Finance
“Alison”
No self-respecting theater House is without its ghost
⸞⸟
May 1924
“Okay, my little Nut, let’s hear it,” Papa says.
I grin and snuggle into my pillow. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I shall die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”
“Amen,” he echoes and kisses my forehead before turning off the light.
“Sweet dreams,” Mamma says as she places a folded piece of cardboard over my nightlight. It’s covered with holes; Papa poked them on it, so my ceiling looks like it’s filled with stars. “Nut will watch over you too,” she whispers and kisses me goodnight.
I smile, looking at my starry ceiling, thinking about my papa’s work—for months he’s been telling us all about it.
My papa is a stonemason, and he was hired by the two Mr. Peerys to build the magical movie palace. He says there is only one other building like it in the whole United States. That is because it has a sky ceiling—an “at-mos-phe-ric dome,” Papa calls it. He says the indoor sky will change from morning to night, and it will even have clouds! And Mamma, who is a schoolteacher, has been explaining to my brother and me about the Egyptian legends. She’s told us all about the tomb of King Tut that somebody found, just a couple of years ago in Egypt, and since then, the whole country’s been in a fever—even us—about mummies, treasures, and gods and goddesses.
My favorite legend is the one about Nut. She is the Egyptian goddess of the sky. In Mamma’s book, the painting of Nut shows her protecting the whole world with her body; she is opened like an umbrella over us, and her bent back is the sky full of stars—yes, she is my favorite.
I close my eyes and see myself drifting through the night sky, dreaming that I can touch those stars.
⸞⸟
“Alison, baby girl, are you ready?” Mamma calls.
“Almost,” I say, buckling my shoes and tying a ribbon-like headband knotted at the back of my neck—that will have to do until my hair is long enough to wear in a ponytail; for now, though, it barely reaches my shoulders.
I race out of my room to the kitchen. Mamma’s got the sandwiches ready; she fixed them with the roasted chicken leftover from last night’s dinner. She looks me up and down and smiles. “Don’t forget the cookies.”
I pull out the two biggest from the jar (I baked them this morning) and wrap them in a napkin, frowning at the chocolate chips already staining the white cloth—I’ll just have to scrub it later.
I can’t wait to see what the Egyptian Movie Palace looks like inside; Papa promised I could go in today, so I’m bringing us lunch, and we’ll have us a scaffolding picnic.
Since we live only a block away, Mamma is letting me walk over there.
“Now you be careful crossing the street,” she says.
“Yes, Mamma.” I give her a kiss, and I’m out the door, clutching the lunch basket and a bottle filled with juice.
“And be back by two.” She waves from the front door.
“Yes, ma’am,” I call back, turning to look at her one last time. She looks so pretty in her flowered dress and white apron. She smiles and blows me a kiss.
Skipping on the sidewalk down 25th Street, I don’t even notice the heat and the sunshine—they’re nothing to me because all I can think of is the dark, cool inside of the theater and the ceiling filled with twinkling stars, in the middle of the day!
Looking both ways before crossing Washington Boulevard, I hurry the rest of the way to the movie palace.
As I go by the box office with my basket and juice, I see lots of men working in a cloud of fine dust that makes me want to cough. A couple of construction workers tip their hats at me. I nod politely but dash past them.
Papa said to go to the right of the auditorium, which, just like he said, looks like the pictures in Mamma’s book of the open court of an Egyptian temple!
It’s dark. There are only a few lights, mainly on the scaffoldings where men are working. Something happens to my ears in there, like someone stuffed cotton balls in them, but then I remember what Papa said about acoustics, and I settle down.
Papa is on the scaffolding along the wall, farthest from the stage. I stand there for a few minutes, watching him. He is concentrating hard, with his trowel and mortar handy.
“Hey, sweetie, aren’t you Joe’s little girl?”
The deep voice makes me jump—had the bottle not been capped, orange juice would have sloshed everywhere. “Yes, sir.”
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says kindly and walks me over to the foot of the scaffolding.
“Hey, Joe! A young lady is here to see you.”
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“Don’t mention it,” he says with a wink.
“My little Nut! You’re here already?” Papa calls down, leaning over the safety bar, and I wave up at him.
