529 Accounting

T.’s got another payment owing to his college, so I’ve asked him to pay it out of his account, since he deposited the refunds from earlier overpayments. I put together a Note documenting his electronics purchases used for school, and textbook rentals, and direct payments to his college. I think the new payment will completely use up the refunded amount, but we’re still working through that process. I still don’t get the rules about distribution and when the class actually occurs and also, I guess we only have to deal with any errors we make there if someone comes asking a whole lot of detailed questions. We do our best and move on.

While I was at it, I took a look at what was involved in using 529 for K12 expenses, since A.’s going to Fusion. As near as I can tell, you just take a cash distribution, and then if anyone asks, tell them where the money went? *shrug* So I asked R. to name A. as the beneficiary of the 529 he set up when T. was born (we each set one up, and then never set anything up for A., because you can reassign within family, defined in a relatively flexible way), pull out the maximum allowed and put it in the joint checking account as a reimbursement to me.

None of this really matters, other than I’m learning all the rules, and the rules really do matter to a lot of people I care about and it’s helpful to have learned them for that purpose.

R. said something about how you can now move money from a 529 to a Roth, up to the amount the beneficiary earned over that tax year? I should probably also look at ABLE accounts. ETA: Probably more useful for M. than for my kids, altho definitely interesting to know about.

ETA: Elsewhere in money, I had a zoom meeting with an advisor and other members of the team, as they gently nagged me into agreeing to talk to some other people about you know maybe updating the will and so forth. Which I think I’m just about ready to do again. Because I dislike finding new providers for … anything if I can possibly avoid it, my team’s out in PacNW, but they are part of a larger organization with people in my state, so, yay? Relevant background on the applicable law and so forth, which is nice.

Very Nice Funerals by Crusie and Mayer

This is the second in the Rocky Start trilogy, and if the first book was weird, this one is so much weirder. I do not recommend starting with this book.

But it’s a good one! SPOILERS FOLLOW!

In the previous book, Darius very conspicuously failed to listen to Poppy at a key moment, when she was extremely clear and Darius and Poppy both suffered as a result and honestly, Darius learned nothing from the incident, but I went into this book really wanting to know what Poppy was going to do about it. Good news! Poppy dumped Darius. It wasn’t instantaneous, and she did a thorough job of establishing Darius’ character before dumping him. He really was committed to not listening to her. It was well-written, believable and I adored Poppy through the whole thing. Just amazing. The switcheroo with Mei and Marley and was fun, too, and it’s being developed slowly and I’m looking forward to seeing more in the final book.

We find out that Herc did not pay up as promised, but Max puts some pressure on him and gets him to do at least some of what he promised. So that was nice.

Someone rolls into town in a Cybertruck, which gets hacked and then dumped in the Little Melvin. That was fun. Tell us what you really think, Crusie/Mayer.

Poppy and Rose continue to clean up around the shop and Find Things. That is extremely enjoyable.

All in all, a very good outing, altho a bit grisly at times.

I’m hoping that we get some kind of closure with Herc in the third book. And given Betty’s comment about the Witches, I would not be surprised to see more of them, too. It’s been a really fun ride, tho.