Time for Grass
Today’s weather is less than stellar. Either the rain has washed away or simply hilighted the complete lack of grass in the courtyard. There are plans to replace the ground covering in the spring. Until then, this is my view and front lawn.
How Chase “Credit Access Line” Hurts Your Credit Score
Recently I was checking out my free credit score on CreditKarma.com. It has been a bit lower than I had expected lately and I wasn’t quite sure why – until I noticed that my reported available revolving credit total was much lower than it should have been.
I currently have two active credit cards – a Discover card with a credit limit of $3000 and a Chase Freedom Visa Signature card with a limit of $7500. Both of these limits are well beyond what I really would ever need – but that extra spending room is nice in case of emergency.
CreditKarma as well as Experian report my available credit limit as $3000, not the total of $10500. Because of this, my debt-to-available credit ratio is much higher than it should be, thus causing my credit score to go down significantly. Credit scoring algorithms place a very, very large weighting on this ratio.
Little did I know that this credit access line “feature” was doing more harm than good. I have a suspicious feeling that Chase and Visa are doing this purposefully. It is in their interest for consumers to have a worse credit score. A worse score means they can charge higher interest rates and be less likely to be accepted for other lines of credit.
Honestly, this calls for a class action lawsuit. I can only imagine how much money this has cost the consumer by anybody who was switched to a Visa Signature card with a credit access line and subsequently applied for another line of credit. I certainly hope it did not affect my home refinance rates. Hopefully this sort of thing will be better regulated in any upcoming bank regulation laws.
If you have a similar issue – call your credit card company and ask that you get your credit limit back so that it is reported properly to the credit bureaus. Hopefully after a few months you will see your credit score shoot back up to where it was meant to be.
A reason to not be excited for the Continental – United merger.
Recently pricing nonstop flights to Chicago – I found this somewhat surprising. What makes United think they can charge 2x the price for nearly exactly the same flight between Austin and Chicago? I’ve seen this pretty frequently from United lately. I’m not excited to see what they’re going to be doing to Continental’s prices or quality of service. I guess I can pretty much give up hopes of ever being able to fly nonstop to Cleveland again – despite Continental’s hub there.
Getting rid of Snail Spam
Enough is enough. I get too many pounds of junk mail every week in my mailbox. Such a small thing can become infuriating over time. More importantly – it fills up my recycling box even quicker and creates more paper clutter on tables – resulting in more chores. Chores are not good. Chores make me unhappy.
Paper junk mail:
- Wastes paper
- Wastes ink
- Wastes fuel in transportation and printing
- Wastes corporate advertising dollars. If I didn’t sign up for your credit card the first 75 mailings, why would I on the 76th?
- Wastes time.
- Wastes space
The main offenders:
- RedPlum. These guys send out ridiculously large coupon papers once or twice a week. I never look at the coupons or discounts. I’m not fooled by loss-leaders. I don’t care. Go directly to recycling bin. Do not pass eyes. Do not waste time.
- To cancel, fill out the form here.
- AAdvantage Citi Card offers. Seriously once a week! You’d think it would be a single piece of paper, too, but these envelopes are packed to the max.
- To cancel, call AAdvantage customer service and request to be taken off of the mailing list. It takes about 2 minutes.
- Mortgage Insurance offers. The fun never stops. After closing on a home, I’ve gotten one to two of these daily, slowly tapering down until I refinanced. Now its back up to several a day. I have yet to figure out how to stop this bombardment from numerous companies – none of which even care to share their actual name. These are horrible life insurance policies from most likely illegitimate companies. I will not fill out and return your form full of my personal information. Direct to recycling bin.
- 401k/Investment statements and fund prospectus. Does anybody actually sit down and read these 100-page dry documents on every single detail of the fund? If you do – get a life or a better fund. Or better still – read it on your computer. I guess this material is good if you have problems falling asleep. It is also very thin, dry paper which I imagine would be excellent at starting campfires.
- I signed up for the electronic version
Thats it for now. If you have any advice on how to get rid of more junk mailings – feel free to comment. My goal is to end up with just mail which is extremely important, mail from friends and family, and the occasional check from… who knows where. Also – if you want to send me money in the mail – feel free.
