JoeTaxpayer

Let’s start this week with an exciting milestone in my life. My first radio interview has now made it to a Podcast. My daughter thinks this makes me famous, but I told her I’m famous only in my own mind. Last September, I attended the annual Financial Bloggers’ Conference, and one day at lunch I happened to be sitting next to Gerri Detweiler, She is an author, speaker, credit expert, and radio host of Talk Credit Radio. She asked me all the right questions, inviting me to tell her about my most recent accomplishment, helping a reader avoid $90K in taxes due to some very bad advice she received regarding an inherited IRA. I wrote about the situation at my Rothmania site in an article “Let’s Kill All the Lawyers” and this story prompted an invitation to her show soon after. The podcast Inherited IRA Tax Tips is available through her web site, and while the subject is, admittedly, a bit dry, the lessons you learn might save you a nice chunk of money down the road.

Michael Kitces brought an older article of his to my attention, Why Saving In A Roth (Or Any) IRA Might Be A Bad Idea For Young People After All. I’m keeping an open mind, and appreciate when some very intelligent bloggers offer a completely differ spin that makes me stop and think a bit.

Five Cent Nickel hosted a guest post from William Cowie, Meet Jim, my millionaire next door. The title is a reference of course to Dr Thomas Stanley’s series of books which included The Millionaire Next Door, and my favorite, Stop Acting Rich. Some of us have neighbors that are just that, millionaires next door, others are simply keeping up with the Joneses.

The Free Financial Advisor took a bit of a shot at others in Bad Advice? Here’s Some From Top Money Gurus. In this article we’re shown five bits of advice that seem to fall a bit short. The classic ‘bad advice’ I’ve disagreed with for years is the David’s debt snowball. Paying off that stack of $1000 card with the 6% rate so you feel better about finally getting to the 24% card that you owe $10K on. Not the advice I’d offer.

Strangely, the One Percenter tells us, “I Don’t Recognize U.S. Coins.” And then I saw the image of the nickel he posted, and I’m not sure I’ve seen one myself. I was aware of the quarters showing scenes from each state. Those seem to have started a decade ago. But I do get the point, I agree, we use less and less cash, favoring a charge card for even small, quick purchases.

On a personal note, I finished our taxes today. They were nearly done a month or so ago, but no rush, there was a chance some form would come to me late, or my wife would find a receipt from a charity tucked away (instead of handing it to me to put in the tax folder!) Are your taxes all done? If not, will you be finished by Monday night? If you need extra time, you can file for a six month extension with the IRS. Remember, this is just an extension to get the final return sent in, not extra time to pay what’s due. Take your best shot at the return with the information you have, and pay at least what you expect the bill will be.

The proposed Federal Budget is out. I wrote a bit about the retirement account limits, and plan to revisit that topic now that I have more details. This budget wont pass. Not a chance.

I miss Frugal Fridays. The last one was Frugal Friday Week 35  and it was published nearly three years ago. I’d like to bring back the concept with a mix of observations, finds, and general approaches to frugality.

A few weeks ago I was looking for a cable to connect an iPad. Not the current ‘lightning’ cable, just the old 30 pin connector.

My favorite office supply store had it. Wow. $20 after tax. So, I looked a bit more and there we are.

Not just a bit less, but remarkably lower in price. 36 cables for the price of 1! Keep in mind, this is just a cable, no power adapter included, and that’s fine. Our cars have cigarette lighter to USB power converters in them, but it’s the cables we lose, lend, or misplace all the time. At just over 50 cents a piece, it’s ok if we give a couple away when someone is needing a cable.  I know that 9 may seem like overkill, but these cables aren’t just easily lost, they are easily damaged by catching them in a door or pulling at them at a bad angle. I like having a couple extra in each of our car’s glove compartments and a few in my desk drawer at home.

Have you run into anything that has such a wide range of price? Anyone try to sell you a single wooden pencil for $4, when they are $1 a dozen elsewhere?

Universe Today broke the news that NASA (The US space agency) is planning to capture a 500 ton asteroid. That sounds big, but it’s only about 7 meters wide. The article came with an artist’s illustration of what this would look like.

This would be a moderately interesting story, but unrelated to finance, right? Not so fast, dear reader. Universe Today also had a Q&A; What Are Asteroids Made Of? It turns out that “the metallic asteroids are composed of up to 80% iron and 20% a mixture of nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold, and other precious metals..”
20% precious metals? If this asteroid is of the metallic type, we are looking at 100 tons of precious metal.  If half is nickel, not so precious, we still have 50 tons, or 100,000 pounds of treasure. At $1,000 (It’s still a variety of metals, so I’m estimating the average) per ounce this multiplies to $1.6B from a projected cost of $100M to fund this venture. I wonder how long it will take before commercial ventures attempt asteroid mining.
It may be that the composition suggested in the article is wrong, and even the metallic asteroids are lower in the truly precious metal compared to iron, copper and nickel. That would be a shame. It’s still years away, but it’s interesting to ponder the idea that we have the technology to begin a space mining operation.

Is this too great a logical leap? Is this idea still science fiction? If it’s all possible, and the numbers work out as I suggest, what would be the impact of the price of these metals? There is currently estimated to be under 4 billion ounces of mined gold on the planet, would a few hundred thousand ounces at a time be absorbed, or would it send the price crashing down?