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+--- Thread: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread (/showthread.php?tid=11501)
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Sijray21 - 01-10-2019
don't forget to sign up for any dependent care FSA benefits if that's offered for you ($5k/yr max per household - single and married filing jointly).
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - .RJ - 01-10-2019
what the fuck
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Apoc - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 01:26 PM)D_Eclipse9916 Wrote: That's fair, if you are good about paying down home equity; its not a horrible return between home price increase and reducing interest on a cost.
I didn't even want to own a house in Seattle, but we bought because I saw what was starting to happen to the market. We've been incredibly lucky in that we're sitting on enough equity that we could pay for a four year ivy league degree just by pulling the equity out. The market here has softened a lot, but we've got 17 years so I'm thinking a good bit will still be there when he goes to college.
We pay $1,000/month for our in-home nanny's 14 hours/week. We could save money by using childcare, but the wife's income prospects are pretty low with a masters in art history. In most cases, we'd be lucky to break even... and she'd rather be a SAHM than pursue a career in something she doesn't enjoy. We end up spending a good bit more than that with date nights, travel, and overnight care (we have zero family anywhere near us), though.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - JPolen01 - 01-10-2019
I'm 99% sure my company doesn't offer an FSA. The HSA has been nice for all the pregnancy doctor visits though. My wife makes enough where even at $1700/m for daycare we still come out on top by quite a bit. She keeps kicking around the idea of staying him, but I'm not really interested in that. We would have to really adjust our lifestyle which doesn't appeal a lot to me.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Sijray21 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 03:58 PM)Apoc Wrote:(01-10-2019, 01:26 PM)D_Eclipse9916 Wrote: That's fair, if you are good about paying down home equity; its not a horrible return between home price increase and reducing interest on a cost.
Note Dependent Care FSA caps at $3,600 for joint filers making $125,000+ combined.
[redacted] - needed to search more... it's not mentioned in a lot of places
actually, i'm still confused. was this a 2018 change? IRS doesn't state an income cap limit for the $5k pretax benefit. i only saw the limit on one site, but the rest i'm checking don't mention anything about an income limit.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Apoc - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:00 PM)JPolen01 Wrote: I'm 99% sure my company doesn't offer an FSA. The HSA has been nice for all the pregnancy doctor visits though. My wife makes enough where even at $1700/m for daycare we still come out on top by quite a bit. She keeps kicking around the idea of staying him, but I'm not really interested in that. We would have to really adjust our lifestyle which doesn't appeal a lot to me.
It's a personal choice, but there are tangible benefits of one person staying home. The best part, for me, is my wife does all the errands and whatnot during the week. This means no trips to the grocery store, very little house BS (e.g. meeting handymen), etc. for us on weekends. That means we get to maximize "fun stuff" on days I'm not working. The money can be hard to give up though, if you're used to it.
Also, your lifestyle is going to change a fuckton anyway soooo...
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Sijray21 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:00 PM)JPolen01 Wrote: I'm 99% sure my company doesn't offer an FSA. The HSA has been nice for all the pregnancy doctor visits though. My wife makes enough where even at $1700/m for daycare we still come out on top by quite a bit. She keeps kicking around the idea of staying him, but I'm not really interested in that. We would have to really adjust our lifestyle which doesn't appeal a lot to me.
just an FYI, Dependent Care FSA is not the same as a standard Healthcare FSA. i'd double check your employer benefits to make sure you don't miss it.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Apoc - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:04 PM)Sijray21 Wrote:(01-10-2019, 03:58 PM)Apoc Wrote:(01-10-2019, 01:26 PM)D_Eclipse9916 Wrote: That's fair, if you are good about paying down home equity; its not a horrible return between home price increase and reducing interest on a cost.
Note Dependent Care FSA caps at $3,600 for joint filers making $125,000+ combined.
[redacted] - needed to search more... it's not mentioned in a lot of places
actually, i'm still confused. was this a 2018 change? IRS doesn't state an income cap limit for the $5k pretax benefit. i only saw the limit on one site, but the rest i'm checking don't mention anything about an income limit.
It has to do with Highly Compensated Earners and ensuring plans don't favor those who make a buncha money. I deleted my statement because that may not be true of all plans, depending on how they're structured.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Sijray21 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:18 PM)Apoc Wrote: It has to do with Highly Compensated Earners and ensuring plans don't favor those who make a buncha money. I deleted my statement because that may not be true of all plans, depending on how they're structured.
so damn complex... looking into it now...
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - JPolen01 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:15 PM)Sijray21 Wrote: just an FYI, Dependent Care FSA is not the same as a standard Healthcare FSA. i'd double check your employer benefits to make sure you don't miss it.
Yes - I know this thanks to the year of my life I spent selling payroll services/benefits that I will never get back. I could have been a bit more clear that I wasn't lumping the two together.
And yeah my life is changing a ton, but if I can minimize the change as much as possible...
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Sijray21 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:28 PM)JPolen01 Wrote: Yes - I know this thanks to the year of my life I spent selling payroll services/benefits that I will never get back. I could have been a bit more clear that I wasn't lumping the two together.
