Mosshead

list of productivity blogs

i’m always on the lookout for good ideas in productivity and organization. This list of 50 productivity blogs will be fun to cull through when I find the time.

Add comment July 14th, 2008

Washington domestic partner law and financial planning

A and I have talked about becoming registered domestic partners off and on the past year. We have this sense that it would be a “Good Thing” ™ to get our financial and estate planning together before registering.

Mosshead is definitely not a money blog, but it’s tax season, so naturally I wonder what the financial implications of registering will be. Below are some notes from my research.

UPDATE: the ACLU in Seattle sponsored a great informational session with a financial planner and estate planner so I’ve added answers to my questions below.

Financial Planning

We have some common short term goals as well as the usual long term goals.

build up emergency savings and place it into a higher yield account (other than our shared savings account)
- must we track who contributes what?
  - yes! … gift tax, which might as well be called “gay tax” when you consider IRS’ arguments against lifting it for domestic partnerships … if either of us were audited, we’d need to prove that no gift tax as owed. So we do need to ensure that we’re contributing somewhat equal amounts to any shared accounts. The annual exclusion is $12,000.
  - Essentially, on a shared account, we both own 50% of the account regardless of how much $ each contributed. That means if A deposits $1000, she’s gifted me with $500. If I deposit $1000 2 weeks later, I’ve gifted her with $500. That’s how I understand it anyway.
  - Gift tax is especially insidious from a taxes perspective … it’s taxed at about 45% … the government figures if you’ve got enough money to give away they should get a good cut.
- on shared interest-bearing accounts can we decide who claims interest on taxes?
  - I believe so
- Actually, we need some advice in general about how we manage our money - at the moment, we get paid at different times and we shift money back and forth as needed. I suppose you could call the “shifting” interest-free loans.
  - gift tax again is an issue
pay off our unsecured credit card debt
- will domestic partnership make us liable for each other’s debt?
  - As of June 12, registered domestic partners in WA will join the wonderful world of community property that married couples enjoy … but since the federal government (esp. IRS) does not recognize domestic partnerships …. we are once again vulnerable to that 45% gift tax. From the Second Substitute House Bill sec VI it appears the debt preceding the registration does not become community property (the wording kind of beats around the bush, so that should be verified by a bona fide lawyer).
  - Since we don’t own a house, our situation is easier to manage - but community property means we each own 50% of assets. If one of us were to get pregnant and only work part-time … we’d need to work closely with a financial planner to avoid getting screwed at tax time.
- if one partner pays over $12,000 of the other’s debt, will it incur the gift tax penalty?
  - yep
- What if we just put all our money into a common pot and pay what needs to be paid out of it? (yep, that’s what we do now and so do a lot of unmarried couples.)
  - bad idea until the IRS starts treating gay households fairly.
fully fund our IRAs each year and make matching contributions to a retirement fund
- again, we run into risking that $12,000 gift tax penalty if not careful.
- the retirement fund … we do own a business together and the business will provide a retirement fund with a matching plan. This is probably the safest way for us to build retirement
we’ll need a new car in the next 5 years
- it will cost about $24,000 for the truck we want.
- I don’t think that tracking amount of money contributed to this purchase is really important unless we plan to divorce, or only 1 person’s name is on the loan.
we want to buy a house in 2-3 years.
- We have a lot of saving to do. Again, we’ll have to watch the gift tax penalty closely and be smart about shifting income between us.
- We have to meet with a financial planner before embarking on the house journey.
we especially need retirement security - if one of us dies before the other, we don’t qualify for social security benefits as long as the federal government will not recognize gay households.
- we’ll need a long term investment plan and profile designed by a CFP who understands financial bias against gay/lesbian households in the tax code.
- Again, we want tax efficiency in our investment profile as well

So, the thing that pisses me off the most about the whole gift tax/gay tax thing? Every bill that’s been introduced to make an exception for unmarried households has been shot down because of the terrible loss of income it would represent to the federal government.

So … you tax the shit out of queer households, most of which are low to middle income, to fund services that we don’t have access to (social security, military service and benefits). Hm.

Estate Planning

it’s hard to separate this out from financial planning since it’s so closely related.

house: we don’t own one yet, but it doesn’t hurt to be informed beforehand so we can focus on the house when we buy it. According to this account of California domestic partner , even though domestic partnerships got inheritance rights, the law is fuzzy on whether the property undergoes a change of ownership (when a married survivor receives the house they own, it is not considered a change of ownership). The problem is whether the property value must be re-evaluated … which will greatly increase inheritance tax if they didn’t do any estate planning to avoid inheritance tax.

