Company Benefits
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@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
Which I always avoided by letting the gov't owe me money. As long as you always do that, they never make you do all that quarterly crap.
There is a threshold where you don't get fined, but I have no idea what it is.
I've owed like $4k before with no penalty.
Oh yeah, it's not a thing that affects "normal" people. Everyone owes or is owed a little, they don't care. This is for big numbers.
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@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
personalcapital.com is a bit better for long term wealth tracking as it can handle 2FA accounts with eTrade etc that Mint can't.
That looks good. I took a quick peak at their website... and it looks free. I have to get going and can't look into it at the moment, but is it free to use and offer at minimum what Mint does, plus what you mentioned?
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@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
Which I always avoided by letting the gov't owe me money. As long as you always do that, they never make you do all that quarterly crap.
There is a threshold where you don't get fined, but I have no idea what it is.
I've owed like $4k before with no penalty.
One off your fine, but since I owed more than $1000 last year I'm expected to make quarterly this year. The rule to handle the weird outliers (oil royalty, winning a lawsuit etc) is make sure you pay them 100% of last years return in quarterly installments (assuming last year wasn't quarterly).
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
Which I always avoided by letting the gov't owe me money. As long as you always do that, they never make you do all that quarterly crap.
True, but it has to be withheld evenly. In theory paying my CPA to manage the quarterly payments means I can hold onto that cash longer and make more money with it while still fufilling my obligations. Your situation is likely easier as you have deductions (House, Kids), as you can just set your deductions to 0 and still not owe money. I have to set my withholding to 0 THEN add an extra percentage or cash amount to withhold (or write a quarterly check).
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@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
Which I always avoided by letting the gov't owe me money. As long as you always do that, they never make you do all that quarterly crap.
There is a threshold where you don't get fined, but I have no idea what it is.
I've owed like $4k before with no penalty.
One off your fine, but since I owed more than $1000 last year I'm expected to make quarterly this year. The rule to handle the weird outliers (oil royalty, winning a lawsuit etc) is make sure you pay them 100% of last years return in quarterly installments (assuming last year wasn't quarterly).
This stuff killed my dad. When he retired his tax payments were larger than his income. Not sure how the government expects you to do that. He was paying something like 120% in taxes while on a fixed retiree income! He had no means of coming up with the tax payments let alone eat! It was insane.
Yes, actually owed more than 100%. Sure he would get it back eventually, but... how do you do that?
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@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
@travisdh1 said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
Note, you owe taxes on a quarterly basis was my point.
That's not the norm tho. You only owe quarterly if you are paid as an independent of some sort (1099) or a business. Normal employee taxes are only figured/paid once a year.
Actually they are. My dad is taxed quarterly and he is retired. Everyone owes as money comes in. Quarterly reporting is due under numerous non-business circumstances.
Exactly. If you're like John and you have these crazy huge bonuses as a normal employee you still have the quarterly requirement, etc.
For example you can't just claim exempt status at work then send in a check for 20k + the following year on April 15 and think you won't be penalized, because you will be.
Bingo on the liability, although my bonus is a farce by wall street standards (not that I'm complaining, it's just that I could buy a used car, while they could buy a new S-Series with theirs).
Bigger issues for me are RSU grants vesting and ESPP gains. Last year our stock doubled under the ESPP window. If you maxed it out (15K withheld) It ended up being something crazy like 20K in gains after the discount applied to purchases (15% discount).
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@tim_g said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
personalcapital.com is a bit better for long term wealth tracking as it can handle 2FA accounts with eTrade etc that Mint can't.
That looks good. I took a quick peak at their website... and it looks free. I have to get going and can't look into it at the moment, but is it free to use and offer at minimum what Mint does, plus what you mentioned?
It's free for everything. They will try to call/email you to sign up for having a financial advisor so they can monetize the service (I gave them a google voice number, and ignore their emails). That said a financial advisor isn't the worst thing for some people to have.
Mint seems to get confused and think paying off my credit cards is an expense sometimes.
