Author: stlplace

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

More tips for 2009 income tax filing

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I received both the federal and state tax refund last week.

Besides using the Turbo Tax from Bank of America site (get 35% off). For State (show me state) filing, I used paper filing, because state filing is usually simply enough, and also the Turbo Tax already gave me the estimate refund amount (so that I can compare my own calculation with it).

One thing to keep in mind, is to use the “fill/calculate” versions of the tax forms, when filling the forms using Adobe Acrobat Reader. That way, when you print, you will have a bar code, which will expedite things according to MO Department of Revenue. One can certainly use Turbo Tax state version too, but I felt it’s just unnecessary. I did used the state version once or twice, and at one time I screwed up (put negative number in income), and the online software did not warn me. Later I had to make amended return. So my lesson there is never trust the computer blindly.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance Stocks

Joined Bank of America Keep the Change Program

Reading Time: < 1 minute

(Update 05-07-2010) I just found out some more details on how it works. Per BoA’s FAQ of the Keep the Change Program, “The matching funds will be credited annually to your savings account. This will take place within 8 weeks after the month of your enrollment anniversary for the Keep the Change® savings service.”

(Update 04-04-2010) I found US Bank “Start” saving program also to be interesting. I may join them after I “kept” enough changes from BoA in the initial 90 days.

(Original) I heard about it for a long time, today I took the plumage: I went to the local BoA branch and opened a Savings account, and because I already have checking account and check card with them, I enrolled into the Keep the Change program. Quote BoA:

======
We’ll match your Keep the Change savings for the first 3 months, to the penny. After that, we’ll continue matching 5% a year. The maximum total match is $250 per year.
======

So it looks like the offer is less generous than the old one, where they match penny by penny until hit annual limit ($300?). In other words, there is no 3 month sweeten deal, then 5% match thing. It’s more like I missed the hot deal 🙁

But look at another way, I need the Savings account regardless, the Keep the Change is just ice on cake.

Categories
Software development

Some corrections to Hibernate tutorial

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Hibernate logo
I was referring to the First application at Hibernate (Jboss) offical documentation. I found some problems when doing the exercise: just want to share some of my findings so others may benefit.

1) dependency version missing: there are already some some discussions on the Hibernate discussion forum, such as this one and that one. I followed the first one: added the version numbers as suggested and the problem went away.

2) jdbc driver can not be found, the fix is to

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=hsqldb -DartifactId=hsqldb -Dversion=1.8.1.2 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=/path/to/your/hsqldb.jar

in my case (mac) this is /Users/major_xu/Downloads/hsqldb/lib/hsqldb.jar

I saw discussion on this one, too, the suggestion is to “add classpath for hsqldb.jar”. But I don’t know how to do it in maven command line.

3) misc: there are a lot other corrections:

Continue reading “Some corrections to Hibernate tutorial”
Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Tax tips 2010: double check ESPP income

Reading Time: < 1 minute

ESPP stands for Employee Stock Purchase Plan. My former employer is a public company, and it offers a good ESPP plan: 15% discount of stock market price at the beginning or the end of plan period (pick the lower of the two prices, then apply 15% discount), the plan period is usually 6 months. I took advantage of that. I was nervous about the market crash in Jan 2010, so I locked in my gains in late 2009. But I found a catch until today when I finalize the federal income tax using Turbo Tax (got 35% off referral from Bank of America here).

Basically I found my W2 form already included the ESPP gain (as my ordinary income). And I already put those in the investment section before today. That’s double counting my income! I am glad I caught this when I double checked my W2 form 😀

Opened traditional IRA
To correct the mistake I made about selling ESPP stocks too earlier, also combined with my new employment situation, I opened an IRA account to reduce the taxable income for year 2009.

