Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Year End Tax Saving Tips

Ok! So it is year end. Everyone is in festive moods. Great! Lets have some fun with friends and family. Sit around the table and talk about all the crazy things that happened this year. While doing so lets also discuss about taxes, tax saving tips. Remember we have until December 31st to make adjustments and be wise about saving taxes.
First thing we need to do, of course, is to see how we fared so far in the year. Since it is almost end of year, any recent pay stub should tell you how you are faring so far. Check your pay stub to see your income. Get a rough estimate of taxes you gonna pay. You can find the tax table here. Once you got that, here are some of things you can do to save taxes.
Increase your IRA contributions
I know bunch of folks who feel that contributing to retirement is a waste of money. In fact I met few people who think they wont live long enough to see the fruits of 401K. Well, whatever reason they give, it ultimately boils down to the fact that they want to see hard cash right now in their hands rather than years later. Few people think they wont have enough bank savings if they put the funds in 401K. It might be so, but you have to check your assumptions with the facts.
Check your savings/checking accounts and see how much you saved over the year. If the amount is 3 times your monthly salary, it is excess for a single person, and if it is more than 5 times your monthly salary, it is excess for a family person. Money lying around in bank is almost useless money. As Warren Buffet says "cash is probably the worst investment." Contribute part of that savings to your IRA, let the money grow. More often than not, your employer matches the contributions and hence you get free money. Contribute something, a little, whatever you are comfortable with at least to get that free money. Dont you go buy clothes from Macy's if they have BOGO offer. So why is this different? Put money in 401k and save taxes, grow your money.
Clean up your closet
How on earth would cleaning your closet help you reduce taxes? The trick lies in what you do after you clean up. I am sure you accumulated bunch of clothes over the year and you no longer wear few of them, or you feel they are old and hence dont use anymore. Most people just throw them into dumpster. Such a waste. There are people who might actually think that those clothes are luxury. You may want to consider donating them to charities like Goodwill who would donate it to people in need. You would indirectly be helping community, reducing waste, be more environment friendly and get tax deductions on your contributions. Make sure you get a receipt from them. I did this exercise last year and guess what why contributions came up to? A whooping $463. I never realized when I donated, but after a while when I was filing my taxes thats how much I got after calculations. I donated my old clothes, shoes, stereo set, key board, some electrical appliances, books etc.
Consider volunteering work
Volunteering not only gives tremendous personal satisfaction of helping community but can save taxes for you. Any work that you do for volunteering is tax deductible. Any mileage that you drive for volunteering is tax deductible. There is a charity which arranges for rides for senior citizens who cannot drive themselves. Think of them as your grandparents and give them a ride to the grocery store, airport or wherever they want to go. It is very very refreshing and you get to hear their amazing stories.

Consider selling your investments for loss
This might sound crazy to you and of course this is not applicable to all. If you have an investment portfolio and you see you did well in couple of places and not doing so well in other places and you doubt your recovery, may be it is time to sell those and take losses. All losses are tax deductibles. You can compensate the gains you made on other parts with the losses.

I deliberately left out ideas like claiming job search expenses, student loan interests, etc since there is not much you can do now. These can anyway be taken as tax deductibles even though you dont do anything now. I will summarize tax preparation check list in another post some time soon.
If you have a tax saving tip, do share it with us, so that we can grow as friends together and get maximum tax benefits out.
Happy holidays folks!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

New Digital SLR Camera

I wonder which SLR camera to buy. My constraints are around $600, mostly automatic, just for a beginner in photography, not too bulky so that I can carry it with me on travel easily.
The ones under consideration are:
















Wondering if any of you have any idea on which one to buy.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Microtrends

'Microtrends - the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes' is a wonderful book for those who are interested in learning about socio-economic trends and in general how people behave. The book doesnt explain why people behave that way. All it explains is how people in small groups act like microcosms and why their needs are different. It is a wonderful treatise on the way these small groups are changing the political scene and the policies. It also talks about potential business opportunities targeted to these small groups.
I did think about a few of business ideas (not a million-making ones, but good enough to live ones) while reading the book. A couple of them I share here.
Idea: Mobile pantry cafe
Target market: local train stations for commuters
This idea is very simple. There are estimated 3.4 million extreme commuters (traveling more than 90 miles one way). If you could figure out the places they are headed to, you could have all the early requirements for them and help them out at cheaper prices than starbucks or a simple breakfast at much cheaper price. For example, in San Diego, where I live a lot of people head to Mira Mesa, Sorrento Valley Blvd in the morning. This is a perfect place to have mobile cafe. In fact I saw one a couple of weeks ago. So I presume people are already acting up on it.

