I bet it filters out good waitstaff faster than bad. Anyone who is decent but relying on customer attitudes to pay the bills will go find something that pays steady.

Probably utilization. You can double check your credit report to make sure there are no late payments or unexpected new lines of credit. Beyond that, it's not worth worrying about.

How much debt are you in not counting the house? Why has your SO not got a job yet? Even a low paying bad job while looking for a new job is better than no job.

Not that uncommon. HOAs where I live are 400+/month

Forget about the life insurance paperwork for a minute. Take some time to grieve, prepare for a service, or anything else that is more immediate. Even just getting a death certificate takes a few weeks, and life insurance isn’t going to do anything without that. Call them next week.

Sorry if I wrote USPS. That should have read UPS and I believe they accept all types of mail (FedEx, dhl, Amazon, etc).

The reason I was leaning UPS is because I've read the other mailbox service providers use "suite" and "pmb" in the address and I don't want that to concern my employer.

Contact TreasuryDirect (may also need to get the estate executor to also contact TD). The I bond gift should go to the recipient's estate.

Increase prices to cover the fee. Offer discounts on cash payments.

I want to point out that “managing my investments more directly” can actually hurt returns, not help.

I tried to quickly find a link but couldn’t. There was a fidelity study a few years back that analyzed all their 401k participants and found that the best performing participants, were the ones who were deceased (by over a 100 bps).

You are mistaken because you are forgetting that the dollars you got as a loan are treated as post-tax dollars.

Look at it this way, take out a loan for $10k, immediately pay it back with that same $10k - did you convert them into 'double-taxed' dollars, of course not.

> The HOA can have a huge impact on your property values and the overall desirability of the community.

Just tacking onto this for an affirmatory personal anecdote; the condo complex I live in has been in pretty desperate need of repairs for about a decade now but the HOA board has continually put off the repairs and projects in favor of keeping dues low because they didn't want to pay for it. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, the repairs are badly needed and we are faced with a massive special assessment that is hurting resale value to the tune of almost a hundred grand per unit. It is truly staggering, shocking incompetence on the part of the board. We are selling to leave the state as we're in a high COL area and will still be able to afford a nice house elsewhere with the sale proceeds, but having the value cut by almost 20% because of the board's incompetence hurts a lot.

Hold your HOA accountable for every penny you can. Even your $3.50 overcharge.

My dad has done it. Twice in two different communities.

There are some studies that found that tipping isn't necessarily related to quality of service

Edit: interesting to see down votes. Here's an excerpt from academic research; "other studies have failed to find a significant relationship between tipping and service evaluations (Bodvarsson & Gibson, 1994; Crusco & Wetzel, 1984; Lynn, 1988; Lynn & Latane, 1984; May, 1978)"

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/72354/Lynn46_Tipping.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwib86qX76T8AhUpK0QIHSohC1UQFnoECAYQAg&usg=AOvVaw3nkAIqOaefKJ32GoQqU7a7

And from the Freakanomics podcast:

"Lynn’s research shows that tipping is an unfair way for workers to be paid, because personal characteristics like a server’s race, gender, and appearance factor too much into customers’ tipping decisions."

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-tipping-still-exist-ep-396/

>Food vendors raise rates all the time but no one would pay a 3% food cost recovery fee when visiting a restaurant. Its the cost of doing business.

They just lower the portion sizes, get rid of expensive ingredients, increase prices, or all of the above.

Any cost will be passed down to the customer. Including the "cost of doing business". The problem is when the cost is not disclosed upfront. If I am buying a $12 burger, it's a $12 burger. Period.

Interesting. I'm actually up slightly YoY. What is your asset allocation?

Send a screenshot with a big red circle around the '$3.25' and the words, 'lawyers love red circles'

> My UPS mailbox is a different zip code than my brothers address (currently filed with my employer), but they are in the same city and state.

It's fine as long as the employer is able to get the state and local tax withholding right. If not, you'll need to deal with getting the wrong local tax refunded and paying the right local tax.

> I just want to make sure I am not causing any issues using my UPS mailbox

There is just one caveat. UPS mailbox is considered a commercial address, so you can't do a USPS mail forwarding from it. If you ever stop renting the mailbox, you have to make sure to tell all senders instead of relying on mail forwarding.

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Might be a dumb question, but is Credit Karma's ratings/suggestions actually helpful or just marketing tools?

I have 3 active credit cards (no balance), a 799 score, and paid-off car (1) and students loans (3). No late payments or delinquencies. Credit Karma is suggesting that I have too few accounts (7) with too low of an average age (5.5 years at the moment).

Is this something I should be concerned about seeking to improve, especially if I am considering purchasing a home within the next 5 years?

I have seen churning suggested, but it's not something I have much interest in, both because I don't feel that I need a new card and because the time required seems excessive given the return.

When they do this, they should offer free ways to pay. Like check or cash

All costs of doing business are passed on to the customer, that's where the business gets their money from

You are actually arguing for less visibility because you just want them to increase the cost of the item so you don't know how much of it goes to the ripoff payment processor.

No, that doesn't make sense. You'll be turning what would have been tax-free growth into taxable growth only to put it back in the same account that would have been tax free.

Do you use a UPS mailbox or a different mail provider?

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You should be filing a claim form to the insurance company and depending on the face amount of the policy you may need a death certificate as well.

No idea why they need the doctors info or other policies. Sounds almost like you have an application not a claim form.

As for who gets the proceeds it depends. Some states require the spouse to get them. Really depends on who she had listed as the beneficiary on her application or and updated beneficiary forms.

EDIT: if the policy was taken out recently it could be in the contestable period in which they often do ask for medical records