He lowers a bucket he has tied to the end of a rope. “Put our lunch in there, and then come up the ladder—I’m on the third floor,” he kids.
I giggle nervously as I place the basket and the bottle inside the bucket. He starts pulling it up as I begin climbing the ladder. The scaffold wobbles, but I tell myself, only two floors to go.
Papa helps me to my feet and steadies me as I look around, feeling a little dizzy—we’re so close to the dome! Papa has pushed his tools to the edge of the boards and cleared the middle of his work surface for our picnic. He sits in the center and pats the spot next to him for me.
He chatters away while I eat slowly, staring wide-eyed at everything: the ceiling, the wet mortar drying next to me, the pink plaster on the wall across from us, the stage, which seems a loooong way down from where we are. And when I look behind me, we are at eye level with the private boxes. I get lost in thoughts of how wonderful it would be to see a show from inside one of those boxes!
“‘Wanderer of the Wasteland,’” Papa says like he was reading my mind. “That’s the feature they’ll play on opening night only two months from now—it’s a silent movie, so the Wurlitzer pipe organ will do the accompaniment,” he explains.
“I would much rather see a play,” I tell him, imagining real people, acting and singing on the stage, and us, sitting in a private box.
When we finish our cookies, Papa smiles and tells me he has a surprise.
“Lay down right here,” he says, setting aside the basket and the empty bottle.
Just like he asked, I stretch out on the boards and stare at the ceiling, waiting. I’m so excited! Papa’s surprises are always good!
When he finishes making signals to someone below, Papa lies down beside me.
“Wait till you see this,” he says, snuffing his work light and jutting his chin toward the ceiling.
“Oh, Papa!” I gasp, and it comes out with a little bit of a sobbing sound.
The blue dome begins to light up at one end, like morning is coming, while at the other end, it’s midnight blue, with lots of twinkling stars. Pretty soon, wispy clouds begin to move through as if blown by a breeze. I want to cry; it’s so beautiful!
Papa squeezes my hand, and I hold tight to his. I want to tell him how much I love this surprise, but nothing comes out—I just keep staring.
“How does the Egyptian prayer go?” he whispers, and I have to clear my throat, or else my voice will shake with all the things I’m feeling. As soon as I’m steady enough, I begin repeating what Mamma had read to me.
“‘O my Mother Nut, stretch yourself over me, that I may be placed among the im-pe-rish-able stars which are in you, and that I may not die.’”
“But if either of us does,” Papa says, “Nut would take us to her star-filled sky and revive us with food and wine.”
“Do you think maybe she would give me milk instead of wine?”
Papa chuckles, and I grin, though a tear rolls down the side of my face because I’m so choked up. I wipe it off quickly and ask him another question, trying to make light of my feelings. “How do you think it would be to live here all the time?”
“Oh… I don’t know about living here as if it were home. How about just sleeping here, every now and then? Like we’re camping in the Sahara Desert,” Papa replies seriously. I know he doesn’t want to make me feel childish. He squeezes my hand one more time and turns to look at me.
When I look at him, he winks, and I decided it would be okay to camp here, although I would much rather live here.
“It’s a magical place, Papa,” I say, turning my head to stare at the indoor sky again. “Papa, do you think the sky really is the goddess Nut, bent over us like in Mamma’s book?”
“It’s possible—the Egyptians sure believed it,” he says reassuringly.
In my head and in my heart, I’m convinced it’s true.
“Well, little girl, it’s about one-thirty now.”
“Yes, sir, and I told Mamma I would be back by two.”
“Then we’d better get you down.”
Papa gets up and loads the picnic things in the bucket. The scaffolding sways a little with his movements, and for a second, I feel like I’m on a raft floating on a river, maybe the Nile.
Papa’s tools are still at the edge of the work surface, so I go put them back in their spot, closest to the wall, where he’ll be using them. That’s when it happened.
It’s what Mamma would call a head rush because, I guess, I stood up too fast. Everything turns gray and sparkly as I bend over the tools, and when I try to straighten up, my head hits the guardrail, and my body falls forward. I try to grab on to something, but there’s nothing.
“The third floor,” Papa had said, and a rush of hot and cold goes through me when I realize the floor is a long way down.
I don’t even have time to imagine the pain I’ll feel when I hit the concrete below.
