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Old 01-03-2021, 01:55 PM   #141
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look at the problem from the other side... not trying to reduce the tax bump for your heirs, but trying to prep for the tax bump from being an heir.

my attempt was to roth convert to move asset to never tax... thus reducing the tax bump
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Old 01-03-2021, 01:58 PM   #142
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+1
I record daily and check all accounts online as well. Have caught fraud a couple of times and gotten it corrected before the merchandise was even delivered to the fraudster. Hoping the police were there when they were "getting" the fly fishing gear ordered on OUR card!

Really doesn't take much time to do, but then being in accounting...numbers are my thing!
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That's some serious discipline.
I reconcile my visa statements , checking etc, about once every 2 months or so. It does take me an hour or 2 but I enjoy doing it and still capture just about everything since I put everything I can on CC and checking account.
Put it all in my spreadsheets which I have diligently been doing since 2012.
I'm a bit of a numbers nerd so actually enjoy categorizing, noting year over year deltas etc.
My background is also in accounting, although more of my career was in financial analysis.
I do enjoy budgeting and tracking expenses. I love "playing" with numbers in general.
As @retire23 mentioned, I also have captured multiple fraud attempts over the years on a timely basis, as I check my cc expenses daily.
When I decided to cut down some expenses from the budget, my detailed analysis made it easy for the decision making process.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:23 PM   #143
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My background is also in accounting, although more of my career was in financial analysis.
I do enjoy budgeting and tracking expenses. I love "playing" with numbers in general.
As @retire23 mentioned, I also have captured multiple fraud attempts over the years on a timely basis, as I check my cc expenses daily.
When I decided to cut down some expenses from the budget, my detailed analysis made it easy for the decision making process.

Yes that is a good reason to check daily. What I did was just have Bank of America send me an email alert every time my credit card is used. I then check the emails and if it looks good just delete the emails and do my bimonthly spread sheet thing.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:23 PM   #144
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I record every expense every day, except on vacation. Takes a grand total of 5 minutes daily.
Same here. When I order things from Amazon I write them individually on my sheet, bracket it with the word Amazon beside it. Allows me to check my credit card statement before paying.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:29 PM   #145
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look at the problem from the other side... not trying to reduce the tax bump for your heirs, but trying to prep for the tax bump from being an heir.

my attempt was to roth convert to move asset to never tax... thus reducing the tax bump
I've read the above several times but still don't understand.

From the heir's point of view, if they know they're going to face a 10 year SECURE Act tax bump, they probably want to be Roth converting now, ahead of time.

They could get stuck, if they have a lot of Roth converting of their own to do and then get hit with a SECURE Act 10 year tax bump...but that just means they're going to be in higher tax brackets and nothing they can really do. First world problem for sure.

Still don't understand the killing Roth conversion comment...everything we've said since seems to suggest Roth conversions are a better idea after the SECURE Act, not worse.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:33 PM   #146
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Being forgetful and lazy, I am happy to let Quicken download expenses for me (we are nearly cashless and use credit cards all the time). I just go in after the download, and correct/add the categorization as needed. The classification is not as fine as some posters here do, but works well enough for my purposes.

For example, speaking of RV fuel cost, a few clicks on Quicken let I see that I have spent $16,383 on fuel cost for my motorhome towing a car, ever since I bought it. That's travel over a period of 10 years, and covering 43K miles. I did cross-country RV travel every other year, alternating with European trips, so did not drive every year.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:43 PM   #147
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I record every expense every day, except on vacation. Takes a grand total of 5 minutes daily.
That's some serious discipline. [...]
I record every expense every day too but for me it's not much discipline. It's what I do right after taking my shoes off, changing to more comfie clothes, and settling into my recliner with my laptop, once I return home. All part of the same routine. (Then if I order something from Amazon later that night, I record it when I order it.) They say that it takes 21 days to form a habit and once this becomes a habit then it is pretty much automatic.