Idea: Social network for empty nesters
Target market: there are estimated 10000 people retiring every day. Most of these people are empty nesters with either their spouse or no one who live with them. They would be pretty bored at home all day along.
The idea is to create a social network, but with much more active participation. Find out empty nesters in the community and arrange for simple fun games or activities for them, for a very nominal fee. An online facebook like of application would also work, if we can streamline the applications to suit their needs. Of course it got to be less technology oriented than facebook and just no nonsense kind of network.
anyway, there a lot of niche markets that can be targeted. i strongly recommend all my friends to read this book. If you like to buy it, here is a link for it.
Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Do not procrastinate


Even though I make it a point not procrastinate things, once in a while either I get lazy, or I dont look down the timeline to see what is in future, which leads to procrastination of few things. And sure, these things come back to bite me in the ass :). A while ago, I had to write a test code which required me to install a plethora of tools, compilers etc just for a small test code. I figured out if I just use some machine which has all these I can get away with it and avoid the delays in installing all the unnecessary tools that will eat away my PC's memory. So I went to a friend who had all these tools installed and got the work done. What I overlooked is the fact that once you write a piece of code, it will forever be yours and you would be help responsible for it. Sure enough a few days later I got a call asking to change this and that in that small piece of code. Again, I had to scramble again to find the friend who helped me earlier. This time he was in a hurry which basically meant he is hinting you at getting your own tools. I was like, yeah, just this time. Well that just this time was just another time. Now I am at a position where I cannot live without installing those tool set. So, I am going to install all those tools which if I had installed the first time would have saved time, a bit of humiliation and given me an opportunity to learn more.
My passport is about to expire in February next year. I thought I have plenty of time to get it renewed when I realized it in August. So I procrastinated it. Before I realized it is October without me following up on it. And then suddenly one day I realized we have holidays coming up. We planned to go out of US, may be to Europe, Mexico or New Zealand. In the process I realized I cannot go out of US unless I get my passport renewed. Even then by the time we figured out expenses, we kinda said no to a trip outside US. And hence I procrastinated again. But later on, we thought we can go to Mexico for cheap, just to realize my passport needs renewal. So now I am scrambling to get all the documents together and get it done.
Procrastination is never good. It might save you time in the short run, but in the longer run is always a hassle. By far procrastination is the main negative point in me that I need to work on. Unfortunately it will always come back in the most wrong time.
I wondered about ways to get over procrastination. Here are few that I came up with. Please leave a comment if you have more on this.
  • Make sure you always look at long term before you decide to procrastinate a thing
  • Know the consequences of not doing it now
  • Find out the time it would take to do it now, compare it with the amount of time you mgiht be spending later on if you dont do it
  • Make a list of things to do and keep track of them regularly. You may use any of the things to do software, if you like, for example tracks (written in Ruby on Rails)
  • Clear up your things to do once in a while, so that pile is maintainable


Monday, November 2, 2009

Holiday Time!

Its holiday time and I just want to help my friends to find good gifts. Amazon has a good collection of gifts. Follow the banner and see!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Obama and Nobel Peace Prize?

This got to be the biggest joke of the year. Or probably in the history of Nobel Prize. Obama and Nobel Peace prize? Dont get me wrong. I do like what Obama is doing but I certainly dint think he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
I strongly disagree with the above statement. I doubt if Obama has done enough to strengthen international diplomacy or cooperation.I do agree that he probably has potential to do that. Yes, he does give speeches (definitely great ones) about furthering diplomacy.Yes, he is making efforts to bring parties together for negotiations and peace talks. He may be trying to get more peace into the world. But I dont see him deserving Nobel Peace Prize. He hasnt done enough to deserve it. There are a lot more people who did more than what he did and deserve it more.
To me it appears like a political move. In some sense, it might be a good thing since now he would be forced to keep up the image. He probably would pull the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. I do commend his decision to shut down Guantanamo bay. Hope he continues to do much more such things to at least deserve Nobel Peace Prize.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Microsoft Help??