I hear a hollow sound, sort of like that watermelon made when my brother dropped it on the driveway, and then I know it’s my head that just made that sound. But I can’t feel anything—well, maybe just the cool cement under me.
I open my eyes—there is the starlit sky. There are loud voices all around, and Papa sounds like he’s growling as he comes down the ladder.
“Don’t move!” I think that’s what he says, his voice sounds so different, angry or maybe full of fear.
“I’m sorry,” I want to say, but I can’t, so I lie still like he told me. If he’s angry, I wonder if he’ll shake me?
But when he kneels beside me, he doesn’t do that; he seems afraid even to touch me.
Wishing he could hear my voice inside my head, I think really hard: “Papa—I’m sorry—I got dizzy…” My eyes cloud with tears. He’s crying now. I want to get up but can’t move. “Papa—”
He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it. “Alison, my little Nut…”
More men tower over me; they’re all shaking their heads gloomily. The lights are on now, and the stars are gone, but they haven’t turned off the clouds—they race so fast across the sky, they make me feel sick.
Papa’s eyes say things look bad for me—I won’t make it home by two like I told Mamma. I look at the sky, and I feel like I’m getting closer to it. The cement doesn’t feel so cold, maybe because it’s not there anymore, or I’m not on it anymore.
I guess someone’s working the lights again. The clouds slow down, and everything is like fire on one side of the ceiling: sunset. And then, there’s midnight blue stretching out forever on the other side.
There are so many stars! I could reach out and touch them if only I could move. For one sleepy moment, I believe I’m back in my room, waiting until tomorrow when I get to go to the magical movie palace.
“I love you, baby girl, my Alison, my little Nut!” Papa cries, and I think it’s strange that I hear Mamma’s voice with his; is she here? Maybe I really am in my room, and I just finished saying my prayers…
Then, there’s another voice, a breezy one I don’t recognize, and she says, “I am Nut, I am here to enfold and protect you from all things evil.”
The stars are all around me now. I close my eyes, and I float for a while, not in my room but in a dream. I think I should go home, but I don’t know how. I’m not worried, though.
⸞⸟
When I open my eyes again, the scaffoldings are gone, and the auditorium is full of people. They’re sitting on rows and rows of chairs. The air is thick with perfumed smoke. There is music coming from the organ, and a silent movie is playing on the screen.
It’s opening night—how time flew!
And I never made it back home…
There are people sitting in the fancy private boxes and below them too. There’s a lady wearing a flowered dress; she looks like Mamma! I race over to see her up close, but it isn’t her. The stars in the sky ceiling seem to dim with my disappointment, but they light right up again when I think I see Papa and my brother!
It’s not them either—I should’ve known they wouldn’t come without Mamma.
Maybe they’ll all come for the next show. Of course, they will, and I will be waiting for them!
I see a row of chairs right on the spot where I fell, and there is an empty seat. I sit next to a woman who doesn’t notice me, and I stare amazed at the screen. Music fills me up.
I am home.
***
I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading this ghostly spin.
The inspiration to flesh out Alison’s story came to me during a private tour of Peery’s Egyptian Theater. The manager at the time did a wonderful job of showcasing the historic movie palace for me. I saw the place where Alison fell; I sat on her favorite chair—dozens of people have seen her there. I went into the bathrooms where she entertains herself, turning the lights on and off, or just letting the water run—per the chuckling janitor who shared his experiences with me.
Because of her innocence and sweet demeanor, Alison occupies a special place in my heart. I hope I’ve done right by her and that you, henceforth, let her tag along—in your imagination.
A factual tidbit about Alison:
Peery’s Egyptian Theater, Ogden’s historic movie palace, is located on Washington Boulevard, between 24th and 25th Streets.
Legend has it that during its construction in 1924, a 12-year-old girl named Alison brought lunch for her father, and at some point during her visit, she died in a fall, either from scaffolding or from a balcony.
The friendly ghost of Alison, described as having shoulder-length hair, reportedly haunts the boxes in the rear of the theater, though there have also been sightings of her playing a piano, turning lights on and off, and occasionally sitting next to a lucky patron in the audience.