I like mint for basic budget and expense categorization. I find it's cash flow tracking and other dashboards to be crap compared to personal capital which seems less fragile and doesn't get confused by the fact that I used 2FA for some accounts (Notably my brokerage which would be insanity to not be using 2FA on).The lack of accrual based budgeting for mint (and most budget tools) annoys me. I want vacation expenses to be amortized over the full year, or rolling 6 months prior basis. Instead it looks like I spent 10K in march like a drunken sailor when I was booking hotels or flights, and then comparatively little in July when I actually was on vacation because Pad Thai costs 50 cents. Things get even more wacky when Hotel's reverse the holding charges and re-charge at check out (Concur still doesn't know what these zero charges are, and it annoys me a lot). This means In order to make Mint act sane I would have to manually zero out the charges for hotels when I make them, and then reverse and divide them after they actually come in.
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Thanks for completely derailing my thread. This should have been forked a long time ago. I'm just unsubscribing from this thread. Y'all have fun with bonuses and taxes.
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@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
I REALLY dislike bonuses. Those are not a benefit. That's a trojan horse benefit, looks nice on the surface but in reality is just a way to lower employee pay through trickery.
This is astronomically true across the board. I actually was about to say the same thing.
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@quixoticjeremy said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
I REALLY dislike bonuses. Those are not a benefit. That's a trojan horse benefit, looks nice on the surface but in reality is just a way to lower employee pay through trickery.
This is astronomically true across the board. I actually was about to say the same thing.
Bonus pools for the last year I can find data (2015) showed pools funded at 89% (I suspect it's gone up as the economy has gotten better).
Anecdotally they don't work at Small companies because arbitrary thresholds often keep them from getting paid at all.
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
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@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
Eh? That whole pool thing is just crap to me. That company I always relate back to - they have a yearly, I guess I'll call it raise pool. It's like 2-8% of the entire teams salary into a single pool.
Let's assume 2% was put in the pool. The top earner made $210K/y and the bottom guy made $120K/y. Let's also assume that the top guy just did a stellar job this year, and the boss wants to give him 5%. If he does this, he has to allocate many of the 2% from the $120K/yr guys to cover that one $210 guy, basically cutting the $120K guys completely off (or at least someone on the team is getting nothing or next to nothing). I'm sure someone here thinks this is OK, I don't. I know this isn't about bonuses, this is about annual raises. And even that is a crap thing! Raises should be tied to two separate things - cost of living adjustments (not really a raise, just keeping the status quo) and merit increases (raises).
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@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
@quixoticjeremy said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
I REALLY dislike bonuses. Those are not a benefit. That's a trojan horse benefit, looks nice on the surface but in reality is just a way to lower employee pay through trickery.
This is astronomically true across the board. I actually was about to say the same thing.
Bonus pools for the last year I can find data (2015) showed pools funded at 89% (I suspect it's gone up as the economy has gotten better).
Anecdotally they don't work at Small companies because arbitrary thresholds often keep them from getting paid at all.
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
In the biggest companies I've seen (Fortune 10) they use bonuses with the junior staff and not with the senior staff. They will actually threaten to move top performers to bonuses systems if they aren't good enough to stay out of the bonus pool.
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@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
Eh? That whole pool thing is just crap to me. That company I always relate back to - they have a yearly, I guess I'll call it raise pool. It's like 2-8% of the entire teams salary into a single pool.
Let's assume 2% was put in the pool. The top earner made $210K/y and the bottom guy made $120K/y. Let's also assume that the top guy just did a stellar job this year, and the boss wants to give him 5%. If he does this, he has to allocate many of the 2% from the $120K/yr guys to cover that one $210 guy, basically cutting the $120K guys completely off (or at least someone on the team is getting nothing or next to nothing). I'm sure someone here thinks this is OK, I don't. I know this isn't about bonuses, this is about annual raises. And even that is a crap thing! Raises should be tied to two separate things - cost of living adjustments (not really a raise, just keeping the status quo) and merit increases (raises).
Much like forced ranking.
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@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
@quixoticjeremy said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
I REALLY dislike bonuses. Those are not a benefit. That's a trojan horse benefit, looks nice on the surface but in reality is just a way to lower employee pay through trickery.
This is astronomically true across the board. I actually was about to say the same thing.
Bonus pools for the last year I can find data (2015) showed pools funded at 89% (I suspect it's gone up as the economy has gotten better).
