Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Sleep and bonus deferrals

Portage Park multiyard sale
In some vampire shows -- Vampire Diaries comes to mind -- they show one of the characters breaking their humanity vow and going on a killing spree because their thirst for blood is insatiable.  That is how my thirst for sleep is right now.

On a good night, we do get 6 to 7 hours of sleep.  It might not be consecutive since there may be a quick wake up to soothe a baby, or our body my betray us and invite the Insomnia Gnome into our bed.  But the kids are doing their part by going to be around 7 and not getting up until 5, give or take a half hour.

On a rare occasion,  I do manage to sneak in a daytime nap.  Whether it is 30 minutes or 2 hours the end result is the same:  I wake up feeling as if I just put my head down a minute ago and my body screams for more sleep

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Somewhere my financial Advisor is laughing his ass off:  In anticipation of Things to Come I changed my tax withholding and adjusted my 401K contributions for this month.  Our bonus check was coming and in the past I always put 25% in my 401K, but didn't want to do that this time.  On July 4th I logged in and changed it to zero, or at least I thought I had.  It turns out the change didn't commit.

It could be because I didn't realize that it didn't save because when you change your contribution rate, you have to check the yes/no box about resetting your catchup contributions or something like that.  It could also be that I got distracted by Moose and Squirrel or a half dozen other things but I'm gonna take the blame for this one.

Could that money do better for me over the years in a retirement account?  Absolutely.  I crunched the numbers and it comes down to an additional $200 in taxes but $500 in my pocket now that I can use to pay some of these bills that are piling up.

I've contacted the retirement fund but I'm guessing that because it is a such a huge hassle to reverse this, there isn't even a mechanism to do it even if they agree that my login records show that I at least tried to make this change.

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