“ALISON”
As featured in “SEVEN GHOSTLY SPINS: a brush with the supernatural”
© 2018 by Patricia Bossano
Published in the United States by WaterBearer Press
www.waterbearerpress.com
ISBN: 978-1-2019093-0-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-2019093-1-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-2019093-2-0 (e)
The post “Alison” appeared first on Your Money Geek.
If you’ve been looking to join a credit union instead of a bank or want to add a credit union account for your checking and savings, PenFed is worth checking out.
While they don’t have the highest checking and savings APYs, they are reasonable and competitive for a full-service credit union. In fact, PenFed made our list of the top 5 credit unions nationwide of 2020.
PenFed’s mobile app allows you to do all of your banking online or on the go through their mobile app, no matter where you are in the U.S. and even some locations outside of the U.S. In this article, we’ll review PenFed’s checking and savings products.
Quick Summary
- Competive interest rates
- Large nationwide ATM network
- Minimum balance required to avoid checking account fees
|
PenFed Checking And Savings Details |
|
|---|---|
|
Product Name |
PenFed Credit Union |
|
Account Types |
Checking, Savings, Money Market, Certificates |
|
APY |
0.05% to 0.90% APY |
|
Min Deposit |
$5 |
|
Promotions |
None |
Who Is PenFed?
Pentagon Federal Credit Union is a full-service credit union. They were created in 1935 and have $25 billion in assets. PenFed is headquartered in McLean, Virginia. They used to restrict membership to a relationship with the military or federal government but have recently opened up to everyone.
PenFed services all 50 states, including the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Okinawa (Japan). They are federally insured by NCUA and are an Equal Opportunity Lender. In addition to PenFed checking and savings accounts, members can also access home, car, credit card, and student loan products.
See our review of PendFed’s student loan refinancing product.
What Do They Offer?
PenFed has one checking account and four savings products. They have a network of 68,000+ ATMs. You can bank online or through their mobile app. PenFed has nearly 50 branches across 16 states and the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Okinawa.
The PenFed website shows its accounts earn interest (APY) and dividends. The terminology can make it sound as though you get the APY plus dividends. That isn’t the case. Dividends are simply being used interchangeably with interest (APY).
Access America Checking Account
You’ll need to deposit $25 to open a checking account with PenFed. PenFed checking accounts do earn a little interest — 0.20% to 0.50% depending on account size as shown below.
- 0.20% APY on a daily balance of less than $20K
- 0.50% APY on a daily balance of $20K or more up to $50K
In addition to the listed APYs, you can also earn dividends with a monthly direct deposit of $500 or more. As well, to avoid the $10 monthly fee, you’ll need a daily balance or monthly direct deposit of $500 or more. Overdraft protection is available but is subject to approval.
Premium Online Savings Account
The Premium Online Savings Account pays 0.90% APY on balances up to $250,000 and only requires a $5 deposit. There are no monthly fees. However, there also is no ATM access.
Be aware that savings accounts have more restrictions than checking accounts. Due to federal law, you can only withdraw money from your account up to six times per month. You’re allowed up to $10,000 per day in deposits and a total of $50,000 for the month.
Regular Savings Account
The Regular Savings Account pays only 0.05% APY on all balances. But in exchange for giving up that interest, you gain ATM access. However, if you can get by with transferring money to your checking account before making a withdrawal, the Premium Savings Account is clearly the way to go.
Money Market Savings Account
The Money Market Savings Account requires $25 to open and doesn’t lose ATM access. There are no monthly fees and you get free checks upon request. The account pays interest through several tiers that are dependent on your balance:
- 0.05% APY — $10,000 or less
- 0.10% APY — between $10,000 and $99,999
- 0.15% APY — $100,000 or more
See how this compares to the top money market accounts here >>
Money Market Certificates
You’ve probably heard of a certificate of deposit (CD). Credit unions call these simply “certificates,” but they are basically the same.
PenFed has several certificates to choose from. All require a $1,000 deposit to open. Just like a CD, your money must remain in the certificate until maturity or you’ll pay an early withdrawal penalty. Dividends are compounded daily and paid monthly.