As Dtail pointed out, it doesn't actually take much time and my guess would be more like 30 seconds than five minutes. For example today under Restaurants "$8.00 soup". There. That didn't take long to type. I haven't spent anything else today so far.

Then every few days I "balance my wallet", taking the previous amount that was in it and subtracting what I bought in cash since that time, and checking to see if the result balances with what is presently in my wallet (to make sure I didn't forget to enter anything). That can be a little more challenging but I love doing it, especially the victorious feeling when it balances. At the same time I check my credit card purchases on their website, and then I check my bank accounts daily, to make sure anything paid from CC or bank was entered in my spreadsheet too. Again, quick and easy and only every few days.

I didn't keep track of my spending to the penny each day when I was working, but back in 2011 F told me about how he does this and I was SO impressed and instantly a convert! What a great idea. Anyone who loves numbers should try it because honestly it is so much fun. Or it is for some of us, anyway. More fun than a barrel of monkeys.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:46 PM   #148
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I've read the above several times but still don't understand.

From the heir's point of view, if they know they're going to face a 10 year SECURE Act tax bump, they probably want to be Roth converting now, ahead of time.

They could get stuck, if they have a lot of Roth converting of their own to do and then get hit with a SECURE Act 10 year tax bump...but that just means they're going to be in higher tax brackets and nothing they can really do. First world problem for sure.

Still don't understand the killing Roth conversion comment...everything we've said since seems to suggest Roth conversions are a better idea after the SECURE Act, not worse.
the tax bump (secure act) makes roth conversion too expensive during the bump
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:48 PM   #149
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I record every expense every day too but for me it's not much discipline. It's what I do right after taking my shoes off, changing to more comfie clothes, and settling into my recliner with my laptop, once I return home. All part of the same routine. (Then if I order something from Amazon later that night, I record it when I order it.) They say that it takes 21 days to form a habit and once this becomes a habit then it is pretty much automatic.

As Dtail pointed out, it doesn't actually take much time and my guess would be more like 30 seconds than five minutes. For example today under Restaurants "$8.00 soup". There. That didn't take long to type. I haven't spent anything else today so far.

Then every few days I "balance my wallet", taking the previous amount that was in it and subtracting what I bought in cash since that time, and checking to see if the result balances with what is presently in my wallet (to make sure I didn't forget to enter anything). That can be a little more challenging but I love doing it, especially the victorious feeling when it balances. At the same time I check my credit card purchases on their website, and my bank accounts, to make sure anything paid from there was entered in my spreadsheet too. Again, quick and easy and only every few days.

I didn't keep track of my spending to the penny each day when I was working, but back in 2011 F told me about how he does this and I was SO impressed and instantly a convert! What a great idea. Anyone who loves numbers should try it because honestly it is so much fun. Or it is for some of us, anyway. More fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Perhaps you all are convincing me to do this daily rather than every month or two.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:51 PM   #150
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I record every expense every day too but for me it's not much discipline. It's what I do right after taking my shoes off, changing to more comfie clothes, and settling into my recliner with my laptop, once I return home. All part of the same routine. (Then if I order something from Amazon later that night, I record it when I order it.) They say that it takes 21 days to form a habit and once this becomes a habit then it is pretty much automatic.

As Dtail pointed out, it doesn't actually take much time and my guess would be more like 30 seconds than five minutes. For example today under Restaurants "$8.00 soup". There. That didn't take long to type. I haven't spent anything else today so far.

Then every few days I "balance my wallet", taking the previous amount that was in it and subtracting what I bought in cash since that time, and checking to see if the result balances with what is presently in my wallet (to make sure I didn't forget to enter anything). That can be a little more challenging but I love doing it, especially the victorious feeling when it balances. At the same time I check my credit card purchases on their website, and then I check my bank accounts daily, to make sure anything paid from CC or bank was entered in my spreadsheet too. Again, quick and easy and only every few days.

