Money

What happens if you cash a check for zero dollars? For an amount including a fraction of a cent? How about for a negative amount?

I finally broke down and applied for a credit card last weekend. The prospect of better fraud protection and cash back was just too tempting. I’m now eagerly awaiting for it to arrive in the mail.

Today and next week I have off of work. I needed to use up some vacation time before May or I’d lose it. I figured I’d take off this time since it’s public school vacation week, and thus my Mom and wife have it off as well. My dad is also taking it off. So, we may go out to the Berkshires sometime in the middle of next week, if the weather’s good.

“It’s time to upgrade.

Your copy of Microsoft money includes online services for three years. To continue enjoying use of services like investment tracking and synchronization with MSN Money, please act now and upgrade to Money 2006.” — Microsoft Money 2003, when I opened it today.

There are a lot of electronic money transactions nowadays. My “paycheck” gets electronically transferred from my employer’s bank account to my bank account, from where it is electronically transferred to merchants I do business with.

My question is, is there traditional cash (in the form of dollar bills) somewhere that is associated with all this electronic money? Or is there some currency in circulation that just begins and stays electronic?

Jessi and I are settling into our house well. It’s starting to feel normal to live here. Our driveway got paved yesterday, and it looks nice, although they left a lot of dirt in our front yard.

So now, they naturally would like payment. They’ll take $5,000 if I give them a check, but if I get cash, then it’s only $4,700. This seems a bit… fishy to me. I know that it can’t cost them $300 to process a check. So, there has to be something more going on. My guess is that if they get a check, then they report it on their income taxes. But if they take cash, it just goes into their pockets and they don’t properly report it. (And it’d be much tougher for an IRS audit to establish a paper trail, or something.)

So, I just sat down with Microsoft Money, and it says that the government is going to give us a really big refund come the end of the year. Apparently, while becoming a homeowner is expensive, the government tries to make things easier for you by not taxing you on money spent on property taxes or mortgage interest. So, I just filled out another W-4 and intend to give it to our Personnel department tomorrow.

I am contemplating the possibility of signing up to get a credit card for use in emergencies. Does anyone have any good/bad experiences/advice/suggestions?

So, now that I’m kinda grown up and got a mortgage and such, I’ve been spending time putting together a budget to make sure everything works out, especially now that I have some concrete numbers for the mortgage. When doing the budget in Microsoft Money, it helpfully gives a pie graph of where our expenses are going. I noticed that a very large chunk of it was going toward our mortgage interest. It was about 20% of our monthly expenses. (Especially near the beginning of the loan, the vast majority of the payment is just paying off interest.)

It’s interesting how basically all investments one can make are based on somebody being in debt. Our economy runs off of debt. It’s rather… odd.

Those of you in the area know that last weekend was The 2005 Massachusetts Sales Tax Holiday Weekend. The theory is that this gives a boost to retailers, since it’s a sale at every single store, getting people to go out and buy things during a normally slow time. The long-term benefits to retailers, plus the short-term benefits in meal and gas taxes which are still collected, make up for the lost tax revenue.