actual stock price (blue line). With the simple moving average, a “buy” signal is indicated by when the stock price line crosses above the moving average. In the case of MGT, the stock price is currently below the moving average, indicating that we do not want to buy right now.

• MGT’s 14K, 5D Slow Stochastic Oscillator is shown below. With stochastic, the K line (blue) is the “buy” line, and the D line (red) is the “sell” line. With this technical indicator, a “buy” signal is indicated by when the buy/K line crosses above the sell/D. In the case of MGT, the K line is currently below the D line, indicating that we do not want to buy right now.

• MGT’s 8-17-9 MACD indicator is shown below. With this technical indicator, a “buy” signal is indicated by when the MACD line crosses above the EMA line. In the case of MGT, the MACD appears to have decreased and is now crossing the EMA, indicating that we do not want to buy right now (this is actually a sell signal if we already owned the stock).

Step 3 – Qualitative Research on the company, the management (CEO especially), current news, and that no insider selling is happening

• Management Analysis (done through Google Finance and Reuters.com) – The current CEO of MGT, Robert Ladd, joined the company in 2010 as a director and became CEO in early 2012. This occurred almost exactly the same time at which the stock price for the company increased from almost $0 to $4 per share. There was also a stock split at this same time. At a high level, this appears that the market took the news of a new CEO as good and that Mr. Ladd was assessed as a good leader. Ladd also has a long history of investment analysis, which is important in his role as head of a holding company where he is making investments as his primary business. I also found another article stating that Mr. Ladd is “responsible for rejuvenating the company.”
• Insider Trading (done through company website or MSN Money)  – In looking at the recent transactions of company insiders, there have only been stock purchases over the last year or so, which is a good thing. It is also encouraging to note that the management only have reported income that they pay themselves of $200 per year or so, so it appears that their salary is heavily weighted in stock options/stock performance. That’s also a good thing. 
• Additional Clarity About What the Company Does/Its Current Position (find the “news” columns on Reuters, Yahoo/Google Finance, etc after you bring up the chart for a specific stock) – On the MGT company website, I found a presentation from late 2012 that stated that they “have a cash rich balance sheet.” However, in looking at their balance sheet from that time, I really didn’t understand how they could make that claim. 
• It wasn’t until I read up on the developments at MGT within the past 3 months or so that I was able to obtain a complete picture of the company. Because none of these events are yet reflected in their SEC filings/reported financial figures, it makes judging the decision to buy or not more difficult and involving more guesswork.
• First, I found out that they obtained about $6MM in additional financing in late 2012 from equity offerings. This will definitely help free up some cash flow and pay off short term debts.
• Second (and more importantly), I found out that MGT is selling off its medical holdings because it did not fit and wasn’t profitable for them. They have decided only to focus on their gaming patent development for now. The fact that the company is focusing on its core competencies and will obtain a large amount of cash to improve its balance sheet from the sale is definitely a good sign to me. The general “buzz” in the community is that this stock is set to “take off” this year because of these recent events. 
• Lastly, as I mentioned in my high level review, MGT’s stock price started off higher during the euphoric times of 2000-2001, but was not able to recover until just recently. Because of this, I said that I wanted to look specifically at what caused the decrease in the stock price in 2002 (if it was related or unrelated to the general stock market bubble), what caused the flat-line from 2002-2011, and what recent event has sparked renewed interest in this company (is it legitimate/sustainable, or just speculation?). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find information about what caused the decrease in 2002. However, I found a press release stating that the increase in 2012 was not for some shady insider event, so that is a good sign! 

Step 4 – Review and Decision to Buy or Not

• Seems like an understandable and good business model (now that I have performed a little more analysis).
• Since the long-term financials are not very good and/or negative, the investment involves a lot of risk. However, although the financials are negative, the recent trends definitely point upwards for MGT.
• In addition, there is nothing but good current news on the horizon for MGT, including a lot of positive effects not currently reflected in their SEC filings. They also have a strong CEO and no negative insider trading. 
• All 3 of the technical indicators dictate that NOW is not a good time to buy shares of MGT. 
• Because of that, my final conclusion for this play is to keep monitoring the technical indicators and news for MGT, and I will place a small amount of play money in this stock when the technical indicators all give me the green light, either in my account at Sogotrade.com or TradeKing.

