I think my husband uses IRS online methods to do quarterly estimated payments.
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I have an ID.me account but you donât need it to make estimated quarterly payments or file your taxes.
So unless there is something you need from the IRS that requires it, Iâm not sure thereâs much benefit to having one. Lots of people were worried about the security implications of that company having so much personal info, the selfie requirement in particular freaked a lot of people out for some reason.
I got it because the IRS has a process that generates a unique id every year that you can use when you file your taxes that proves your return is not fraudulent, and getting that id requires you log in with your ID.me account. Someone unsuccessfully tried to file a bogus return with my SSN once, so I like the security it provides.
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Other federal agencies are now into adopting ID.me⊠well, I guess I would have to get one at some point, so I did.
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Both my mom and I have SS online accounts. When my mom recently moved to another state, I only had to go online to change her address and her SS & Medicare information were updated.
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I also request an IRS PIN each year and suggest that my adult children do the same. (They then proceeded to forget that they requested the PIN and have to go looking for it at tax filing time!). Once you set up the ID.me account, subsequent requests are easy.
A couple of people mentioned IRS online access. I pay my quarterly taxes via credit card, but I donât have an account that provides me online IRS accessâas far as I know!
Can anyone please explain why or if I need an online IRS account?
Thanks!
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Whew! It looks like we finally did sell our boat (signed contract, but no check in hand yet). If this goes through, we can pay off all the debt that we accrued for buying property and another boat, and hopefully live off our pension! Itâs quite exciting, as when we retired, we had a significant amount of money saved and thought we wouldnât have to access our 401Kâs for a long time. But then we used much of that money to pay down our 2.25% rate mortgage 
and bought some property, then boat #2 arrived before boat #1 was sold, as tends to happen. It is weird being in debt again after so many years of being out of it, but hopefully those days are soon gone. Until we find something else to get in debt forâŠ
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I have a mortgage on our house and I wish it was bigger because it has a 2.625% interest rate. We sold a couple of properties in the pandemic that had 3% mortgages. I wanted to keep them but ShawWife correctly said that she was the one who did the work and one was going to need a new kitchen a bathroom and she did not have the energy for them.
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We are same boat - I wish we had taken more out with 10 year 2.5% mortgage on our home. But I also liked the smallish monthly payment. Canât have it both ways, but you definitely could have/should have taken the bigger mortgage on your current home with the sale of the other properties.
I was just thinking about other âmissedâ financial opportunity yesterday. When search engines were relatively new (in the early 1990âs), one of my bosses (MD but very heavy tech driven, with a brother in CS work) said Google was the best search engine available at that time. DH and I should have bought Google stock! But like most, we were busy with careers and didnât open a personal investing stock account.
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Google was founded in September 1998 and didnât go public until August 2004.
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Would it make a difference in your life if your wish did come true? Would you somehow be way more happy?
Even though not public, MD (and we) knew about it (and USED it) â and I would have been smart watching for it going public!
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A friend of mine was a local realtor until they moved OOS. I went to one of her open houses, where the ownerâs wife didnât like the house, and they actually moved out and got something else. He had a lot of money tied up with this empty house (it was way above average home prices already). She did get the home sold fairly quickly, but he stopped by during her open house. He was paying two mortgages, but probably could afford that aspect â just had money tied up with this empty house as the main factor.
@gpo613, I am guessing that your question is facetious.
But, let me take it seriously. Would having more debt at below market rates make a fundamental difference in my life? Definitely not at the moment. I feel blessed at how my life has turned out thus far. I have loved the substance of my work (other than employee management; see below), love learning new things which I do in my work, have been happily married for 40 years (well, will be in August), was/am a great father to my kids and have a very good relationship with them as adults, live in a house that is so nice it makes me happy every day (more the location than the house), can and do travel to nice places, am putting more of my time into pro bono work trying to make the work a better place. Iâm not a person who values tons of things but I do love good coffee and have an Italian machine that grinds the beans and makes espresso at the touch of a button and another machine that steams/froth miles. ShawWife and I sit down every morning with our lattes, look out on the river from our living room, and feel grateful: She says, âWe landed in lucky.â Slightly higher returns from having more below-market debt would not change any of that. (None of that was pre-ordained by my circumstances. My parents were not wealthy. I was a very bright kid from a family full of Asperger-y folks and went to college with zero social skills. I had to learn how to interact with people in college and grad school. I studied tech subjects when it was nerdy and not fashionable. My siblings are all doing fine but none landed where I did.)
The main things that would meaningfully improve my life that I can think of: 1) I have relatively high status but with a significantly higher status, a higher percentage of my corporate projects might be those at the highest level of business and government and the the pro bono work might have bigger impact; 2) if I had enough money that I had a private jet (which given our knowledge of climate change, I now probably would not do though Iâd be tempted); and 3) if I had more money but less than private jet money, and I could also help my kids sooner in their lives. Iâm working on the latter also.
