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Well Darn It!

February 3rd, 2016 at 12:57 am

When I was working as a school librarian in New Mexico, I was part of a program called Americorps. As part of that program you get an education award for each year of service. I earned two awards.

I used about 30% of it for a certificate program, but have had no use for the rest of it.

With marrying Mr FT, my plan was to transfer the award to him so he could pay off his student loans.

I'm almost POSITIVE I read that the only qualification was it had to be an immediate family member.

But ... tonight I was doing a little more research into it to refresh my memory. Unless I was reading something way different, I really messed up.

Apparently you can only transfer it to a child or grandchild AND only then if you were 55+ years old when entering into Americorps service.

If this is truly the case, then we won't be able to pay off his student loans in one fell swoop. So .. I guess that means that we really have no reason to wait to actually buy a house til after we're married. (I figured it would take a few months for the award to be transferred, and then pay off the loans.)

What a colossal waste of money. The award money will expire in 5 years (7 years from end of service.) I have absolutely no desire to go back to school for anything.

Ugh and Double Ugh!

--
We sure got some snow here this morning! There was nothing by 2 a.m., and then when I looked again at 4, there was at least 4 inches. By noon, there had been at least 10!

I got stuck trying to get out of my parking lot and couldn't find my shovel. So I improvised and used ... a mop! Then when I came home tonight, I had to make 3 attempts to get up the little hill into the parking lot!

I kept track today of how many calls I took asking about if the buses were running. Over 100 total, but 45 of them were in the first hour! Other people were also taking similar calls.

It didn't help that Omaha shut down their bus system. I think that got a lot of people here panicked that we were going to do so as well. How nice would a snow day be ... Smile (did you notice how well I slept last night? Yeah.)

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I may have misunderstood the Brink's PrePaid deal. I have an email in to customer service to clarify, but from what I can gather, it pays interest 1 x per quarter, not monthly. Which is why I didn't have any interest show up for this month. The .50% is for amounts over $5k, so it still should be 5% for the first $5k.

Waiting now for clarification.

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I received my $25 AGC from SBs today. Pretty fast since I only ordered it yesterday!

4 Responses to “Well Darn It!”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1454463163

    I know nothing about Americorps. Did you pay something to be a part of it? What kind of award did you get?

    Keep us updated on Brinks. I haven't done anything towards that yet, but a quarterly interest payment wouldn't keep me away from 5%!

    I received my Amazon gift card from Swagbucks in one day, too.

  2. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1454463466

    No, I didn't pay anything to be in it. I was part of a program working with low-income/disadvantaged kids. As part of your "pay" you got an award each program year of $5750 (I think if I remember correctly.) For youngsters with student loan debt, that's great. For me ... I got an iPad out of it?? I was really hoping to be able to use it for *something* and Mr FTs loans seemed perfect!

    Oh, I agree! 5% quarterly is still very much worth it. It just isn't what I had thought it was at first. But I also don't want my money to sit there for three months and find out that wasn't the case.

  3. snafu Says:
    1454468045

    Can you talk to an expert from the Americorps program, first asking if there has been changes since you earned the award and second, to verify there is no 'backdoor' [obscure] possibility for a spouse to benefit or transfer to 3rd party as a tax deduction.

  4. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1454468227

    Snafu - Yes, I probably should talk to someone there directly. Whatever amount is used is considered taxable income.

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