H&R Block Online Fail #2
I decided it was time to switch to TurboTax – which I was much happier with. Just to verify the numbers, I wanted to check against H&R block and found a rather significant discrepency. When researching the Sales Tax deduction allowed by the IRS – it seemed that H&R block’s amount was significantly higher than the IRS & TurboTax calculations. Congratulations, H&R Block users – you just earned yourself an audit! Hopefully they have fixed this issue. I certainly notified them as soon as I found it.
As I expected – if their software isn’t written well enough to give me a proper error message – it probably isn’t written well enough to accurately calculate my tax return either.
Never again.
BRIAN SAGHY: Hello
Lucas S.: Hello BRIAN, welcome to H&R Block’s At Home Live Chat Support! How can we assist you today?
BRIAN SAGHY: I’d like to report a potentially serious bug
Lucas S.: I see, what is the precise error?
BRIAN SAGHY: Under the State & Local tax payments section in particular. When I choose to use the “IRS standard” amount from the IRS sales tax table, the value returned is MUCH higher than that returned by the IRS website.
BRIAN SAGHY: The IRS provides a calculator here: http://apps.irs.gov/app/stdc/
Lucas S.: I see, that does sound serious. Would you like me to put in a word to my superiors?
BRIAN SAGHY: In my particular case, H&R block says that my standard sales tax deduction is $1,619, the IRS website says $921.36
BRIAN SAGHY: Yes, I highly recommend it or you guys are going to have a lot of audits on your hands
BRIAN SAGHY: Also – I didn’t even know that I qualified for such a deduction. Once this error is resolved – you may want to suggest looking into making this more prominent. TurboTax showed it to me right away and ended up with a much better tax return by default.
Lucas S.: I see, I’ll be sure to let them know that as well
BRIAN SAGHY: Thanks
Lucas S.: Is there anything else that you would like for me to do for you this evening?
BRIAN SAGHY: Thats all.
Lucas S.: I thank you kindly for this feedback and I will be sure to send this up to the proper authorities.
Time to break up with H&R Block Online (formerly TaxCut)
You know, as much as I hated filling out all of my 2009 taxes in H&R Block’s new “At Home Deluxe” online product, I think I may just go ahead and try filing with TurboTax anyways.
Last year, I was wowed at how great their online TaxCut software was. It was quite helpful, easy to use, and seemed to take care of all of my investment needs.
This year – quite the opposite. When trying to find information about wash sales the site provided no helpful input, no automated calculations – nothing. It is really just a beautified IRS form. I had to research the web for hours and do my calculations manually in a spreadsheet. Even then, because they don’t show you what fields you’re actually filling in in the IRS form – there is not way to be sure I was doing it right.
Then, finally, I got to a point where I thought it was time to submit. And – it finds an error.
“Error 1 of 1: Remove the non-alpha characters in %P in order to electronically file this return.”
%P? Oh gee thanks, that is useful. Who knows where that is. So it brings me to a random spot in my return – all of the characters such as $’s and ,’s are automatically put there by the software. If it is complaining about those – I don’t even have the option to change them. After going through the portion in the survey that it takes me to multiple times with no success, I finally ask tech support:
Welcome to H&R Block At Home technical support. Please wait while we find a technical support agent to assist you.
You have been connected to Kelly A..
Kelly A.: Hello BRIAN, welcome to H&R Block’s At Home Live Chat Support! How can we assist you today?
BRIAN SAGHY: Hello, I’m trying to submit my return by e-file, and it is giving me an error message that appears to be broken:
BRIAN SAGHY: Remove the non-alpha characters in %P in order to electronically file this return.
BRIAN SAGHY: %P definitely looks like the backend code is somehow broken and is not being filled in correctly
Kelly A.: That means somewhere in the return there is a letter that is where a number should be or a number where a letter should be. You will need to review the entire form to find it. I apologize for the inconvenience.
BRIAN SAGHY: That is pretty awful
Kelly A.: I agree.
Kelly A.: Is there anything else we are able to assist you with today?
BRIAN SAGHY: i guess thats it
Tech support agrees – their product sucks. So why should I pay for it? We’ll see if TurboTax or TaxACT 2009 is any better this year.