A big improvement, mentioned in a post in March of 2022, was a plan I was putting in place to minimize my dealings with a highly talented by highly annoying colleague (a textbook high functioning narcissist). Last month, he chose to leave the firm. There will be some touchy negotiations but my stress level is already lower as a consequence.
Now back to the original question, I like to invest well and having a bigger 2.625% mortgage or retaining 3% mortgage would improve my investment returns. I would feel satisfaction when I was looking at it. Somehow, knowing I had below market loans would probably not enter my thoughts on most days. We are not living on investments at the moment, but maybe we will be down the road and having higher returns would certainly provide me with a greater sense of confidence. I saw my mother get very nervous in the last 10 years of her life about money and she would always me if she would run out of money (She would have if she had stuck with the status quo but we rearranged things so she was not going to run out of money). Money beyond a certain level does not provide intrinsic satisfaction when basic needs are met, but I think it can provide a sense of security.
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I wasnât trying to be facetious.
I realized something a bit ago. See I am a transplant where I live. The bulk of my family is 800 miles away. So when we had kids we got into a routine of one year going on a vacation that was more traditional to a destination. Then for a couple of years we would go visit my family. From that experience and watching the kids I learned it really always isnât where you are instead it more often is who you are with that makes the difference.
Similarly I grew up playing golf in addition to other sports, but I was best at golf. Over the years mainly through some of the companies I have worked for I have gotten to play some famous courses and some that arenât so famous and they want to keep it that way. If you know what I mean. It was cool to play those, but that this point golf is way more about who I am with than where I play. See my Dad died 6 years ago and I would give anything to play another round with him. I could care less where.
I am not going spend the back nine of my life worrying about every dime. If I stay on my path I know I will be fine in retirement. And it will be a retirement where I will have time to donate because I feel like I will be able to make a big difference for a few if I have the time.
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I think the woulda, coulda, shoulda might be more of a personality trait. I donât do that much, but have a tendency to do it with finances. For example, I bought Google stock a week ago and itâs already gone up 8 points. Instead of congratulating myself on the timely buy, Iâm irritated that I didnât buy more. It wouldnât change my life, but I just canât help it. We bought four short sale/foreclosure condos around 2008. Great investment, but why didnât we get more? Canât help it. Still happy where we are.
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Love your answer and detail.
At some future point you might look into corporate jet travel with âsharedâ costs/use â our neighborâs brother was a pilot for such a âgroupâ out of Nashville. Definitely makes some of the travel nicer and less time/waiting with flights.
I know you will be feeling great when all is completed with annoying colleague finalized exit from firm. On the âhome stretchâ with that one.
Your love of good coffee, and with your DW. I really loved coffee (drank since age 12 in Switzerland with coffee/milk rather than warm milk right from the cow on my grandparentsâ farmâŠ) and thought I would always be drinking coffee. But I was consuming a lot, especially during sitting down retirement things â drinking coffee with tapered caffeine (I would brew a pot of 80/20 caffeine to decaf portions and drink about 10 cups a day). DH drinks and still drinks 16 oz of coffee a day (one large cup with grandpa message). I would drink milk with the coffee, and quite a lot of milk. This was creating a lot of calories a day that I didnât need. So I decided to instead drink hot decaf tea - I use 2 tea bags, one Celestial Raspberry Zinger and the other tag less decaf black tea, using my instant hot water tap but then microwave the water/cup one minute more before adding 1/2 tspn Truvia and the tea bags. I reuse the tea bags until I need to replace (have extra tea bags out ready to use the new bags). I use a generous mug my talented DD2 painted/ceramic fired. I still love the smell of coffee and have enjoyed a cup of coffee maybe once a year with a great dessert.
I still drink a lot of milk - often with cereal, or with certain foods, but I believe the no coffee and the no caffeine is healthier for me (no caffeine for the most part, but sometimes have a Diet Pepsi somewhere and it is with the caffeine). It is a treat, and I definitely feel the good effects of the caffeine/energy.
Good for you (and your siblings) to have the financials and motherâs living situation rearranged for more reassurance that her money would not run out â and your mother lived a long life too, what a blessing. The sense of security is important.
It sounds wonderful with your time looking out to the outdoors/scenery. Our home has a very private/wooded and green back yard, with blooming rose bushes in a nearby flower bed. Good view from our family room couch through glass sliding doors and full-length windows on each side. Dining room and kitchen have good greenery views but at above sitting visual sightlines. Specifically had DH trim back a few bushes recently so I could see more from the kitchen windows when I am at the kitchen sink and counter area. We love this custom-built house (built for and by us) and yard, but once DH is finished with his activities in this area, will look to downsize and move to be closer to the grandchildren and DDs/families.
