Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

PA TAP 529 Investment Plan for College

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While this topic is very different from the usual content I write, I feel it will have value for those young adults with children that are sure to be following a similar track in life; “How do I pay for my child’s college education?” I’m not financially savvy by any means, but here’s your call to action if you haven’t yet done anything to start saving.

I’m a Gen Xer and I would consider myself as middle income. I’m not rich or poor by any means, but I don’t want for much either. I buy a car/SUV every 10 years or so, mow my own lawn, pay my monthly mortgage and yearly taxes. I hold a full-time job with a large retailer, I run my own consulting business and I try to volunteer regularly with a number of organizations. With three daughters I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to save for their college education. After a lot of reading and research I decided that a Pennsylvania TAP 529 plan was the best tool and provided the most benefits for me and my family being a Pennsylvania resident. The biggest benefit is that all my TAP 529 contributions are tax deductible at the state level. In 2020 I believe the max contribution per beneficiary was $14,000. So I could contribute $14,000 to each of my TAP 529 plans and have those contributions deducted from my income on my state taxes. This will generally save me a few thousand dollars in taxes, which I can then re-invest back into the TAP 529 accounts. In addition, the funds I contribute to the TAP 529 are excluded from the FASFA application for student aid.

I ended up selecting the PA 529 Investment Plan, and that’s where the money has been gowning for the past few years. There’s a lot of flexibility in how the funds can be allocated, if you are interested in taking an active part you can select from a myriad of options. Or you can set it and forget it and the plan will automatically re-allocate the funds to less riskier investments the closer your child gets to college age.

My Thoughts

It’s never too late to start saving or investing. Whether you are saving for your child’s college education or for your eventual retirement, there are plenty of ways to start saving and investing today. In 2018 I opened an account with Betterment, a robo advisor. That account has provide a rate of return around 9.7% annually, not a phenomenal number by any stretch but it’s definitely better than 0%.

What are you doing today to save for your child’s college education or your retirement?

Cheers!

The Swedes are coming!

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No, I was hacked with some stolen user credentials.

I was surprised today when I noticed that someone had posted a new article to this site at 6:36AM this morning titled “3 Reasons to Start Using Dealspaces”. Interestingly enough the user account used to post the article was a test account under my wife’s name that I probably haven’t used in years.

I went looking at the nginx access.log files and found the relevant entires;

213.164.204.89 - - [17/Feb/2021:11:36:17 +0000] "POST //xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.1" 200 141 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0"
213.164.204.89 - - [17/Feb/2021:11:36:18 +0000] "POST //xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.1" 200 2253 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0"
213.164.204.89 - - [17/Feb/2021:11:36:19 +0000] "GET /2021/02/3-reasons-to-start-using-dealspaces/ HTTP/1.1" 200 9985 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0"

The IP address belongs to a Swedish Internet Service Provider named Bahnhof, not particularly helpful as it could have also been a Tor endpoint or exit node. I can tell from the time stamps that the action was likely scripted as there was exactly one second between each request.

Needless to say I immediately deleted the post and the user account that was used to make the post and then changed my own password out of an abundance of caution. I then scoured the entire WordPress filesystem using the recent backup I had to try and make sure that nothing else was changed. I even dumped the database and ran a quick comparision against a recent backup, again looking for any changes or any obfuscated code.

My Thoughts?

Old user accounts are becoming a bigger and bigger problem as the longer they hang around in the wild they will eventually end up being compromised. This is why IT security professionals plead with users to use different passwords on every single website and to frequently change those passwords. Unfortunately in this case I’m going to guess that the password used for this account likely wasn’t very secure (Test123) and that’s likely how the hacker was able to login to WordPress and post the article. So shame on me for yet again falling into the roll of a user.

Are you curious if your user credentials have ever been leaked? Check out have i been pwned?

Cheers!