The following certificates are available:
- 6 Month — 0.40%
- 12 Month — 0.70%
- 15 Month — 0.70%
- 18 Month — 0.70%
- 2 Year — 0.75%
- 3 Year — 0.80%
- 4 Year — 0.85%
- 5 Year — 1.00%
- 7 Year — 1.05%
Mobile App
The mobile app for PenFed checking and savings includes all of the features you’d expect from full-service credit unions. You get instant check deposits, bill pay, ability to send money to almost anyone, account management, and the ability to transfer funds between your PenFed accounts.
Are There Any Fees?
The majority of PenFed’s accounts don’t come with fees. However, its Access America Checking Account has a $10 month fee if certain minimums are not met. To avoid the fee, you’ll need to keep a minimum balance of $500 or set up a $500 monthly direct deposit.
How Do I Open An Account?
You can visit Penfed.org or a local branch if you have one near you to apply for membership. If approved, you’ll need to deposit at least $5 to open an account.
Is My Money Safe?
Yes, money deposited with PenFed is federally insured by the NCUA. Like FDIC insurance for banks, NCAU insurance protects up to $250,000 of credit union member deposits per account.
Is It Worth It?
If you’re looking to open a checking or savings account with a credit union, PenFed is a full-service credit union that pays up to 0.50% on checking account deposits and up to 1.00% on savings. It has about 50 branches in 13 states, plus a few outside of the U.S. and includes NCUA protection. For those reasons, PenFed checking and savings is certainly worth considering.
But if you won’t be able to meet the requirements for waiving PenFed’s monthly checking account fees, you might want to look at these free checking accounts instead. And if you’re comfortable with managing your checking or savings accounts with minimal support, you might be able to earn higher rates with an online bank. These are our favorite online banks for 2020.
PenFed Checking And Savings Features
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Account Types |
Checking, Savings, Money Market, Certificates |
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Minimum Deposit |
|
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APY |
Checking:
Regular Savings: 0.05% APY Premium Online Savings: 1.00% APY Money Market Savings
Certificates
|
|
Maintenance Fees |
|
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Branches |
~50 across 13 states |
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ATM Availability |
68,000+ fee-free ATM network |
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Customer Service Number |
1-800-247-5626 |
|
Customer Service Hours |
|
|
Mobile App Availability |
iOS and Android |
|
Bill Pay |
Yes |
|
NCUA Charter Number |
00227 |
|
Promotions |
None |
The post PenFed Checking And Savings Review: Full Service And Solid Rates appeared first on The College Investor.
“Success can get you to the top of a beautiful cliff,
but then propel you right over the edge of it.”
As a Mustachian, there’s a good chance that you are a bit of an overachiever.
Maybe you fought hard to get exceptional grades in school, or perhaps you have always dominated in your career or your Ultramarathon habit or your hobbies - or maybe all of the above.
In the big picture, this usually leads to having a “successful” life, because of this basic math:
Traditional Success
=
How much work you do
x
How much society happens to value your work
The Nitty Gritty of Traditional Success
Now, lest the Internet Privilege Police head straight to Twitter to start writing out citations, Traditional Success is not a measure of your worthiness as a human being. We’re just talking about the old-fashioned, Smiling 1950s Man definition of success.
And since we’re all scientists here, we could break the “Work” side of it down a bit further:
And thus, you could say that on average, doing more stuff produces more traditional success.
But then what?
This is the point where a lot of smart, driven, born-lucky people drive themselves up the Winding Road of Challenge and then right off the edge of the Cliff of Success.
If you’re still on the way up, or stuck at the bottom, it is difficult to even imagine the idea of “too much success”. But it’s a real thing, and it happens much more quickly than the modern overachiever would like to admit. Observe the following cautionary tale:
Diana is the director of engineering in a Silicon Valley tech startup. The work is intense, but they are almost over the hump - the company went public last month, and she owns shares that are worth over $10 million at today’s share price. They will vest over the next five years, so she just needs to grind this out and then she will be set for life.
Sounds great, right?
Except this is Diana’s third smashing success. She was already set for life after the second company was acquired, and even before that, her first decade as a rising star at a large company had already left her with over $2 million of investments and a paid-off house in hella expensive Cupertino, California. She had more than enough to retire, twenty years ago!
To many people who are less fortunate, the present situation would still sound like great fortune, and in some ways, it is. Becoming a Director of Engineering is (usually) far better than a punch in the face.