Categories
gadgets Stocks

Is PALM here to stay: II

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I sold my few shares of Palm Friday morning shortly after opening. Palm (Nasdaq:PALM) share dropped 29% on Friday after horrific earning outlook (marketWatch). Palm is increasingly likely to say “bye bye” to its loyal customers in a year or two. Quote sobelmedia:

======
I’m never going to forget my very first Palm Pilot in 1998…how cool…it was everything I needed and wanted in a handheld device…addresses, notes, contacts everything…and it had the ability to sync with my computer to keep it up to date. Over the years the company changed owners, management, operating systems and the competition heated up all at the same time. Now it appears as though Palm is at the end of the rope and Wall Street is ready to say goodbye.
======

I think PALM has to blame itself for the recent problem (since webOS based Palm Pre launch at Sprint network last July). I saw the following problems:

Continue reading “Is PALM here to stay: II”
Categories
Investing

Stock lessons 2009/10: sold stocks for tax reasons

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Sold stock ((NYSE:BEE) at a loss for tax deduction (in year end of 2009), but forgot to buy it back in Jan 2010. Now the stock doubled the price from where I sold it. I am not trying to predict the stock price in near term, or think “what if” from hindsight here. I think one key reason I did not hold the stock is still due to my ignorance: I don’t know how to value it (as REIT). I saw someone put an quite optimistic est. at around $2.50 in last Dec.

Back the topic, another reason I think I did not hold the stock is because it dropped precipitously in last Dec., and I started to sell some after initially bought quite a few shares. As I sold when the stock started bouncing, I sold too early. After a while I only have a few thousand shares, I sold them at around $2: thinking to take advantage of the loss for tax deduction, and hope to get back when the price drop again the the Jan.

But obviously I did not jump back to this bandwagon in Jan.

Think long term and trade less

Continue reading “Stock lessons 2009/10: sold stocks for tax reasons”
Categories
Life

We got a baby girl

Reading Time: < 1 minute

She was born in St. John’s Mercy Medical center St. Louis, labor room 5, at 6:55 AM CST, on May 5 2010 (Friday). She weighs 7 pounds (3.15 kg). Mom and baby were both doing fine. Obviously our lives changed forever since her arrival. For me personally, I need to worry about two people instead of one; and vice versa. The first 2 days at hospital after baby born is a bit overwhelming. Things calmed down quite a bit after the initial panic. And I think we both become more confident about taking care of baby as time goes: diaper change, swaddle, and feed the baby (for my wife).

Babies are fun
They are a million times fun than iPhone, or at least a thousand times fun than computer programming. Maybe my wife will disagree with me on this one. Nowadays because I work in office (instead of home), I see my baby only in early morning and evening, so I tried to spend some quality time with her (like changing diaper and burp). It seems to me our baby has some change everyday. The first 24 hours is obviously very sleepy. After that she is more active, besides the cries every baby does, I can see her smile a little from yesterday.

Some trivia stuff
A year ago this time (March 5, 6 and 9) is the 10 year low of US stock market (Dow Jones stock index).

I found some iPhone apps for baby: like this one “baby brain” and “total baby” (available at iTune app store), both tracks baby diaper change and feeding, among other things. I thought about this when my wife started write those information on a notebook (although she has iPhone).

Categories
Master Series

Reading Buffett letter to shareholder 2009

Reading Time: 1 minute

link to 2009 PDF annual shareholder letter here.

Buffett CNBC interview
(part 1 here, following the link from part 1 to get to part 2 to 8 )

Recommend reading by Buffett
Keynes’s *General Theory*, chapter 12

Intelligent Investor Chapter 8 and 20

My Notes

Continue reading “Reading Buffett letter to shareholder 2009”
Categories
gadgets

Palm only way forward

Reading Time: 4 minutes

1. Come up with products that is consistent (not sometimes work, sometimes don’t, see this old post from PreCentral guys).

2. Also come up with some smart ads (with Sprint and Verizon), something like this one from German carrier O2.

O2 has about 11% market share in Germany per Yahoo Answers.

Continue reading “Palm only way forward”
Categories
401k and Personal Finance

401K, IRA, Roth IRA

Reading Time: < 1 minute

How to deal with 401k when leaving a job?
Some options:
1) Take it out, with 10% penalty, and potential income tax later on. This is usually not recommended.

2) Rollover to an Rollover IRA; or Rollover to the new employer’s 401k.
I did this once: not because of change of job, but because of change of company ownership, I have opportunity to rollover some of the 401k money into Vanguard Rollover IRA in year 2007. That money didn’t recover to the initial value so far.

3) Leave it alone (until 59 1/2 years old).
I did this when I left my former employer in Oct. 2008 (the middle of financial crisis), it turns out to be a good move (or no-op), as the value recovered from the crisis.

Should I open a traditional IRA or Roth IRA?
Tax deduction: IRS publication here.

Continue reading “401K, IRA, Roth IRA”