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gtd98765

I have done both, and gotten lucky on both. One child attended a state university for which I had purchased prepaid tuition, and I ended up having paid well under half of the rack rate at the time she attended college. We also benefited from the college savings plan, which was invested in an age-bas...

gtd98765

Ah, thanks to you both! Do I also need to mail in the paper 1040-ES, or is paying the bill sufficient?

gtd98765

I set up an Electronic Federal Tax Payment System account so I could easily pay my estimated taxes this year. But when I log on and try to select 1040-ES as the tax form I am paying, it is not listed. The IRS website clearly says you can use EFTPS to pay estimated taxes, but does not say how. Any ad...

gtd98765

I am a super cheapskate, but if taxes and legal situation about $1M were at stake, I would be willing to spend a few hundred/thousand for advice from a qualified lawyer.

gtd98765

Our household A/C is out of commission. It's an old unit (at least 13 years old). The compressor seems to be running, but the fan isn't spinning. I just learned from my HVAC repair person that the average HVAC system today lasts 20 years. So a 13-year-old system is not "old" no matter wha...

gtd98765

For me, Turbotax for years has invariably overestimated my need for estimated taxes. I have never paid them based on TT and I never had a penalty. I think TT has its estimated tax algorithm tuned for people who like to get big tax refunds.

gtd98765

If you want a truly no-work option to get a low price, look at Car Bargains. https://www.checkbook.org/carbargains/ You pay them $250 or something, tell them exactly the car you want, and they get you multiple bottom=line bids from local dealers.

gtd98765

My advice as someone who learned and used 3.5 foreign languages as an adult (former diplomat): If it's fun for you, try it out. But if you want to be able to use a foreign language in actual conversation with non-English speakers, you should sign up for a course of some kind, e.g., at a community co...

gtd98765

I use a Yubikey to secure my Google account, but I do not have advanced protection. In addition to the Yubikey you can use an authenticator app like Google Authenticator as a second factor, print out and save backup codes, or use text message for the purpose (however, text message is the least secur...

gtd98765

Brian Krebs has an article on this now too: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/can-we-stop-pretending-sms-is-secure-now/#more-54819 SMS text messages were already the weakest link securing just about anything online, mainly because there are tens of thousands of employees at mobile stores who can b...

gtd98765

Concerning. But for clarification, the hacker would have to know your phone number, where your account was held, and what your username was to get anywhere with this, right? If so, that's not impossible, but pretty unlikely. JT Yes. Plus the password to whatever account the hacker is trying to acce...

gtd98765

Another good reason to avoid using text messaging for Two-Factor Authentication:

A gaping flaw in SMS lets hackers take over phone numbers in minutes by simply paying a company to reroute text messages.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g8wb/ ... -netnumber

gtd98765

I'm very sorry to hear that. Here is an article that addresses what happened to you and recommendations on what to do: https://medium.com/mycrypto/what-to-do-when-sim-swapping-happens-to-you-1367f296ef4d Sim-jacking is an attack in which your phone number is migrated away from your SIM card / phone ...

gtd98765

There are several recent threads on this that you will find by putting "Truecar" in the search box at top right.

gtd98765

Medical insurance for travel abroad is generally not prohibitively expensive. Type "foreign travel medical insurance" into the box at top right of the page and you will wind up with several prior threads on the topic. Here is one: viewtopic.php?t=268509 .

gtd98765

Retired FSO here. Foreign Service was a great job for me, but clearly it's not for everybody. As you noted, moving every few years gets to be a drag after awhile. Not every day is great, but I can say when I woke up in the morning I always knew who I was working for - the American people. FSOs I kno...

gtd98765

We used a local online estate sale company and were astounded at the junk that some people bought, such as 10 rolls of 50-year-old roofing paper; they only paid about $10 for it, but they came and took it away and we did not have to carry it or dump it. We treated the estate sale not as a money-maki...

gtd98765

Costco has the download priced at $39. Not quite as good as the former Amazon sale, but better than rack rate.

gtd98765

I bought the First Alert fire chest in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-fireproof-document-safe/ Fortunately, I have not yet had to verify that its claimed fire protection abilities work. I only have important documents like wills & medical directives in here, and th...

gtd98765

The Wirecutter has reviews: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/ Their top pick is right in your price range: After testing and evaluating 30 routers over 250 hours, we’ve determined that the best router for wirelessly connecting your laptops, your smart devices, and anythin...

gtd98765

I had a Blue Air filter while living in a highly-polluted city abroad. It made a giant difference, which we confirmed with a professional PM 2.5 measuring device. Back in a far-less-polluted US city I have the somewhat cheaper Honeywell HPA-300 recommneded by Wirecutter. Changing the filters twice a...

gtd98765

We have had the Yamaha P-115, the predecessor of the P-125, for six years and have been very happy with it. We also have a grand piano at home, but the Yamaha has gone to live in two of my children's college dorm rooms and they have enjoyed playing it when they were at school.

gtd98765

So this might be a stupid question, but are the thermostats for the HVAC controlled via the HVAC unit directly? My Honeywell digital thermostats are both clearly designed to be powered by the forced-air furnaces using the "C" wire. Even my 25-year-old Carrier furnace could cope with that,...

gtd98765

I haven't had my heat pump checked in at least five years and it still works fine. What is the purpose of these annual inspections? Are they worth the cost?

gtd98765

Costco has the download of Quicken Deluxe available for $39.