But Diana is now 52 years old, with a collection of increasingly severe back and neck problems and a few medical prescriptions piling up. She has two grown children in their twenties, but wishes she had been able to spend more time with them as they grew up. She has all the money in the world, but still almost no free time, and this next five years is starting to look like an eternity.
What happened here?
Diana is in good company, because many of our hardest-working people fall into this same trap. They have the talent and the great work habits figured out, but they are still missing one last concept - the idea of the sweet spot.
Diana could have stopped after the first company, or the second, but her career success took on a momentum of its own, so she kept doubling down without stopping to consider why she was doing it - and what she was giving up in exchange.
Once you learn to see the phenomenon of the sweet spot, you will start noticing it everywhere. And it is an amazingly useful thing to start watching and fine-tuning to get the most out of your own life.
Fig.2: What is the ideal amount of Anything?
The Sweet Spot of Physical Training
When a non-runner starts running, they will see immediate benefits. In the process of going from being unable to jog across a parking lot, to being able to easily jog a brisk mile, your entire body will transform for the better. Muscles and bones get stronger, heart and lungs expand and reach out to give your body a healthy embrace, brain functioning and mood and hormones smooth out and normalize.
Training your way up to become a two mile runner still brings great benefits - just slightly smaller. The fifth through twentieth mile turn you into a hyper efficient machine, but some people start seeing joint injuries as they rise through the ranks.
And by the time you reach the fringe world of 100-mile runners, serious injuries and surgeries are completely normal - as well as unexpected organ failures in otherwise young, healthy people. The sweet spot for daily running for maximum health is somewhere the middle.
All around us, seemingly unrelated things follow this same pattern, from career work to physical exertion to parenting strategy.
Fame and Fortune - be careful what you wish for
Fame definitely has a sweet spot. Building up a good reputation in your community can open the door to better friendships, jobs, relationships, and more fun in general.
But as that reputation expands outwards to become fame, you get the “reward” of constant coverage in gossip magazines and waking up to find photographers and news reporters on your front lawn. At the extreme end, you need to mobilize a team of armored vehicles and line your route with snipers every time you leave your well-guarded compound.
Even money, our humble and ever-willing servant is subject to this phenomenon. It certainly helps us meet our basic needs, but there is a certain point at which Mo Money can become Mo Problems.
The first bit of monetary surplus can be fun as you can afford a nice house and good food. Then the next chunk seems fun but also causes distractions as you rack up second and third houses and ever-more elaborate possessions and vacations that take a lot of energy to keep track of.
And from there it goes downhill as tabloids start keeping track of your wealth and scrutinizing your choices, hundreds of people mail in pleas for your generosity, and you end up with a full-time job just making sure that the surplus goes to good use. This life arrangement can still be enjoyable for some people, but I would definitely not wish it upon myself.
On and on this pattern goes. A curve with a sweet spot in the middle. The optimal amount of calories to consume in a day. The volume at which you will enjoy your music most. The right brightness of light to illuminate a room. The number of friends with whom you can have a meaningful relationship.
Why does it occur in so many places? I believe it is because this is how our brains are wired in the first place.
Humans are a ridiculously adaptable creature, but we do still come with limits.
And when you respect those limits and fine-tune your life within the sweet spot for all of the main pillars for happy living, you end up with the best possible chance at living a happy, prosperous life.
Interest rates are still at WTF-low levels, so if you haven’t already done so, I recommend checking your current home mortgage and student loan rates. Either at your local credit union, or online via a service like Credible.
Click Here to open that up in a new tab, and keep reading.
Note: This is an affiliate link, to learn why I use these even when I am supposedly retired, read this.
The Curse Of the Overachievers - Revisited
So now you see the problem - overachievers like us tend to get really good at a few things like a career or an athletic pursuit often specializing so much that we neglect other things like overall health or personal relationships.
And our society notices and rewards us for the success, which just reinforces the behavior, so we take things to even higher extremes, often without stopping to think about the reason behind it.
Okay, So What Now?
Once you see the pattern of the sweet spot, it is impossible to un-see it. So it becomes pretty easy to float up and look at your entire life from above, like an outside observer.
And from up there, you can see the areas where you have enough, and places where you may have already gone overboard, and the corresponding things that you have left neglected as the price of that success.
