Korean Job Discussion Forums

[regicide]

Suze Orman is the kind of celebrity that grows on you. I like her well enough and now that I heard her talk about her same sex partner and its tax consequences, I think she is kind of cool.

Good advise--well pretty sophomoric stuff and I don't know how someone could make a living with what she knows.

Bad advise--lots;

The first one--you are a smuck if you get tax refund --the idea being you are giving the government a tax free loan and you should be increasing your withholding. The thing is Suze--Americans love their tax refund and that few dollars a month in lost interest means nothing to most people and they would have spent it anyway. On a more serious note�under-withholding can cost you penalties interest and is POOR tax planning. CPA firms are very careful that their clients submit quarterly estimates and do not end up short. From personal experience, my brother spouted this crap and I listened him and said " ya ya sure brother� Then, the very next year he won an expensive car in a lottery and his wife got a raise. Even with a house, which didn't have a lot of interest since he got a 15 year loan (another mistake) he had a big fat tax bill--in the tens of thousands. Thanks Suze.

The other one I will keep brief. Term versus whole life (universal). Buy term and invest the difference and that nonsense. My cousin dropped his whole life policy which already had some good non-forfeiture values (cash to keep the policy going when he got cancer) to buy that term. When he got sick he couldn't pay his term insurance and then when he wanted to borrow against the death benefit to have a decent time before he died ( this is common these days) he didn't have that term policy in force.

If he would have kept his cash value policy (which he already had for several years and each yearly premium now increased the cash value by a like amount) he could have got the loan he wanted. The company also de-mutualized and granted stock to its policyholders. (my parents bought a car with their stock)

Thanks again Suze.