the everyday adventures of sabrina

Since I’m not really much into the whole Jesus-in-a-cave resurrection thing (though i do like bunnies), and this has been by and large a financeapalooza weekend, I decided to go for the three-day trifecta and make myself a nice shiny budget and look over my free annual credit reports. I live a life of wild excitement always on the edge. although, i still haven’t got any Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (smaller or not), damn it.

After successfully fetching both Equifax and TransUnion, I failed the Experian security question check because they asked me something stupid like ‘You opened a mortgage in YYYY/MM. With what company is this account?” and my mortgage company renamed itself a few years ago so I checked “NONE OF THE ABOVE” which was not what they wanted to hear. (They are going to snail mail me a URI to access my report, instead. Cute.) And everybody asks you to answer these freaking stupid “security” questions. Like, no joke, one of TransUnion’s questions was “What is your friend’s name?” You know, I may be antisocial at times but I’m willing to bet that a majority of Americans believe that they have more than one friend, so that question seems a little on the ill-considered side. And then there’s “What was your high school’s mascot?” Because THAT’S hard to find out. And then there’s how everybody and their brother asks for your mother’s maiden name. The trouble with just making shit up in response to these questions, too, is how am I supposed to remember that, two years ago, I told Experian that Bugs Bunny was my friend? Now I have to keep notes on everything. In a secure location. I’d put it all in a gpg-armored file except then I’d probably lose the damn file.

ATTENTION IDENTITY THIEVES: Bugs Bunny is not actually my friend. He’s a cartoon. I don’t even really like Looney Tunes. Thxu.

So, it’s very tedious in a sort of quasi-interesting way. It’s nice to think that I have a game plan — I am all about game plans — and a strategy to accomplish things, but man, it can be so boring looking at column after column of numbers. Still, I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment once it’s all done, and I have a beautifully ordered, precise schedule of an organized budget that I will inevitably totally ignore.

2006 taxes: done and done!

plus, added bonus: despite my fears that due to changing jobs my tax withholdings were going to be screwy (in a bad way), i did not have to write a fat check to the irs! HOORAY FOR NO FAT CHECK WRITING! (especially hooray since due to the checking account madness + my semiannual auto insurance payment i have, like, $300 to my name until payday. oh, that, and my laundry quarters. dear electric company, and everybody else: please do not send me bills until after tax day. thank you!)

hooray for turbo tax! i’ve used it for years and years and it makes taxes so much less painful it isn’t even funny. it almost makes you forget you’re dealing with Form 1040… this year, i went with the online version rather than the installed-software version. the only functionality i lost was the ability to import my quicken data, since it only supports quicken for windows, not mac. (it was able to import previous turbotax/mac data, though.) it was nice. i just clicked on to the site and started working, and a few hours later — done! i was pleasantly surprised by the experience since i was expecting another crappy ajax and javascript-laden monster site that would make my poor firefox freak out in new and exciting ways. in fact, my only glitch was when the AT&T repair guy showed up to work on my busticated phone line, and cut my DSL for 45-60 minutes or so in the middle of listing my deductions. (“Host Not Found” error in an ajax pop-up — heh.) anyways: hooray!