$1000 – scooter
$250 – MSF Course
$250 – Safety Gear + rain gear
$100 – tags/insurance per year

Are you sure you will save money? You can get a lot of gas for $1500.
I did ride a scooter last summer, and I loved riding. I did it because I loved it, but I put (lots) more money into it than I saved in gas. Also, keep in mind that you’ll be getting 60-80 mpg but stopping to get a gallon of gas every 50-100 miles. I drive a car now, and save my scooter (a 600cc Honda) for weekend fun.

The alternative is to claim 0 and then figure out what you will owe in November and have the rest of it withheld from your December paychecks. I’ve done this and it resulted in no pay for December, so make sure you budget for it!

A 401K or FSA may reduce your taxable income, but you will likely still not come even just by adjusting your allowances.

that roads are greasy,
safety margins small,
and fellow drivers
fellow imbeciles.

Piet Hein

I see people all the time where I live, which is a combination of city and rural, on mopeds on highways. You are on top of them before you know it and there is nothing they can do about it. At least a motorcycle can go with traffic.

However the little old lady argument goes with the motorcycle as well. You can be as safe a motorcycle driver as you want, but it’s other people you have to worry about.

Personally I wouldn’t get on the highway on anything on the highway that isn’t surrounded by steel, including a bicycle. It’s the other guy you have to watch out for and the consequences of an accident are way, way too high. Drive the truck for your shorter commute and have your husband drive the more efficient car.

As Steve in W Ma suggested, the larger issue here may be that Jason and his girlfriend are beginning to develop different priorities than the others in their social circle. This seems to a common problem.

Which means that, for many people, there’s not much downside to canceling a credit card that’s starting to charge you just for carrying it, provided you get a better credit card before you cancel the first one.

By the time the old credit card (and the length of time you’ve had credit with it) rolls off your credit history, you’ll hopefully have 10 years’ worth of history with the new, better card. Which is actually more than you have with your card now (since you say you’ve had it for 6 years).

I think a lot of the articles could be really valuable to my girlfriend and some friends my age (I’m 25). However, she has a reading disorder that makes her take almost 4 times as long as me to read and digest written information. Every article I send just seems to end up in an endless queue it seems. Can anyone recommend any alternative learning sources for someone like her? She’s learned to be a very “visual” person, so any videos, Youtube channels, etc might be great for her.

I’m not saying this is the case here, but that in general it is true.

this is if you have a system in place (not discipline, a system) that lets you keep track of this chunk of assets and you are not the type to suddenly decide “I’m going to Barbados” . Although really that’s none of my business actually, if you want to go, go. But if you are asking what is the financially most advantageous thing to do, I think what I have suggested is it.

@q2, “. I have tried making suggestions like a pot luck or cookout, but they are stubbornly sticking with restaurants.”

If you’ve explained that this is important to you and that it’s temporary, but they don’t respect your decision and as people aren’t flexible enough to do something less expensive some of the time, I’d be reevaluating how much I really want them as friends.

In any case, I’d say stick to your guns and just tell them you’re busy this month since they haven’t shown interest or care enough in your goals to support your decision in any way.

You might want to just invite a few of them over one night this month, with no referece to cost or budgets, though. They might just have no clue that there’s another way to have fun.

@ Sally (Q7) writer – if you feel that badly about it, feel free to donate the extra $36,000 to charity; then you won’t have to pay taxes on it. Personally I’d rather let Uncle Sam ‘take’ the $9K in taxes and have the other $27,000 for myself (I realize I’m simplifying here because there are also state taxes and FICA, but you get my drift – it’s still about $22K after accounting for those). Also, getting a refund or not getting a refund in previous years is irrelevant. You can set your withholdings however you want and get a huge refund or a tax bill the following April (though if you underpay too much there will be penalties). What you have to look at is the overall tax paid.

For a more formal office, perhaps one approach to the clothing problem could be to keep one or 2 sets of nice clothes and shoes at the office (assuming you have the space), and changing immediately when you arrive. I don’t have an answer to helmet-hair though!

Also in the office I mentioned, the bike actually worked quite well for me – I think I got a bit of respect from some of the guys because of it, and some ‘bonding’ moments with the older ones telling me about ther (mis)adventures on bikes. So again it depends on your profession and the type of people who gravitate towards it, but you might be surprised by who had a bike in their youth, or who ride on weekends, or who always wanted one but never had the guts to do it! (My mother’s boss – a very proper woman – swore me to secrecy when she told me she’d had one, she didn’t want her sons to know!)

Either way its mostly academic.

Bottom line is their W4′s appear to be wrong and need to be fixed.

p.s. if this is a duplicate than sorry, I tried to post it once but it didn’t appear.