Ever wonder why MS is perceived with such derogatory sense? Take a look at this link
I wanted to find out how to create an auto table of contents page in power point. I went to MS website and was baffled to find the answer. I guess that is the level of intellect that they expect from their users. Grow up MS!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Weird Status messages!

Have you ever seen very weird status messages on facebook or orkut or any of such social networks. i wonder what people think when they put up those messages. Interestingly, there are people who comment on those statuses. I wonder where people get their time and what makes people think that other people might be interested in knowing what they are doing. Here are few examples:
  • xyz is watching TV: *Wow! Really? How interesting? WTF should I be interested in it?
  • abc is reading a novel in the bathroom: *Mindblowing... fantastic.. never knew you can even read a novel, let alone in bathroom
  • jkl is dying to watch Harry Potter - *wish you would die right now..
  • iuoi is loving every moment of time spent on the beach - *yeah, really? are you serious? if you are loving every moment, why the heck are you updating your facebook status?
  • Eating pistachio cake. Very yummy
  • Teaching xyz how to waste time using iPhone.
Get a life people and know that you ane not the center of universe

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Agatha Christi novels!

Hello people!It's been a while since I bogged! Hope I biog more often.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I realized that my vocabulary going down, deteriorate slowly and steadily. I realized that I need to do something about it. That's when I realized that it has been so Long since I read a good novel (read it has a novel). I remember my English professor at university say that people who read more often has better vocabulary and sentence creation. So I decided to need novels. I am very find of reading anything that can stimulate me. Then I remembered Pairot who always says "Little grey cells!" So I decided to need Agatha's novels.
Two weeks and I am done with two and a half novels. The once I read are:
  • The Death on Nile
  • Murder on the links.
  • Murder of Roger Ackroyd
of the three, the last one had a very interesting ending.
Death on the Nile, it was pretty obvious from the beginning who the culprits are. But I wasn't ask to put together all tm details to prove them as culprits.
Murder on the links, even though I was able to guess the murderer, it did take a lot of deliberation to arrive at it.
murder of Roger Ackroyd, all along I was dole to guns that nom of the people really at the household were the murderers, but it did come to me as a jolt who the murderer was. I never even considered that person could be the culprit.
Anyway, it has been a lot of fun reading Agatha Christi's novels. She has a knack of giving you the facts and yet leave the interpretation to the reader until she reveals the mystery. Its been great fun to employ my little grey cells to solve and put the facts in an order. Its been fun taking an hour everyday to employ my grey cells. Hope to finish her series this year.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Words for the day!

I pledged myself that I would keep a log of the words I came across which I either forgot the meaning, or I am not sure about it.
machiavellian - using unscrupulous ways to get ahead
delectable - delightful, highly pleasing
imbecile - A stupid or silly person; a dolt

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Things to do when you get bored!

The other day I got So bored that I started wondering what I can do to get out of the boredom.I was scratching my head when I logged into my gmail accountand saw my brother online. So, there I realized.That's the first thing I can do. catch up with my friends and family.So I started talking to him and were discussing how to get oneself out of boredom.Here are Some of the things we came up with!
  1. Find synonymsfor boredom.
  2. why do people get bored?
  3. Think about your favorite cartoon.
  4. Read an article on boredom.
  5. Learn to unite a simple story.
  6. Read news
  7. play poker online
  8. Solve Sudoko
  9. Solve crossword.
  10. Read jokes
  11. try poetry
  12. Practice speech
  13. plan a vacation
  14. Think about a possible business idea
  15. Romance a thought.
  16. Write blogs on these :)