gtd98765

One could deal with this "irrational fear" by 1) generating completely random passwords with a password manager; 2) printing out a list of account names and passwords and/or saving the list to an SD card; and 3) putting that list/SD card in a safety deposit box at the bank. This would allo...

gtd98765

Consumer Reports has frequency of repair statistics by brand and appliance type: https://www.consumerreports.org/applian ... ppliances/

For refrigerators, Whirlpool is listed as "average."

gtd98765

The pandemic has upended the used car market, making used cars more expensive than they have been in the past. So whatever annual cycles may have existed in the past do not currently pertain. Whether things will get back to "normal" by your Jan 2022 deadline is impossible to tell.

gtd98765

Consumer's Checkbook, a non-profit consumer magazine, recommends against them: https://www.checkbook.org/washington-area/home-warranties/ Home warranty companies run lots of ads promising to save you thousands of dollars when something goes wrong with your refrigerator, furnace, plumbing, and other ...

gtd98765

Print out or download your annual evaluations if you do not have them. Do you have copies of recent travel vouchers showing you accounted for any travel advances? At one point my agency did an audit of travel vouchers five years old, causing big problems for some people who had thrown away their rec...

gtd98765

thanks everybody!

gtd98765

I would also be interested in a video mtg.

gtd98765

Remember, you can always spend money from a 529 on amounts above the ECOA, as long as you pay tax & 10% penalty on the earnings portion of the nonqualified withdrawal amount - not the whole nonqualified withdrawal. So if you are only talking a month or two over the summer it might be easiest jus...

gtd98765

The 1099-R for 2020 that I just received for my U.S. govt pension is not the same as the form in Turbotax or on the IRS web site. The official form has boxes 17, 18, and 19 along the bottom right, labeled "local tax withheld," "name of locality," and "local distribution,&quo...

gtd98765

It's important to specify whether one is talking about the online version of TT or the CD/download version, since they are different. At least for last year, the online version required Premier to deal with investments like stocks & mutual funds. The CD/download version did not, it just required...

gtd98765

A scam. Discussed in several threads, two of which I have pasted below. You can find more by typing "title lock" into the search box at the top right.

viewtopic.php?t=304980

viewtopic.php?t=327976

gtd98765

I think you will get better answers if you describe what you are scanning and what you are doing with the scans afterwards. Anyway, I use freeware scanner NAPS2, which does all I need, scans single or multiple-page documents use either the sheet feeder or the glass window on my scanner, saves the do...

gtd98765

I have friends whose house was extremely smoke damaged in the California wildfires. They sent all fabric items to a specialized cleaning service, but the service could not get the smoke smell out of many of them. I would send a sample of items to a service and see how they do. If you are satisfied w...

gtd98765

Excellent story from a consumer magazine of water & sewer line insurance. The story includes lots of facts and analysis from water systems across the country. Bottom line: Far too expensive for the protection it offers. Also, the price for fixing these lines when they break is usually hundreds o...

gtd98765

I gave up my bank account decades ago due to better service/prices from my employer's credit union. It's worth researching the options among CUs which you are eligible to join to see what might work best for you.

gtd98765

This is a political question. You should complain to your elected representatives and push for laws promoting competition in the ISP sector. There are several studies demonstrating that cities with more competition among ISPs have lower prices - not surprising since the competition/price dynamic is ...

gtd98765

Agree with others that a four-day window over a holiday weekend means there is already a leading internal candidate for the job so I would not waste my time. At this time of the presidential cycle it could be a political person trying to "burrow in" to the career service, which happens at ...

gtd98765

Thanks. Since ISP knows (and sells) which domains we connect to, isn't following a reasonable concern? And VPN the solution? In the US ISPs have privacy policies on line. If your ISP is a big name like Comcast or AT&T, it probably really follows its privacy policy, at the risk of expensive laws...

gtd98765

I've had various Android phones for eight years and have never used antivirus. While the companies that will sell you such software, and the magazines that make money from their ads may say it's essential, I have never read of a real problem except among people who use apps outside the official Goog...

gtd98765

The wirecutter has reviews; https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-vpn-service/ As more people’s work and personal lives go digital, online privacy and security become increasingly important. A virtual private network, or VPN, can be a useful part of your security toolkit. But the industry ...

gtd98765

The Wirecutter has reviews of budget cell phones: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-budget-android-phone/ High-end Android phones can cost $1,000 or more, but you don’t need to spend that much to get a great phone. The Nokia 6.2 is fast enough for most people, it has a usable camera, a...

gtd98765

The Wirecutter has various reviews: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-business-laptops/ You don’t have to run a business to benefit from a business laptop. They’re easier to repair and upgrade than other laptops, and they’re built with sturdy materials that will hold up well to traveli...

gtd98765

The wirecutter has a good article on treadmills that discusses a lot of problems they have: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-treadmill/. Finally, treadmills can be a pain to set up and get working. You have to schedule a special delivery window, move very heavy boxes to the right spot...

gtd98765

Thanks! I just purchased Deluxe & State, plus $10 gift card, for $40 all in. The software is an instant download. The $10 gift card will apparently be mailed to me. At Costco the other day I saw Deluxe & State for $50, so the $30 price net of the gift card seems pretty good to me.

gtd98765

My agency said it was unable to control when the annual leave payout happened. I retired in November, and was hoping to receive the payout in the next tax year, when my income and tax bracket would be lower. Unfortunately it appeared in December.

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