And yeah my life is changing a ton, but if I can minimize the change as much as possible...
that's good. i've never been well-versed in HR benefits and it confused me a bit when i first started looking into things. you're thinking about so much other crap for the new baby coming that taxes and tax shelters were not high on my list at the time.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - D_Eclipse9916 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:28 PM)JPolen01 Wrote:(01-10-2019, 04:15 PM)Sijray21 Wrote: just an FYI, Dependent Care FSA is not the same as a standard Healthcare FSA. i'd double check your employer benefits to make sure you don't miss it.
Yes - I know this thanks to the year of my life I spent selling payroll services/benefits that I will never get back. I could have been a bit more clear that I wasn't lumping the two together.
And yeah my life is changing a ton, but if I can minimize the change as much as possible...
Personal choice as Apoc said. You can also meet in the middle if your wife is able at her job. My wife went 50% (20 hours and correspondingly 50% pay). We didn't want to give up her govie job as that affects her pension. Plus with her not working, there is no 401k matching and $18.5k from her contributions into her work retirement. At least for us, losing her income, plus having to make up for her work IRA and her personal IRA would cause a massive change in our lifestyle. AKA eating ramen.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Evan - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 03:14 PM)Sijray21 Wrote: don't forget to sign up for any dependent care FSA benefits if that's offered for you ($5k/yr max per household - single and married filing jointly).
I have done that for the past couple years but I stopped this year. Getting invoices and filling out the claims was just too big of a pain in the ass. I went to college so I didnt have to do that crap.
I guess I should do the math to see how much Im really leaving on the table there.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Sijray21 - 01-10-2019
(01-10-2019, 04:50 PM)Evan Wrote:(01-10-2019, 03:14 PM)Sijray21 Wrote: don't forget to sign up for any dependent care FSA benefits if that's offered for you ($5k/yr max per household - single and married filing jointly).
I have done that for the past couple years but I stopped this year. Getting invoices and filling out the claims was just too big of a pain in the ass. I went to college so I didnt have to do that crap.
I guess I should do the math to see how much Im really leaving on the table there.
lol, i file it once (once i already spent the $5k - usually sometime in May/June) and submit the whole thing and it gets paid out throughout the rest of the year even when i didn't contribute the whole $5k yet. I'll do it once, but yes, filing multiple claims is a royal PITA...
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - WRXtranceformed - 01-10-2019
Our child care will be wifey, and she's free (sort of). No worries about lifestyle changes here, we've built it around a single income. With that said, I'm shopping other options at the moment because more is better. Or is it mo' money mo' problems?
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Apoc - 02-12-2019
Tax return: Married filing jointly
We barely hit itemized deductions due to the $24k standard deduction. Mortgage interest and property tax on our house were the major contributors. I used the standard sales tax deduction assuming our 10.1% local rate - we do not have state income tax. Excise tax for vehicle registration and charitable donations pushed us over the $24k floor, but we also just barely hit the $10k SALT cap.
This tells me if we upgrade our house, we'll likely get the additional mortgage interest, but we won't get any additional money paid in property tax. Yay for getting taxed on money you pay in taxes.
![[Image: 55289396.jpg]](https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/55289396.jpg)
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - JPolen01 - 02-12-2019
We got totally fucked by the new tax laws. No surprise there. No change in withholding, no major raises. But this year we owe $1200. Married filing jointly. Even ran the numbers filing separately and it was the same outcome. We had been enjoying pretty significant returns due to the way my commission is paid - almost $4k last year. I would prefer no return and not to owe obviously, but owing really stings. Based on my scientific twitter research it seems people are just starting to realize they got fucked by this reform. Stupid Trump supporters.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Apoc - 02-12-2019
Most paychecks went up after they took effect. Did yours? That might be where some of that offset is coming from.
I tried doing some research last night, but got annoyed because people were complaining their refund went down without any context of withholdings, paychecks, etc. I want them to talk tax liability - that's obviously too much to ask.
I need to go back and compare tax liability and effective tax rate from 2017 to see if I should be upset. I started to do that, then realized to do it right I really needed to look at my pre-tax savings rate to make it a fair comparison. That was too much effort at the time. Our refund went from $3500 to $1500, but that doesn't mean shit without the rest of it.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Kaan - 02-12-2019
everything I read when the tax laws were passed, both sides, "be careful, your check might go up but your return will be zero or you might owe."
Married, claiming 1 each, zero kids, we have a house and put in an average of 19% of our pay into 401k/health savings, and have about 10% in charitable contributions... I expect to be down, maybe not pay.
The first year we got married and filed taxes was a "wakeup" call. I wish it was only $1,200 we owed ... BUT my accountant sat us down and we reworked the next year early enough that we were fine the next year. It is all about tax liability and you need to know what counts (and at what rate) and when. He also cleared up things pretty easily when I got an audit letter asking me to write the $9,800 check...
When the tax laws got released, our accountant reran everyones 2017 numbers and said about 20% of this clients were projected to owe that didn't owe in 2017. He also noted if your charitable contributions are down and/or you got a raise... save some dollars up and spend them after tax season clears.
RE: Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread - Apoc - 02-12-2019
Oh, I should also mention that we got the $2000 child tax credit because phase out moved from joint income >$110k to $400k.
This effectively offset the personal deduction we would have gotten for him, since those are gone... although I think the old method would have gotten us more like $2500.