How about you all? What is your approach to analyzing individual stocks for potential investment? How much of your money do you allocate to individual stocks vs. mutual funds?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2339/1563208173_867ddc9717_z.jpg?zz=1

"What a Deal! Only a $59.99 Fee to File a 1040EZ!" Please No. Instead, Try a FREE Step-by-Step Guide to Filling Out Your 1040EZ

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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As we all know, tax season is in full flight here in the United States. Taxpayers are frantically digging through their records and collecting their W2’s/1099’s, and CPA’s and other tax preparation professionals are churning out 80 hour work weeks to meet the deadline.

How are you doing so far in getting your taxes filed?

Per usual, for me this year, the rate limiting step is getting my last two Forms 1099-DIV/1099-INT from Sogotrade.com and Zecco.com (now TradeKing). They always claim that they are working towards a February 15th deadline for getting everyone’s tax forms issued. However, without fail, they manage to get an extension until the first week of March to issue these forms. This, of course, is a pain for me because I then have to hustle a little more to mail out my tax forms to my accountant to then turn around/prepare.

All side-tangents aside (no pun intended), the real reason that I’m writing this post is that around tax time every year, I see advertisements stating how an accountant or tax prep company is offering some GREAT deal for a limited time only to have them help you prepare a 1040EZ for only $XX.99. 

• At Walmart, the H&R Block booth near the checkout area is advertising “$39.99 to prepare your 1040EZ.” 
• On the advertising place-mats at a local restaurant, I recently saw an accountant ad that stated “they’ll help you do your 1040EZ for only $59.99.”

Ok, so let’s stop right there. Did I miss something? The 1040EZ was a filing form built by our friends at the IRS to be EASY, right? Why would you need to pay to get help with it?


Well, I think that the whole reason why people think that taxes are difficult is that there is a certain stigma that has been built by our society over the years that taxes are evil, unfair, long-winded, technical, too hard to understand without a PhD in economics, and/or not something that is not worth your time.

Well, I’m here to provide a little moral support and tell you that this form is not some complicated animal that you need help/to pay for to fill out. You can fill it out just fine by yourself (or better yet, with the help of a free online tax preparation/filing software, something which will be covered elsewhere in more depth). 

So, how does one get started filling out a 1040EZ? I’m glad you asked! Read on!

Step 1 – Meet/Print Off Your New Friend – Mr. 1040EZ

By clicking here, you can access the current tax year’s respective 1040EZ directly from the IRS’ website.

This is a one-page federal tax filing document that is built to be non-intimidating. Check out the picture below. The entire document fits within the confines of this blog post column. Nothing that small can be very scary, right?! 🙂

There are only 12 numbered boxes to fill out along with your writing your usual personal information in the grey boxes at the top.

In addition, you might also want to download and scan through the official IRS publication describing how to fill out the form 1040EZ. You can download the most recent one by clicking here. Unfortunately, due to the nature and regulations of taxes, they have to put many extraneous FYI-type paragraphs in to this publication, causing it to be a full 42 pages describing how to fill out one tiny 1 page form. And the IRS wonders why people thinks taxes are difficult to understand, eh?

Step 2 – Quick Check to Make Sure a 1040EZ is the Right Form for You – Taking the Standard Deduction

Before proceeding, you want to check just briefly that a 1040EZ is indeed the right type of federal tax form for you to be filling out.

Essentially, by opting for use of the 1040EZ (instead of the longer 1040), you are saying that you want to take “the standard deduction” instead of itemizing your deductions. In other words, it makes sense to use the form 1040EZ if the standard deduction ($5,950 for 2012) is greater than any itemized deductions you could list out (charity contributions, mortgage interest, etc). In addition, you are also basically saying that, “Hey, I have very simple finances – likely only 1 source of income and very few non-retirement investments (mostly consisting of interest bearing savings accounts).”

Having established that, you also should go through the really good checklist the IRS put together in their 1040EZ publication shown below to make sure you qualify for the use of the 1040EZ.

Also, listed below are “1040EZ deal-breakers” in the sense that if you RECEIVED one of the forms listed below, you do NOT qualify to file a 1040EZ and must file a Form 1040.