Our BEST life investment was having our DDs and the time/energy/efforts in raising them well. We love the four grandchildren we have, and enjoy giving time/energy/efforts so that the grandkids have a wonderful full life too.
I agree with @gpo613 about vacation experiences and having the time with those around us â DDs could enjoy many wonderful things with WI summer and WI winter with their cousins and grandparents.
DH and I both agree we are very comfortable middle class - we can contribute to charities we want to support, and continue to live and enjoy life w/o a lot of bells and whistles. Long marriage, over 45 years now - and hope to have many continuing happy returns.
Some causes of illness and death are not avoidable but living fully and with educated caution. Rehab nursing was educational on certain accidental situations to avoid.
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@gpo613, sorry for guessing wrong.
Iâm with you. I donât want to spend my time being anxious about spending. My idea was that we could manage the overall level of spending by concentrating on choices in a few big categories. When we were actively trying to save money for college and retirement, the choices were:
- What neighborhood you live in. As I learned from The Millionaire Next Door, people tend to get a lot of their assumptions about what is normal to spend from the folks around them. So, we moved into the less affluent neighborhood of an affluent town and lived there for 25 years. When we moved there, people mowed their own lawns and kids played in the neighborhood whereas in the affluent neighborhoods, there was an armada of folks from Central America and Brazil doing landscaping and you never saw anyone playing (they were in organized activities). I didnât love the house but it was the perfect neighborhood for raising our kids and we were able to keep our expenses way below our income and saved a lot. We consciously chose this neighborhood even though my income was likely a lot higher than the other folks in the neighborhood as it kept our expenses much less than my economic peers. We also thought it was good for our kids not to grow up in a neighborhood where kids think that going to the Cayman Islands for spring break was a birthright.
- Vacations. Where an how you take vacations. We spent a fair bit of time at a couple of houses owned by my wifeâs family, which meant time with them when we might have preferred to be just our family. Some of my colleagues would take trips that were organized by a travel company and were completely guided. âYour driver will pick you up at your hotel at 9 AM. From 9:10-9:25 you will visit Ho Chi Minhâs second house. Then the car will take you to Hoan Kiem Lake where you will walk for 25 minutes. The driver will then take you to the zoo, before a lunch at ⊠.â We would go on our own, miss some of the things they were doing, but have fascinating conversations with college kids at the lake, and spend a quarter of what our friends spent. Iâm sure we saved thousands of dollars a year relative to some of my colleagues/our friends.
- Education. Private v. Public schools. Here, we moved to our sub/exurb in part for the schools and in part for zoning flexibility so our plan was to send the kids to public elementary and public HS but go to private middle school (we were told by principals and superintendents in a number of towns that elementary and high schools were excellent but middle school was weak). ShawD ended up going to a private HS so we had only partial saving on this.
If we could control your spending in these big categories, the thinking was that we wouldnât worry about buying organic versus regular blueberries. It did work but I was still offended by going to Whole Foods and ended up discovering Costco, where I am a loyal member.
On your Dad, sorry to hear that. I get that the who matters a lot.
We have gotten less frugal over time. In part, we have been had some good fortune financially and in part we moved to a much more affluent neighborhood in the same town so of course, we now have landscapers etc. But, like you, I never want to be in the position of being nervous about small expenditures.
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Itâs interesting what people want to spend money on. Even when we had lessâŠtook no vacations and really watched what we spent âŠ.we always hired lawn and snow removal help. For us thereâs very little else that could bring us the pleasure that not having to do these things brings. On the other hand, now that we have a great deal of money we still only have occasional help inside the house. About once every 6 weeks though, most people I know have it weekly. I like cleaning and doing laundry. I find it very satisfying.
Our house is a small part of our total assets. We paid it off years ago.
We ne er took any vacations because I dint enjoy them and are low on my list of where to spend money.
As for education where we live with excellent very competitive public schools itâs the kids who canât quite succeed in public school who tend to choose private. My kids did go to private colleges. At college My older daughter met a wealthy kid from Florida who was talking with her and an Uber wealthy kid from the New Jersey suburbs. Florida girl was flabbergasted that in other parts of the country even the very wealthy often donât attend private school.My kids school had many very wealthy families including a few billionaire families.
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Do people still gift Savings Bonds?
A nephew and his wife had the first baby of âthe nextâ generation. Thinking about a gift, which may start a tradition for future baby gifts too. Donât want to pick something that will be hard to sell in 20 years.
@colorado_mom, how about helping the start their 529 plan? Would that be too weird?
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