Anecdotally they don't work at Small companies because arbitrary thresholds often keep them from getting paid at all.
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
In the biggest companies I've seen (Fortune 10) they use bonuses with the junior staff and not with the senior staff. They will actually threaten to move top performers to bonuses systems if they aren't good enough to stay out of the bonus pool.
At the top it's all about stock as capital gains is a hell of a lot lower in the long term than your marginal tax rate. That's a double punch as it increases your tax liability.
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
Eh? That whole pool thing is just crap to me. That company I always relate back to - they have a yearly, I guess I'll call it raise pool. It's like 2-8% of the entire teams salary into a single pool.
Let's assume 2% was put in the pool. The top earner made $210K/y and the bottom guy made $120K/y. Let's also assume that the top guy just did a stellar job this year, and the boss wants to give him 5%. If he does this, he has to allocate many of the 2% from the $120K/yr guys to cover that one $210 guy, basically cutting the $120K guys completely off (or at least someone on the team is getting nothing or next to nothing). I'm sure someone here thinks this is OK, I don't. I know this isn't about bonuses, this is about annual raises. And even that is a crap thing! Raises should be tied to two separate things - cost of living adjustments (not really a raise, just keeping the status quo) and merit increases (raises).
Much like forced ranking.
The reality is that managers not wanting arguments and defection of the plebs will only cut bonus's of people who they are wanting to fire and using the bonus system as a signal that it's time to start looking for a new job.
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@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
Eh? That whole pool thing is just crap to me. That company I always relate back to - they have a yearly, I guess I'll call it raise pool. It's like 2-8% of the entire teams salary into a single pool.
Let's assume 2% was put in the pool. The top earner made $210K/y and the bottom guy made $120K/y. Let's also assume that the top guy just did a stellar job this year, and the boss wants to give him 5%. If he does this, he has to allocate many of the 2% from the $120K/yr guys to cover that one $210 guy, basically cutting the $120K guys completely off (or at least someone on the team is getting nothing or next to nothing). I'm sure someone here thinks this is OK, I don't. I know this isn't about bonuses, this is about annual raises. And even that is a crap thing! Raises should be tied to two separate things - cost of living adjustments (not really a raise, just keeping the status quo) and merit increases (raises).
Much like forced ranking.
Forced rankings are dumb, but never having any layoffs means large companies starts to accumulate bozos as better workers will go somewhere that will reward success and managers try to amass huge armies of reports to justify bigger titles. Layoff's force companies to re-evaluate projects and departments and enable them to hire and double down on growth area's.
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@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:
@dashrender said in Company Benefits:
@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:
They have challenges at large companies because managers don't want to have the hard conversation and cut someone's bonus who didn't perform so they can pay someone who DID perform.
Eh? That whole pool thing is just crap to me. That company I always relate back to - they have a yearly, I guess I'll call it raise pool. It's like 2-8% of the entire teams salary into a single pool.
Let's assume 2% was put in the pool. The top earner made $210K/y and the bottom guy made $120K/y. Let's also assume that the top guy just did a stellar job this year, and the boss wants to give him 5%. If he does this, he has to allocate many of the 2% from the $120K/yr guys to cover that one $210 guy, basically cutting the $120K guys completely off (or at least someone on the team is getting nothing or next to nothing). I'm sure someone here thinks this is OK, I don't. I know this isn't about bonuses, this is about annual raises. And even that is a crap thing! Raises should be tied to two separate things - cost of living adjustments (not really a raise, just keeping the status quo) and merit increases (raises).
Much like forced ranking.
Forced rankings are dumb, but never having any layoffs means large companies starts to accumulate bozos as better workers will go somewhere that will reward success and managers try to amass huge armies of reports to justify bigger titles. Layoff's force companies to re-evaluate projects and departments and enable them to hire and double down on growth area's.
I agree. Forced ranking was super terrible in a three person team where two people knew they would be kept and one knew they would be let go. The two would always want to hire someone TO BE FIRED each year to make sure that they were not the one to be let go. Forced ranking forces good people to avoid the company, bad people to cycle through and mediocre people to focus on keeping good people out.
