TroyP

When I blanket disputed, I had several 30 and 60 day lates with Sallie. I had been current on my loans for about 2 years at the time (actually, at that point I had made enough extra payments where my next due date wasn't for a year). Sallie deleted all my lates with my blanket dispute. I was stunned, because everything I read here said they were tough.

Two years is more of a general rule. The actual law is a bit more nuanced depending on the specific scenario. The other thing that comes into play here, is that Virginia has VERY specific landlord and tenant laws. If the OP wasn't properly served, they may be afforded additional time to vacate. If the landlord failed to properly comply with the VA Landlord and Tenant law, the path to deletion could be quite easy. That said, I don't see FDCPA violations here...

25% is not a general rule. You have your regular FICA Contribution + Your Employer Contribution (since you are the employer) - Generally ~15% (a bit less). Then you have your actual Federal Income Tax; in my case that's 33% (at least this year, but I can't complain about it being a good year). Then you have your State Income Tax, if applicable, in my case it ends up being around 6%. That puts me at a bit over 50% Self-Employment tax rates. Granted, after deductions are worked out and such, it ends up being around 32% total, but still, 25% is not "safe" unless you know what you're doing. Indeed. I pay about 38% on my self-employment income. As a general rule, I like to estimate like so: Marginal Federal Income Tax Rate +SE Tax Rate +Marginal State Tax Rate =Tax Rate Multiply the combined rate times my expected NET income (income after deductions) and it gives me a pretty good idea.

The 1099-B has changed somewhat... Once upon a time, the 1099-B just reported the gross proceeds from stock sales to the IRS. Now the 1099-B reports both gross proceeds from stock sales, as well as the "tax basis" related to those proceeds. The tax basis is essentially your cost of the shares, net of any adjustments for tax purposes. The IRS would verify that the total proceeds from stock sales reported by your investment company agreed with the amount of any proceeds reported on your return. The IRS is now phasing in basis reporting, to ensure that the amount of the gain or loss reported on your return is correct. The 1099-B reports any sale of a stock, bond, or mutual fund, regardless of what you did with the money. If you sold $1000 in Microsoft stock, and purchased $1000 in Apple stock with the proceeds, $1000 in proceeds would still be reported as the proceeds from this transaction. On Schedule D of your tax return, you must report $1000 in proceeds from the sale of Microsoft stock, and the amount of any capital gain or loss realized on the sale of those shares. The total gains and losses from all your securities sales for the year are netted, and you pay income tax on any net capital gain. If the net result is a loss, up to $3000 can be deducted from your taxable income, with any excess carried forward to the following year. The fact that you re-invested the $1000 proceeds from the sale has no bearing on whether or not the sale needs to be reported on your return, or recognized as income. It's actually much more complex than that, since short-tern and long-term gains are taxed at different rates, and wash sales can cause a loss on the sale of certain securities to be deferred, but that should be a pretty good primer.

Good advice here. Essentially, the decision for where to save first should go like this. To the extent that your DH receives an employer match on his 401k at work, you want to contribute to that plan to maximize the amount of the match. Any excess should be contributed to a Roth IRA up to the contribution limit. So if your DH gets a match of $.50 per $1 he contributes up to 6%, he should contribute only 6% to the 401k, and contribute any additional amount to a Roth IRA. Also, not all employers offer a Roth 401k option, but if DH's employer does, making Roth contributions would be much more tax efficient if your Federal tax rate is 0%...

He may have made the completely rational decision. I look at things like this: Is the alternative worth my time? For example, I bought the GF a camera for Christmas. The camera was $10 cheaper at Best Buy than Target. It was Christmas Eve, and Best Buy is in the mall, and about an extra 15 minute drive each way assuming no traffic (unlikely). I had to park pretty far from Target, but I didn't need to fight for a spot, and I was in and out in 15 minutes tops. At Best Buy, I surely would have spent 10 minutes searching for a parking spot. Assuming I got in and out at Best Buy in a comparable amount of time, going to Best Buy would have cost me at least 40 more minutes of my time. On Christmas Eve, with wrapping left to do when I got home, $10 for 40 minutes of my time was a price I was happy to pay. A smarter solution that would have saved me even more time, would have been to buy the damn camera online, and have it shipped to the house. But as you put it so well "Men.... :rolf:"

I had something similar-ish happen about 2 years ago. I went to an ATM, and took out $100. The ATM gave me 10 $20 bills, so $200. The receipt said $100, so I called my bank the next morning and let them know. They adjusted my account to reflect the fact that I received $200. About 3 days later, I got a FedEx envelope from the bank. They sent be a $100 Visa Gift Card and a note thanking me for alerting them to the issue. That pretty much blew my mind.

I thought I was laying the sarcasm on pretty thick. Apparently not thick enough to convey on the internet. I avoid banks like the plague. It takes a few days to hit my account, but dropping a check in the mail is so much less stressful than dealing with actual branches.

The prefect fee. Not only does this fee avoid their customers' radar, it also entices non-customers to open accounts with them! Whoever worked at the first bank to impose such a fee probably got a huge bonus.

Take a good look at the fees on a target date fund before you choose one. I know the target date funds in our plan have way higher fees than the traditional mutual funds. A 1% difference in fees doesn't seem like much, but for someone contributing $5k per year to their 401k, assuming a 3% annual raise and a 50% employer match on contributions, you're looking at a difference of $50,000 after 20 years. That's not chump change.

I administer the 401k plan at my company. My plan is somewhat different from yours, in that our default investment is a low yield (but low risk) money market fund. That said, like many employers, we have an independent financial adviser who can help our employees to select mutual funds that meet their risk tolerance and investment objectives. I don't personally use the adviser the company provides, but I do have an outside adviser review my asset allocations twice a year.

Totally depends on the situation. My Debt to Income is around .11. That alone doesn't tell a user of that number hardly anything. The only debt I have is the balance of my student loans. My buddy and his wife have a DTI ratio of about 4.0. On the surface, my DTI looks much healthier than his. What the DTI ratio doesn't reflect is that his debt consists of a $400,000 mortgage on his home, in which he has about $200k in equity.

I'd be curious to know why the issuers aren't adopting the new algorithm. Perhaps adopting the new model would require them to update their internal scoring systems, which would be time consuming and costly to implement and test (to ensure they were appropriately assessing risk). Maybe the updating to their internal systems haven't been completed for Fico 8. The other possibility is that Fico 8 doesn't assess risk in a manner they find appropriate, or sufficiently better to justify the increased cost (assuming the cost is, in fact, higher).

Isn't this what Citibank tried when they bought up SmithBarney, and Travelers, and a host of other companies, only to later find out that cross-selling doesn't actually work? They ended up spinning Travelers off, and selling SmithBarney to Morgan Stanley for a song...

Since you intend to pay in full, have you contacted Charter to see if they'll recall from the CA? If so, that might be your best bet.