Lots-O-Debt

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Over the next year you’ll be hearing a lot about the National Deficit and the National Debt – it being an election year and all. The deficit is how much we are spending beyond what we brought in as a country. The consumer equivolent would be how much we spent on our credit cards in one month that we couldn’t pay off at the end of the month. The debt is owed total for all our years of government. This would be like your balance you on your credit cards.

The National Debt Clock gives an up to the minute total of our Debt as a nation (through magic i assume). I found the adjusted totals graph under the FAQ to be quite telling personally.

  • US National Debt Clock
  • US Debt Progression Adjusted for Inflation (1990 Dollars)

    • Camping Rewards

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    For all you campers out there, the great company REI has expanded it’s dividend program to it’s members. For those of you that don’t know, REI members pay a lifetime membership fee of $15 and then they receive a 10% “dividend” at the end of the year from purchase they made. The new(ish) feature is the REI credit card which provides a 1% dividend on all purchases. Somehow, i think getting a free Nalgene bottle is much more useful than say $20 off my next GM vehicle or 12 miles on my frequent flyer program.

    If you’re still scratching your head, “REI….” read below:

    During the past six decades, REI has grown into a renowned supplier of specialty outdoor gear and clothing. We serve the needs of outdoors people through 69 retail stores in the U.S. and by direct sales via the Internet (REI.com and REI-OUTLET.com), telephone and mail. Today, REI is the nation?s largest consumer cooperative with more than 2 million members.

    StrongBad Is Good

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    Following up on the yesterday’s fun w/ Flash, I’m adding a link to

    Home Star…. Runner

    It’s quite a humorous way to waste time online, but don’t take my word for it here are the words of some random web people:

    “dude, home star runner ist the best (clean) page on the internet… those guys need more credit than they get for making all that! I love that web page…… Strong bad rocks!” — Posted by: Homestawkid at Aug 9, 2003 5:08 AM

    “hoh man, i absolutely love strong bad and homestah wunnuh. lol. strong-bad email’s are the best! wish they had something new everyday!” –Posted by: DDRingSkaGurlie at Sep 24, 2003 12:09 PM

    “Yeah, homestarrunner rocks! I like Teen Girl Squads, the Jap. Cartoon one and of course the StrongBad Emails. I wish they did MORE teen girl squads, it makes me laugh so hard when I see it.” –Posted by: Homestarrunnergirl at Jan 27, 2004 12:36 AM

    I mean if 3 random people can’t convince you then I don’t what will…. the japanamation one is a classic, though.

    Stick Figure Fun

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    If you enjoy Flash (as in the web technology not the super hero) or humor or -gasp- both. The following link should give you hours of enjoyment (but this is probably not suitable for small children –stick figure death is surprisingly realistic; i mean the blood is red and everything!):

    Tax Law Stumps The Stupid

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    According to Fox News the average tax filing time has increase to 28 hours and 30 minutes.

    28 HOURS!! Are you kinding me?!?! What in God’s name could you possibly be doing for that long. I think I could read the entire 1040 instruction packet in like 2-3 hours… sharpen my pencils for 30 minutes… search for my calculator in vain for an hour… build an abacus in around 6 hours… what are you doing for the other 18 HOURS???

    Seriously, though. This is the average return – not some self-employed day-trader that really should be using a CPA… this is middle class america with some capital gains and some child credits. So you’ve got capital gains: copying numbers from your 1099 form provided by your brokerage firm to your 1040. Child credits are harder because you have to do complex mathmatical equations like subtracking (that’s “take-a-ways”) the early refund tax check you got last summer. Is anyone else confused?

    Ok let’s forget about the hard stuff: the 1040EZ (the EZ stands for EASY) is supposed to take 3 hours and 43 minutes to complete. You can’t even file a 1040EZ unless you make under a certain amount of money and you don’t have any of those other craze forms (like the afore mentioned 1099 form). It’s ONE PAGE. So unless you spent 2 hours searching for where you put your W2, I’m at a loss for how people can take that long as an AVERAGE. Some people do worse.

    The Fox News articles then goes on as several other articles have done – lamenting our ever increasingly complex tax code (a noble cause) and then talking about how -gasp- it’s forcing people to turn to tax software to save them. Citing increased usage of tax software to prove this point. Uhm. What if people are using software not due to complexity but for other reasons like efiling? I used the online software from H&R block not because the tax code overwhelms me (a re-read publication 17 on dependants and learned about the lifetime learning credit that I can now claim from the IRS website instead of relying on their automated assistants) but because of the SPEED it allows. Sure it speeds up the filing some by doing the math for you, but then you can efile and direct deposit your refund to get your money back in MUCH faster.

    Apparently I’m a speed demon when it comes to taxes because it took me under 2 hours to do my taxes last night including reading some documents from IRS website and restarting the process. You see i had guess-timated that i owed money and so i started filling out an extension (which is automatically granted for 4 months) until i realized that i was, in fact, getting a refund which prompted me to start over and file. I must say i was overall impressed with the H&R Block SW – though I found some of the “add-on services” funny. My favorites were the “why wait up to 2 weeks for your refund when we’ll advance you the money tommorrow all for the low fee of $70” and the “why pay with a credit card when you can use your checking account instead with a low $10 echeck fee”.

    Really though, you don’t have to value your time very much to pay $35 to save 27 hours of you life. Heck it’s even free if you make less than $28,000 a year. All online so you don’t have to install (and then uninstall) anything. My real question is: if it takes 28.5 hours to file your taxes these days — how can you procratinate until the 15th any more?