The Absence of Bill (with Mary Update Bonus!)
When life gives you lemons, you tend to not blog as much.
Mary’s eye surgery was a success in that she’s doing fine. The problem is that she still has double vision when she looks up or down. The doc said that she needs to do eye exercises to strengthen the muscles, but she’s feeling dejected at the moment and I don’t blame her.
On the plus side I found out about the Columbus Victim’s of Violent Crimes Relief Fund (the infamous CVVCRF) , which will help pay any out of pocket bills that insurance doesn’t cover so hopefully this won’t cost us anything. Surgery isn’t cheap.
With all of this going on, we close on the new house Monday. The appliances were delivered today and last night we went furniture shopping, blowing $1,000 on a kitchen dinette and a new sofa. Hey it’s only, money, right? I’ll post some pics when we get some stuff moved in. I love the house. Just love it. 2 1/2 acres of land, room to breathe and I can actually see stars at night.
Actually, we have some left over cash from our loan PPI which helps us furnish things a bit. This is where the new TV money is coming from. I’m still on the fence as to whicn TV I’lll be getting but it looks like I’ll have around $2,000 to play with.
Of course we’re still sweating the fact that our current house hasn’t sold and the showings are slowing down so I’ll have to lower the price. I expected this to happen but it’s still really annoying. We can afford both mortgages (at the expense of not putting any money into savings — I really want to open a ROTH IRA, btw) but the sooner we sell this sucker the better. I am ready to move.
I’ve been playing GalCiv II which, for me, is easily just as fun as CivIV, and is far and away the best “4X” game since MOO2. This game should win some kind of award for game AI. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It anticipates, reacts, and totally surprises you.
I knew I was playing something special when one of the races I was about to invade contacted me, saying that he saw what I was up to and knew he couldn’t defeat me but would do whatever he could to make sure I lost. Sure enough, he signs a pact with the only race close to mine in terms of power (the humans) — giving that race ALL of his tech and ships, which effectively turned them from #2 to #1 in one turn. Ouch. It really is a great, single player, turn based strategy game. It takes me back to when I played more of these types of games…you know..back when people developed them.
I’m still waiting on Oblivion to be delivered from Bethesda but Bill Harris has some good impressions of it on his blog. He, like me, is a real Morrorwind geek so he knows of what he speaks. Well, in this instance, anyway. har har
Lastly, my E3 flight is booked and once again I’ll be there working for GameSpy with some blog updates time permitting.
Hey maybe I’ll see NCAA 07 on the floor and tell you how much I think it looks a lot like NCAA 06. I can’t wait!
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
FYI - You have to have an IRA before you can have a Roth IRA. So you couldn’t just open a Roth.
I had 2 IRA’s that I transferred to Roth IRA’s this past year. Great thing for a younger guy like myself who can pay the taxes on it now and will never have to again - especially after it gains a lot of money. Of course, it sucked come tax time and owing the government a few thousand. But I’d rather pay it now than in 40 years.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
A thousand dollars for a sofa *and* a dinette???
You, sir, are officially a cheap bastard.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:17 pm
While you can ‘convert’ a traditional IRA to a Roth, you can also just open a Roth straight up.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Dan - Hmm. I must’ve misunderstood something. I didn’t know you could open a Roth straight up. I guess you’d then pay the taxes that year on the amount you dropped into the Roth IRA?
About a year ago, I left a company for another job and took the money I had in their 401K, transferred it to an IRA and then to a Roth IRA. I guess I got confused because I think the only thing I could do was transfer my 401K to an IRA before I could make it a Roth IRA. I don’t think I could go from a 401K to a Roth IRA (or at least that’s what I was told).
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:00 pm
My parents opened a Roth straight up..
And yeah, Value City had a spring sale. We didnt go leather so we saved some dough. First time I’ve been called a cheap bastard since opting for Milwaukee’s Best instead of Sam Adams back in the day. I take pride in my cheap beer days.
March 23rd, 2006 at 7:49 pm
MJB:
This is part of my ‘real’ job so I’m pretty familar with it.
The situation you discussed is correct. It’s different when you are rolling over a 401K — that’s not the same as walking into a financial institution and opening a Roth. The problem with you is that you had a 401K — you can’t transfer that into a Roth without taking a hit. (Basically when you convert, you are going to make all those pre-tax contributions post-tax).
I believe some things are waived for a conversion IRA, honestly I haven’t done one in some time, so I’m not totally up to speed on it — but when you convert you’ve got to pay the taxes NOW instead of later (you are always going to pay at some time).
You *could* have kept that IRA/401k as is and then opened a ‘new’ roth and kept them separate. I do know the conversion does have some tax implications…
Hope you made out ok.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Dan,
Thanks for the information. After reading your first post, I had a feeling the issue was that I went from a 401K to IRA to Roth IRA. The main thing I knew was that I couldn’t go directly from a 401K to Roth IRA.
I made out fine. Just took a hit on taxes this year, but I knew I was going to so that was ok. I figured it was better to pay the taxes on it now than in X years when the amount in the Roth would be greater and so would the taxes.