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Rational Communication

Many a times simple communication can solve a lot of problems. Situations that fall into this category occur almost everyday. A little patience and expressing yourself and listening to others completely would help clear up a lot of misunderstandings and bad feelings. The key point is, though, to listen with your head in right place. Many a relationships could have been saved if only the parties involved would listen to each other.
Take for example a couple, wife and husband. Husband is at work attending a meeting. Wife is at some place trying to get back home by bus. She is not sure if she missed the bus. She calls up husband, who is on a phone meeting. Knowing that she is probably calling for an urgent reason, he picks up the call. She tells him, she thinks she missed the bus and wants him to pick her up. He says he is in the middle of a meeting, it would get over in another 15 mins and then he would come and pick her up. She says if you start in another 15 mins, it is going to take another 15 mins to reach here. I need to wait for 30mins. At this point, he tells her, there is nothing he can do; either she has to wait or find out some other way to get home. She gets angry and hangs up.
This is a typical scenario. Husband at work, wife somewhere trying to get husband's attention. It is understandable that girls need attention. But girls need to think whether in their pursuit of attention from their boys, they are distancing themselves. No guy would like a girl if she is encroaching it into his space.
Lets breakdown the incident described earlier:
Wife is desperate at the bus stop since she doesnt know whether she missed her bus. If she did, she is concerned how she is going to get home. So she calls husband to ask him to pick her up, but mainly to share her insecurity at the bus stop. From an outsider and fair perspective, she has two choices. Wait and see if she missed the bus. Wait for her husband to come and pick her up. Or call another friend or cab which would take about same time as for her husband to come and pick up. So no matter what she has to wait. Hence there is no need to argue with her husband about 15 more minutes that she has to wait if she starts after 15 mins. And especially so if he is in a meeting. She should understand that and not argue it.
Lets take another example. Husband doesnt like shopping. Wife loves it. Husband thinks it is total waste of time while it is an activity, kind of must for wife. Husband gets dragged inevitably to shopping mall. Everywhere he goes he shows no interest in being there, doesnt participate in shopping, doesnt show any interest to talk to wife and nags about being in the shopping mall. Is this not common? What can we do about it?
Well, lets see. First, what are your alternatives? Send her alone? It is pretty obvious that if it is possible, you would try it on. Lets say you eliminated all your possible tactics to escape going with her. Now what? Step back and think about it. What are you really achieving by sulking there? The more you sulk, the more she is worried. She has to divide her attention, enthusiasm and energy between looking at you and her shopping list. She is looking for your reassurance (probably the most expected thing by girls) just about everything, shoes, dress etc. And you are standing there sulking, yeah, ok, whatever kind. The best thing to do is, now that you are already there and have no way out, work with her, tell her your opinion, expedite the process so that she makes her decision faster and you can be out faster. Search the store for her if required. It shows you are interested in her, and would help you get out of there faster. May be you can use this next time saying remember I came with you last time and I was interested, can we take an exception today? something like that.
On the other hand, you could probably talk before you go to mall about what you are going to buy, how much time you willing to spend there, etc. This would give you a perspective of whether you are doing on time, spending more than what you wanted. If you see it overrunning, you can hint her about it. Wife on the other hand should realize that her husband is at shopping mall with her against his will for her. She shouldnt take advantage of it and extend the time as long as she wants. She needs to be considerate. She should realize that he would come more often with her if she sticks with what she promised at home before starting. Simple communication like this and sticking to it would help in a longer run. You would develop respect for each other, the love you had will always remain and you would have that spark going on and on.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

what does it mean to be a leader?

i started wondering the other day, what does it mean to be a leader? What qualities makes a leader? Can you claim you are a leader with whatever qualities you have?Are leaders born leaders or is it possible for anyone to become a leader, if one invests enough time to become one?Do leaders do things differently? Is their main job to motivate others or facilitate others to get the job done?Do leader roll up their sleeves and get their hand dirty or just sit back and make others work?
These and many more questions are cropping up in my mind.
I'm sure there are people around you, may be your friend, a colleague, a teammate or someone you know who you consider a leader. This guy/girl need not be the best person, or best qualified or the most brilliant person around yet, you feel like listening to him/her. what are the qualities that attract you to him/her? what are your expectations out of them? is it because they always live up to or fair better than what you expect that you are attracted towards them?
I look around in my company to see if I can find such a person. I've not yet seen a single person who can be role model but I've seen good qualities that I look upto in them. Each one has a different good quality. May be this is how you can become a better person. there is one who is good at making people comfortable and get things done. there is another who is awesome at creating automations. There is another who is great at presentations. So, I guess if you look around and observe you can find people from who you can learn. This brings to another point, teachability.
what does teachability mean? It simply means your ability to be taught not teach. It means that you are open to suggestions, open to try a new thing, open to learn, open to pull yourself together and zeal to move forward and become a better person. Many few people are teachable. this might be a consequence of many things Personality, environment, friends, childhood bring-up, attitude, schooling how pretty one looks, anything. These people think they are absolute authority in pretty much everything. They do not want to even consider a suggestion. there are the people who you would raise comments like "If I need advice, I'll give you." These people make friends but very few good friends. Many of their friends just leave them sooner or later. There are few more who are at least open to suggestions, but they will never seek it unless it is utterly required.These people at the nick of the moment will listen to whom they trust.
To be continued...