I didn't keep track of my spending to the penny each day when I was working, but back in 2011 F told me about how he does this and I was SO impressed and instantly a convert! What a great idea. Anyone who loves numbers should try it because honestly it is so much fun. Or it is for some of us, anyway. More fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Haha, you do more accounting for cash than me. I do try to record all the cash expenditures, but have in my budget "Unaccounted Cash" for $20 monthly.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:53 PM   #151
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Perhaps you all are convincing me to do this daily rather than every month or two.
21 days to form a habit! Honestly I love doing this stuff and hopefully you will too if you decide to start doing it.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:55 PM   #152
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Haha, you do more accounting for cash than me. I do try to record all the cash expenditures, but have in my budget "Unaccounted Cash" for $20 monthly.
I don't have any planned for category "Unaccounted Cash", but if I am off by just a penny or so I don't care. That only happens a couple of times a year, so usually I am keeping track to the penny.

There are SO many times when I forget to enter an unusual cash expenditure, and keeping track this close helps me to remember everything. For example, this week I owed $3 to Frank because I only paid him $10 for some nonperishable food items worth $13 a few weeks ago. These were things he had in his pantry but didn't want, but I did, so I bought them from him but didn't have exact change. I paid him the extra $3 this week. I'd never have remembered that I did that if I wasn't balancing my wallet.

EDIT: And then, last February somehow I lost $23 dollars. I suspect that I was just being my usual insanely clumsy self and dropped it on the ground in a public place when fishing money out of my wallet for something else, or else maybe I thought the $20 bill was a $1 bill (and perhaps the same for a $5 bill) when tipping somebody. Anyway, I assigned that money to my "Miscellaneous" spending category, my only entry during 2020 within the subcategory "To Make It Balance". I never would have known that happened if I hadn't been keeping track.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:57 PM   #153
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the tax bump (secure act) makes roth conversion too expensive during the bump
Now I see where you're coming from. It's hard for me to get my mind into that space, since the only thing I inherited from my parents was a bad attitude.
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Old 01-03-2021, 02:58 PM   #154
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the tax bump (secure act) makes roth conversion too expensive during the bump
Ah, OK, that I understand. Thanks for persisting with me.
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Old 01-03-2021, 03:03 PM   #155
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Then every few days I "balance my wallet", taking the previous amount that was in it and subtracting what I bought in cash since that time, to make sure I didn't forget to enter anything. That can be a little more challenging but I love doing it, especially the victorious feeling when it balances...

With Quicken downloading transactions from accounts, I do not often check the account balances as shown on Quicken vs. what is shown on the institution Web sites. I may do that once or twice a year, and surprise, they quite often do not match. The difference may be as high as a few hundred bucks. Somebody's computer is wrong!

Well, quite often the discrepancy is in my favor, meaning the institution's Web site shows that I have more money than what Quicken shows me on my computer. Early on, I tracked down the discrepancy, and this took a few hours because I have to backtrack from the last point when everything was balanced. I downloaded the monthly statements since that point, and it could be more than 12 months since I last looked, then painfully compared every transaction. Pain, oh pain...

And I found that most of them were caused by Quicken missing a dividend payout. I own mostly stocks, not MFs, and they take turn giving out dividends through the year. Either the institutions dropped the ball in reporting it to Quicken, or Quicken messed up, I will never know.

But as I mentioned, the error is usually a happy one, so now I just credit the difference into Quicken, and move on.

Just a few days ago, in looking through all the dividend payouts this year to prefigure out my taxes, I noticed that one MF account had paid no dividend this year. No can be, particularly as this one that is the 1st MF after-tax account I ever own going back decades calls itself an "income MF". A closer look at Quicken told me that the last recoded dividend was 18 months ago. Hah!

Back then, I found out that the downloading stopped working, and this being a smaller account, I just disabled the downloading to kill the error message, and promptly forgot all about it. And this being a smaller account, I gave it no attention while watching the larger ones daily.