• 1099-MISC (this would disqualify me).
• 1099-DIV (this would also disqualify me).

Step 3 – Filling Out Your 1040EZ – Income Section – Boxes 1-6

So, by now, you’ve determined that filing a 1040EZ form is right for you and you’ve downloaded/printed out a copy to work off of. Now, it’s time to actually fill it out to determine how much of a refund you will receive or how much in unpaid taxes you still owe.

The first part of the 1040EZ form is the income section, and it contains 6 total boxes to fill out. Listed below are some important points I noticed while reading through the IRS’s 1040EZ instructions that you might want to pay special attention to:

• On Line/Box 1, as the name implies, this is where you enter the total amount of your wages that is shown on your W2(s). 
• However, one thing that is slightly tricky here is that on Line 1, you must also include your total amounts of non W2 income as well, including wages earned as a household employee, tip income not reported to your employer, and untaxed fellowship/scholarship income (like I have in my role as a graduate student). 
• Line/Box 2 for Taxable Interest is where you report the amounts displayed on any forms 1099-INT that you received. 
• As mentioned above, 1099-DIV amounts are not suitable for a 1040EZ.
• Line/Box 5 – This is simply the place where you write in the total amount of deductions that you are going to take. 
• Deductions are your friend – they reduce your taxable income. 
• This includes the standard deduction ($5,950 per person for 2012) plus exemptions ($3,800 per person for 2012). 

Step 4 – Calculate Your Total Taxes for the Year – Box/Line 10

Aside from signing and including your direct deposit banking information on the form 1040EZ, the only other step that you need to do that can be a little bit confusing is to calculate the amount of taxes you needed to pay for the year, often called your tax liability.

In order to to do this, you will need to locate where the value written in Line 6 (that you already filled out) falls in the series of Tax Tables shown on pages 31-39 of the IRS’ 1040EZ publication.

Shown below is an example excerpt from this table. All you need to do is find where your Line 6 Taxable Income falls in the ranges shown and then merely follow that number across to the next few columns to determine how much tax you are responsible for.

Once you complete this step, you can then proceed to calculate either the refund you will receive or the additional amount of taxes you owe.

Step 5 – Mail in Your Return

Having calculated how much you will receive as a tax refund or additional taxes that you still need to pay, now is the time to complete the final step and mail in the tax return.

In order to do this, you will need to click here to view the 2-page Form 1040-V. This is a form that contains instructions on how to file your federal tax return, where to send it, and what all to write on the check (if you owe more taxes).

On Page 2, you’ll see a table of addresses for where to send your tax return if you are sending a check and another set of addresses for if you are not sending a check for additional taxes. Simply follow the instructions, and stick your return in the mail. Make sure to make an extra copy for yourself for future records as well!

Conclusions

So, there you have it – 5 easy steps to help you fill out your own Form 1040EZ and file your federal tax return so you don’t have to fall in to the trap of paying someone $40-$60 to do it for you when you are out shopping at Wal-Mart or dining at restaurant and see an advertisement!

Aside from saving money, I feel that it’s also a good learning experience to have some working knowledge of how taxes work. And, using an easy form like the 1040EZ can be a good way to get this process started.

Of course, as I eluded to above, there are (in my opinion) easier free ways to fill out and file your 1040EZ using free online tax preparation programs instead of you having to manually input the numbers yourself. Applications such as TurboTax and H&R Block Online ask questions in an organized fashion that help assemble your return for you. Just watch out because while they don’t make any money off of you for a simple federal tax filing, there are a lot of extra features that they quickly charge you for, and can add up!

How about you all? Have you seen any “awesome” deals where people are charging to fill out your 1040EZ for you? Do you fill out your taxes yourself or employ the help of an accountant? 

If you file yourself, do you fill out the tax forms directly, or use a computer program like the ones listed above?

Share your experiences by commenting below! 

Most Common Loan Problems and How to Avoid Them

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following is a guest post. Enjoy!

How about you all? What are some common problems either you have personally made or that you have seen others readily making?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2012/04/01/19/12/sign-24108_640.png?i

Taking Vacations on the Cheap: Piggy Back on Your Spouse’s Business Trip

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Places We Have Been

How Much We Spend

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