Monday, January 19, 2009

Call me Captain!

89 hours of flying practice....
about $9000 expenditure....
1 and a half year of patient pursuit...
pushing the time limits to make it to the scheduled flight...
a day of grueling oral and 2 hrs of flight test...
a life long license to explore the skies... priceless.

Yes I am done with my private pilot license. Yes, now I am licensed to soar the skies just as the mighty eagle soars the skies. Well not literally, but yes close enough..
Here are the things that I want to do next:
  • Go at night over airports with part time lighting that I can turn on from airplane and turn them on :)
  • Go over the coast line to have a beautiful scenery
  • Take my wife on a full moon day and watch the moonlight shine on our faces
  • Go over salton sea with my friends :)
  • Need to get a multi-engine rating sometime when I get more time
For all those people who think its late to start anything new, come on folks, you got a lot more ahead than what you left behind. And if you think you dont have enough skills, then dodge this, I got my pilot license, anyone can get.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Hilarious business idea got bumped

I have never seen a more innovative idea than what is mentioned in the following story nor have I seen a funny way of describing how it screwed him. Read this and enjoy.

wonderflul

Friday, January 2, 2009

Playing for Pizza

Remember that train scene in the movie "Venki" where Ravi Teja asks the girl sitting across if she reads Johan Greeesham's novel? Well after a long time I read a John Grisham's novel, "Playing for Pizza." It is a novel about a third rated NFL player who couldnt make his mark here in USA, ends up in Parma, Italy playing their league and wins them a championship and everybody is happy. Sounds pretty straightforward? Yes, it is indeed that plain vanilla form. You would think there might be a plot, a unexpected twist or at least some action. Surprise, there is none of these :)
There are a lot of characters in the novel which, frankly,you would wonder why they existed. A few days romance of the hero with a opera singer and she is gone. A game played and a player dropped out. A totally useless supposedly heroine who has no bearing on the story line. Story line, I wonder what the story line for this novel is.
Good things about the novel is that he introduces a lot of foods made in Parma, Italy. Parmesan cheese, Parma ham etc. Some explanation of the arches in Italy.
Overall, it was a waste; spent 6 hrs on the novel; but was worth the time pass from Chicago to San Diego.

Clean up your computer once in a while!

A couple of weeks ago, I observed that my computer got so damn slow I started wondering what happened. When I checked the free space it said I have just 2GB of free space. A month ago it used to be 20 GB. Something terrible happened which I was not aware of. I didnt know where to start looking. So I started checking where the most of the junk lied. I saw there were a lot of files which I no longer use. I deleted them. I deleted few other files, some debug files, it was still just 2GB gain. I looked under Start->Programs -> Accessories -> System tools -> disk clean up. It is a beautiful tool that Windows introduces (I dont know when) to clean up the disk. I ran the disk clean up utility. It took its own sweet time to return back with its analysis. A whooping 16.7GB that it says can be cleaned. It was mostly temporary files, some dump files etc. But I could have never laid hands on them manually. They were hidden in some n number of folders below C:\
After I did the above, my computer was considerably faster. I also ran a spyware software just to make sure I didnt accumulate any of the spyware/adware programs while browsing the internet.
Overall, I am much better now and my laptop is much faster.

While doing so I found out something very interesting. The same happens even at our homes. We keep accumulating a lot of junk (old clothes which you never use, some old mails, magazines, books) that occupy a lot of space and apparently serve no purpose except to take the space and invoke negative feelings in us. Once in a while, we should get rid of them to make more space and peace of mind.
Any suggestions folks?