After logging into their Web site and getting up-to-date information, I found myself a few $K richer, from both the missing dividends and the higher share price. Happy error of omission again.


PS. I also track spending accounts in Quicken, but do not care to the last penny because my wife takes care of paying them off each month.

One time, out of lack of better things to do, I looked into one of the credit card accounts as shown on Quicken, and saw that its balance was not zero after my wife paid it off. I forgot what the error was, but it took me some time to track it down to manually correct it.


PPS. My wife has her own spreadsheet, although I offered to install Quicken on her PC. She's happy with her system, and that's that. When I need to look up something, it's infinitely quicker for me on Quicken than scrolling through her multi-page Excel file.
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Old 01-03-2021, 03:15 PM   #156
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I took my time looking at this... Waited till the year ended. LOL.

Family of 4, we spent $90,743.02 (Thank you Quicken)

That included everything. Taxes, tuition/housing for 1 semester at college. etc.

Previous year was closer to $150k - but 2019 included a new car and a family trip to Europe.

Big items:
Insurance: $21462.73 (Health was 1/2, homeowners, cars (with 2 teens), umbrella, etc.)
Groceries (includes booze): $10,951.22 Was down by $1k this year at $11k. Contributing factor might be that older son is vegetarian now.
Also had $6k of auto repairs/maintenance...
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Old 01-03-2021, 04:19 PM   #157
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Our spending was down about 18% with all the COVID changes, plus we got lucky and nothing serious needed repair (neither our stuff nor ourselves). As it worked out, we gave most of the savings to our kids as their incomes were more impacted-as soon as it starting getting scary back in March, we gave each a check. They all got back to work at least at some amount by May, so they didn't have a bad year overall, just a weird one.
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Old 01-03-2021, 04:31 PM   #158
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We came in at a little over $74K (family of 2, MCOL area), not including income taxes which I still have to calculate. "Core" spending - which we consider everything outside of Healthcare, Travel, Taxes and Lumpy Spending was ~$53K.

CategoryAmountComments
Autos10,6462 leases - 'reasonable' cars, insurance, gas, fees
Charities2,282 
Covid19499Masks, Clorox, Hand Sanitizer or anything else due to COVID19
Entertainment180 
Fees147 
Food & Dining7,342$5,791 Groc; $1K+ libations; Almost $0 restaurant due to pandemic
Gifts1,030 
Health Insurance Premiums12,050COBRA - DW; 1/2 yr COBRA, 1/2 "A"CA - me
Healthcare OOP2,634Deductibles and other out of pocket HC expenses
Home13,796Insurance, Property Taxes (Blue State - Yay!), HOA Dues, misc maint.
Lawn & Garden2,825Lawn & Tree Care, Flowers, Sprinkler service, etc
Lumpy Spending7,298$2K deck repair/seal, $1,750 House repairs, Appliances, Tech, etc
Misc2,457Delivery Fees & Tips, Holidays, Memberships, Online Services, etc.
Personal Care605 
Pets290 
Shopping2,196Computer Hardware & Software, Clothing, Small Appliances, Hobbies
Travel0No Travel due to Pandemic
Utilities8,469CRAZY! Water & Sewer - $1,800+; Cable + Internet $1,500+; Electric: $2,100+...
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Old 01-03-2021, 06:42 PM   #159
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Don't have a clue and don't want to find out either. Best left unknown and never spoken of.
Although I majored in accounting and spent my entire working career in accounting/finance I have no desire to know the details of my personal expenditures. If I go broke I may regret it.
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Old 01-03-2021, 11:07 PM   #160
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the tax bump (secure act) makes roth conversion too expensive during the bump
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Now I see where you're coming from. It's hard for me to get my mind into that space, since the only thing I inherited from my parents was a bad attitude.
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Ah, OK, that I understand. Thanks for persisting with me.
Can one of you who have become enlightened explain it to those of us who are still benighted? I won't be offended if you explain it as if I were five.
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