How should we manage our short term and long term financial plans?
Does anything change with the estate planning we need to do? (my suspicion is “no”)
Will we become responsible for each other’s debt? (yes)
How can we make our investments and cash more tax efficient without incurring gift tax penalties? (work with a financial planner to design a tax strategy)

I’m a strong proponent of doing things myself. But my NOLO books and forms apply to straight married households not to me. Tax and estate laws so strongly disadvantage gay households that I believe it’s absolutely necessary to work with a planner who is familiar with queer issues.

maybe I’ll write more about this later …

This was a good article over at GFN

Add comment April 23rd, 2008

car swap-a-roo

5 years ago A and I had some conversations about whether we really needed to be a 2 car family and decided that there was no reason for us to have more than 1 car.

We live in a bicycle-friendly area where nearly anywhere we need to go is 10 miles or less away. So we envisioned what our transportation situation should be …. Does “transportation situation” sound funny? Yeah. One of the things about living on the west coast is that public transportation is limited and destinations are far away. I’d say that many west coasties feel dependent upon our transportation and our transportation is a type of self expression.

Anyway, the first part of our plan was to get better road bikes for around town. It took us a while, but after we built our kayaks, we’d built up a nice dividend from REI from the kayaking gear we’d bought. So, armed with dividend and REI gift cards, I got an awesome lightweight road bike. My Carema won’t be a classic collector’s item, but it’s fast and fun and gets me out there.

There are about 3 months of predictably inclement weather in western Washington and sometimes we need to drive a car to haul things too big for a bike. Our short term plan was to use the Jetta since that’s what we had. The long term plan though is to do an EV conversion for our around-town car. A home EV conversion will generally get about 30 mi travel distance before a recharge is needed and that’s plenty for in-town errands.

So last year, I purchased the donor car - a 1963 Ford Falcon Futura (we like the model name and it’s a cool looking car that’s light enough). We haven’t had time to do much with the Futura yet other than to kick the tires and rust spots and strategize how to deal with the rust spot/s. That’s okay, we’ll get there.

So, it’s 5 years after that original conversation and the jetta’s electrical issues have become a real problem … no horn, no high beams (yes I changed the bulbs), only the driver’s window can be rolled down.

Our lifestyle has changed in the past 5 years. 4 years ago, I was finishing my degree and had grown overweight from a sedentary lifestyle. Riding my bicycle helped me lose quite a bit of that weight. So, since then we’ve both become more active. We built kayaks a few years ago, fell in love with mountain biking last year and became obsessed with skiing this year. And we feel pretty committed to continuing with that trend

Actually, it’s probably more of a near-mid-life thing … where many women our age are having an “oops I forgot to have a baby” moment, we also had an “oops I forgot to play” moment.

So … the jetta is about to die an ugly electrical death the way that jettas do. And we really want a camper for mountain biking trips and skiing next year. We figure if we get a season’s ski pass for next year it will mostly pay off if we’re going up on weekends and staying the night in a camper.

The upshot of that is I’m about to buy my first expensive vehicle - a 2004 Nissan Titan. Big by most standards, but it’s the smallest truck that has enough payload for a small camper. It’s a scary grown-up decision - the most expensive vehicle I’ve ever bought was $3500. I’m a sucker for both older and future classics.

So, we’ll give the jetta to A’s mother who needs a new car, we’ll look for a bike trailer on freecycle or craigslist so we can haul more with our bikes instead of driving (namely we just need to be able to haul 5 gal water about 1x a week). And we’ll have this hurking truck … that gets 13mpg … with gas at $4/gal.

I have fantasies of getting the ffv option that’s available for the truck and finding an ethanol source … but those really are fantasies at the moment.

I sure hope it’s worth it.

Add comment April 23rd, 2008

volunteer travel resources online

Idealist.org
Probably the most comprehensive listing of organizations that need volunteers from 1 week to 6 months. Some organizations will pay transportation costs as well as provide housing.

Life Changing TravelÂ
is aÂ travel agency specializing in placing people with a volunteer opportunity. Not a bad idea for busy people who don’t have time to do all the research.

TripSpot
listing of organizations that offer volunteer travel

GoAbroad.comÂ
I think this has been around for a while. At least I seem to recall hearing about them when I was in college. I think they’re pretty oriented toward students

Add comment July 14th, 2007

volunteer travel

A few months ago there was an article in Sea Kayaker magazine about volunteer kayaking trips up in Yukon Territory and Alaska.Â This particular trip, some kayakers were volunteering to assist anthropologists as they did field research on indigeneous cultures in the Northwest. It re-whet my appetite for travel.

I’ve dreamed of traveling the world since a young age. But my experiences being a tourist have been disappointing — tourist activities tend to be canned, stale and antiseptic.Â The problem with traditional tourism is that it’s object oriented, yet what makes an experience special to me is developing a relationship with people and place.

I don’t think my feelings about tourism are all that unique. So reading the article about volunteer travel reinvigorated me to start thinking about travel more. I’m going to add a category here and start dumping volunteer travel resources here.