frugalprofessor

Proposed tax reform: What does it mean?

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The much anticipated GOP tax bill is hitting the news (link): Summary of changes to individual taxes: Massive standard deduction ($24.4k) makes itemizing irrelevant for most the US New 10k limit on property tax deduction (this is a big deal if you’re in a state with exceedingly high property taxes (bay area, CA)) No deduction … Read more

Financial Update Oct 2017

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Another month, another update. A few random comments. Good Reads/Listens/Watches My wife and I binge watched the first season of This is Us and are now caught up on season 2. I’m a fan of dramas and this is the best show I’ve seen in a while.   Life We upgraded our 10 year old … Read more

How to defeat your $100/month cell phone plan

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This post is long overdue, as cell phone hacking is low hanging fruit in terms of expense optimization. Here’s how I have done it for the past decade, saving us over $10k in the process.   Google Voice – The Key Ingredient Google Voice (https://voice.google.com/) is the critical component of our phone setup. What does … Read more

Financial Update Sep 2017

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Another month, another update. A few random comments. Good Reads/Listens/Watches This MyMoneyBlog post (link) on the rising cost of insurance + the viability of purchasing insurance on the open market was interesting. The rate at which healthcare expenses are rising is alarming. A friend of mine forwarded me a video of a recent MMM interview … Read more

Frugal Analogs

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I’ve enjoyed the podcast ChooseFI very much. I like that the hosts are normal dudes (probably more normal than me) stumbling through life like the rest of us. The hosts talk a lot about the idea of frugal analogs, which is an incredibly powerful concept. Examples of frugal analogs in ***my*** life include: $100/month cell … Read more

You should have frozen your credit years ago

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Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you’ve probably seen the news that a crap-ton of people’s personal information was exposed through a breach at Equifax, one of the three credit bureaus. You can check whether you were compromised here: https://trustedidpremier.com/eligibility/eligibility.html It turns out that I was compromised. No big deal. Why? Because I’ve frozen my … Read more