Over the past year I’ve been looking at my own life from this perspective, coming up with quite a few of my own diagnoses:
Money: enough. Additional windfalls don’t seem to bring me any lasting joy, but I also don’t have so much money that it makes me nervous. It’s enough to feel safe and empowered, and that’s all I need. Meanwhile, giving away money has brought me lasting happiness, without creating a feeling of shortage or regret.
Career Success (blog): It Varies. When I was really working on this MMM job in the mid-2010s, it started to take over too much of my life. Emails, opportunities, travel and public attention all reached levels where I actually started to have less fun. So I tried dialing it back, as any long-term readers will have noticed. And sure enough, life improved. But then I went too far and started feeling a loss from letting this valued hobby slip away. I’ve been trying to get back into the groove, which revealed another problem - detailed at the end of this list.
Friendships: Not Enough. I have found myself not being able to keep up with close friends, and had difficulty making or keeping plans, partly out of feeling overwhelmed with life details in general. Still, the opportunities abound here in my local community, and the people are wonderful. So I have the opportunity to keep working at this.
Health and Fitness: Enough. Since I was about fourteen years old, eating well and getting a lot of varied exercise has always been a kind of non-negotiable pillar for me. Nothing extreme, but just very consistent. I think this has been paying off as I feel healthy every day and have never had any physical or health problems in these 30+ years since.
Parenting and Kids: Enough (an A+!) Since 2005 I made “being a Dad” my primary goal in life, quitting my career to do so. It’s the only thing I can truly say I have done the best I could at, and I’m really proud of that. But part of this success came from only having one kid - both of us parents knew we couldn’t handle any more, given the overall conditions of life back then. So for us, the sweet spot was One Child - and absolutely no regrets in that department.
Personal Projects and Daily Habits: Not Enough. I get great satisfaction from working on challenging things and making progress. But far too often, I just can’t get it together and I squander entire days on accidental distractions. Planning to go out for a day of work can lead to searching for lost sunglasses which can lead to finding a lost to-do list which can lead to opening the computer to look something up and several hours disappearing. On and on these tangents can go, often leading to me not getting my primary, happiness-creating goals for the day accomplished.
I discovered that I have a pretty severe and textbook case of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, which gets magnified if there are any sources of stress in my life. So I’m working on that (keeping stress down and also targeting habits, diet, exercise and even trying some medication), which will hopefully improve all other areas of life as well.
What am I missing? I’m still working on thinking it all through, so this list will surely grow.
Your Turn
Your life surely has a completely different array of surpluses, shortages and sweet spots than mine. Your assignment is therefore to write them all out tonight, and see where you stand in each area, and decide what to change. Many of the changes are quite easy to make, and yet the results are nothing short of life-changing.
In the comments: what are your own areas of surplus and shortage? And what’s your plan to help restore balance to your life?
While most of us use our TFSAs as general purpose, tax-free savings or investment vehicles, the
Canada Revenue Agency has been cracking down
on perceived misuse of the accounts by assessing some taxpayers with an overcontribution tax, and others
for falling afoul of the “advantage rules” for registered plans
. Two separate tax cases, out last month, dealt with TFSA penalty taxes.
Non-resident TFSA contributions
The first case involved TFSA overcontributions. If you overcontribute, the penalty tax is one per cent per month for each month your TFSA is in an overcontribution position. But there’s a separate, additional penalty tax of one per cent per month if a non-resident contributes to their TFSA, which is what happened in the first case.
In August 2006, the taxpayer left Canada to begin her medical studies in the U.K. While in the U.K. as a student, and, on the advice her Canadian investment adviser, she made contributions to her TFSA in 2009 ($5,000), 2010 ($1,500) and 2012 ($494). She completed her studies in June 2011 and then commenced two years of residency training in family medicine. In November 2012, she registered with the Canadian Residency Matching Service as a fully licensed U.K. doctor, to obtain a residency position in Canada. Finally, in April 2016, she obtained a residency position at a Vancouver hospital and in June 2016, returned back to Canada.
