About Me

jIM

I am a 35yo married and father of twins. I will update the photos once in a while. They were born 3 months early in March of 2008 and went through a tough first 4 months. They are now doing well.

Retirement checkpoints
( ) $1.5 M needed age 53 2026
( ) $750k needed age 45 2018
( ) $375k needed age 37 2010
( ) $180k needed age 29 2002

I had 200k before the drop in 2008. I need to set aside around 200k in next 2.5 years to get early retirement.

[ ] max 401k for me
[ ] max 401k for wife
[x] max Roth for me
[x] max Roth for wife
[x] start taxable portfolio
[ ] 3 months expenses in EF
[ ] 9 months expenses in taxable account
[ ] open college savings account for kids
[ ] dividend income equals half of annual expenses
[ ] pay off 2nd mortgage by 2013
[ ] pay off 1st mortgage by 2026
[ ] finance next car for 3 years or less
[ ] pay cash for my next car around 2016
[ ] start a TIPs 10 year bond ladder by 2016.

HR block is NOT giving objective financial advice

December 8th, 2008 at 10:39 am

I went to my first HR block employee orientation on Saturday.

Interesting...

Part of the claim HR block makes is the following (paraphrased- I do not have the article in front of me)-

"We are in a unique position to offer lower and middle-class people financial advice".

I agree the ability to get objective financial advice at any income level is tough to come by, and tougher for poor and middle-class people.

My issue is HR block is presenting people with products which might charge a 100% interest rate (annualized) to get this advice. Not really objective, huh?

For example if a family making 30k comes to get a tax return of 3k-5k because of EIC and child credits, it probably cost them around $180 to get the return prepared.

If they choose to get a refund anticipation loan, a co-worker and I calculated the loan to rival that of a payday check cashing place (interest might be more than the amount borrowed) on an annualized basis.

Posted in retirement, Spending, taxes | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “HR block is NOT giving objective financial advice”

merch Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 11:14 am

I thought they already got in trouble for this with their tax return loans policies. You get a tax return and get the money that day or something like that. But it was a loan at some outrages rate with fees attached.
ceejay74 Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 11:45 am

Yep, their loans are horrible. When I worked there I would try to get them to take the slower route to getting their money. But for desperately poor people, this is like winning the lottery; they get their EIC & WFC and it's $5K even after all the awful fees, so I couldn't talk them into waiting and getting $5500 in a week or two.

This year I'm considering volunteering for a nonprofit that does free taxes, and gives low- or no-interest RALs. Need to clean the stink of H&R off me.
disneysteve Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 06:12 pm

How exactly does a RAL work? Does the refund then go to H&R or does the money go to the customer and H&R has to depend on the customer to pay them back?
ceejay74 Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

Yes, the money goes to H&R, unless the refund doesn't go through, then the customer is on the hook. The sad thing is, sometimes someone else gets their claim on the kid in first. That happened to one of my customers. If someone else knows the kid's SSN, they can file early and the other person's return gets rejected. By the time it gets resolved (assuming it does), that mega-interest will have kicked in.

jIM_Ohio is Investing to retire early

Instead of making retirement a question, make it a sport- can I do it and how fast?

HR block is NOT giving objective financial advice

4 Responses to “HR block is NOT giving objective financial advice”

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