Much to her surprise, in 2018 the taxpayer received Notices of Reassessment from the CRA for 2009 to 2016, assessing her a total of $17,006 of TFSA penalty tax and arrears interest, asserting that she was a non-resident of Canada when she contributed to her TFSA. Indeed, to be able to contribute to a TFSA (and to accumulate the annual TFSA contribution room), you must be a resident of Canada for tax purposes.
An individual’s residency status is determined on a case-by-case basis, taking into account many factors. The most important consideration is whether or not the individual maintains residential ties with Canada. Significant residential ties to Canada include: a home in Canada, a spouse or common-law partner in Canada and dependants in Canada. Secondary residential ties include: personal property, such as a car or furniture, in Canada; social ties in Canada, such as memberships in Canadian recreational or religious organizations; economic ties in Canada, such as Canadian bank accounts or credit cards; a Canadian driver’s license, a Canadian passport, and provincial health insurance.
The taxpayer argued that during the period that she was in the UK, she maintained a room in her parents’ home and always regarded the space in her parents’ home as her permanent home. She kept many of her possessions there until August 2016, when she moved to Vancouver.
While studying in the U.K., she kept strong secondary ties to Canada, including funding her medical school fees and expenses with annual loans from a student line of credit from a Canadian bank, as well as through various federal and Ontario student loan programs. She retained and renewed her Canadian passport, and obtained Canadian citizenship for her two daughters who were born abroad. She kept and renewed her Ontario Driver’s licence, her Canadian bank accounts and credit cards, and maintained her Ontario Health Insurance as an overseas student. She continued to be listed as an occasional driver on her parents’ vehicle insurance and returned to Canada nearly every year from 2006 to 2012 to maintain her ties to Canada. Lastly, she filed Canadian income-tax returns as a resident of Canada that were always assessed as filed.
In other words, although the taxpayer was physically absent from Canada during her years abroad, she argued that she maintained significant ties to Canada during her period of her absence and “intended to return to Canada upon completion of her medical studies and has, in fact, returned to Canada.”
In a consent to judgment issued last month, the CRA conceded that the taxpayer was a resident of Canada until June 30, 2020. This was a negotiated date that was selected by the CRA, as it was the date the taxpayer had completed her medical degree and could have returned to Canada, in theory, to complete her residency/licensing training. The taxpayer became a non-resident on July 1, 2020 and resumed Canadian residence on June 6, 2020, when she began her medical residency position in Canada.
The result, therefore, was that only the 2012 TFSA contribution of $494 was subject to non-resident penalty tax and interest, which totalled approximately $300, a far cry from the initial TFSA reassessments totaling over $17,000.
Advantage rules 100 per cent penalty tax
The second recent case involving TFSA penalty tax was at the Federal Court of Appeal and concerned the
“advantage rules,” which are a series of anti-avoidance rules
in the
Income Tax Act
designed to prevent abuse and manipulation of all registered plans, including TFSAs. If you find yourself offside these rules, you could face a 100 per cent penalty tax on the fair market value of any “advantage” that you receive that is related to a registered plan.
The taxpayer was appealing a 2018 decision of the Tax Court in which he was reassessed nearly $125,000 in penalty tax applicable to the advantage the CRA says he received in connection with the transfer of private company shares to his TFSA.
The taxpayer went to court to challenge the constitutionality of the 100 per cent advantage tax. He argued that since the CRA has the discretion to reduce the 100 per cent advantage tax to zero, Parliament “improperly delegated the rate-setting element of (tax) … to the (CRA)” in contravention of the Constitution Act.”
Not surprisingly, the Tax Court, and now, the appellate court, dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal, concluding that Parliament, via the explicit wording found in the Income Tax Act, “has prescribed the liability for the tax, the persons on whom it is imposed, the conditions on which a person becomes liable for it, and criteria by which the amount of tax can be determined. (It) delegates nothing to the (CRA).”
The Court did find that there was a wider issue to be considered as to whether the CRA’s power granted under the Income Tax Act to reduce or cancel the tax constitutes “an invalid delegation of taxation power to the (CRA).” But, due to a “lack (of) adequate submissions and fully developed reasons from the Tax Court,” the appellate court refused to weigh in, concluding: “We should leave the broader issue for another day.”
Jamie Golombek, CPA, CA, CFP, CLU, TEP is the Managing Director, Tax & Estate Planning with CIBC Private Wealth Management in Toronto.
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