I had a screw loose !$%&#

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If you live in the Northeastern United States you’re probably still digging out from the massive winter storm that blew through the area over the past three days. Here in my local area of Pennsylvania we managed to get just over 12 inches of snow, although towns not far away managed well over 23 inches and my family in northern New Jersey are estimating that they had around 18 inches of white stuff.

Thankfully I have a 27″ Briggs & Stratton 1227MD Snow Blower to help clean my 2,000 square foot driveway. I bought this unit back in 2017 and while it hasn’t had too much work in the past few years it’s always been reliable and easy to operate. On Monday afternoon my trusty steed stopped working and a bit of panic set in as the second wave of snow starting falling. The engine was fine, but the snow blower would frequently stop moving forward and the wheels would lock up. The snow blower would move in reverse but it would not move forward. Using a 10mm socket and socket wrench I was able to remove the lower panel that covers the drive train and a screw literally fell out. Looking at the bottom panel it was quite clear that the screw was rolling around at the bottom of the panel and was occasionally getting wedged between the drive gear and the external sheet metal causing everything to “lock up”.

I looked around to see if I could determine where the “extra” screw had come from but I wasn’t able to find anything missing or out of place. I put the machine back together and this morning it ran like a champ for 2+ hours clearing my driveway and my neighbors.

My Thoughts?

Thankfully I was able to quickly troubleshoot the problem and determine the issue. While I enjoy the occasional manual labor, I wasn’t looking forward to the thought of having the shovel 12 inches of snow from my long driveway, so I was sufficiently motivated to “figure it out“. Are you handy? If so great! If not, don’t be afraid to branch out and try new things, whether you are a “handy” person or not. It’s not rocket science!

Cheers!

PS: Thanks for the cake Anita, it was delicious!

Weight Loss and Personal Health

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In 2020 my diet and personal health choices finally caught up to me and I had to make some drastic changes. Since that September day I’ve lost more than 60lbs using a mixed low-carb / keto diet. Unfortunately I’ve also had to account for my gout diagnosis which has left me with some very restricted menu options.

The data in the graph below is from a Withings WiFi Scale and makes it pretty easy to see how quickly the weight can catch up to you, or me I guess I should say, over the years.

In July of 2018 I broke my ankle while playing ice hockey and that literally sidelined me for more than six months. The only good thing during that timeframe? I literally couldn’t get to the kitchen for months so I didn’t put on any weight. I owe that feat to my wonderful wife, she loves telling me “no!“. You can see in the graph above that 2018 was relatively flat, until I got my mobility back and started snacking again. :(

How did I do it?

In my specific case, the hunger wasn’t the big issue. The pain from the gout attack was pretty severe and lasted almost 4 weeks, and it literally masked my general hunger for the first few weeks. I was religious about keeping my fluid levels up, drinking 160oz of water daily trying to flush the uric acid out of my body. I believe the water kept me feeling full, but the numerous trips to the bathroom can be super annoying. However, it promotes getting up from the desk frequently which is a good thing.

My job for the past 7 years required me to commute almost 100 miles each day keeping me in my car for ~ 3 hours each day about 15 hours each week. Thankfully that’s changed dramatically with COVID-19 and I’ve made use of the extra free time to walk my dog, Bucket, twice daily. The Fitbit Versa 2 I wear helps track the 10,000+ steps I try to tally daily. Not surprisingly my resting heart rate has dropped from an average of 63bpm to 53bpm at my current weight.

What’s the future hold?

In December I had another round of blood tests and there was “excellent improvement“, as noted by my physician. I still need to have another round of blood tests again this month, so here’s hoping that things are continuing to improve.

As for my personal goals, I would like to get down to around 240lbs. The trick will be adopting a diet and eating behaviors that I can use to maintain my weight and not start piling it all back on once I hit my goal. Ask me in six months where I am. Don’t be so focused on work, or the family or everyone else around you that you forget to take care of your own health!

Cheers!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2021

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I’m sure many of you, like myself, are eager to put this year behind us…. and likely many more are missing loved ones that are no longer with us. There’s no doubting that 2020 will be remembered along with all those that have left us too soon.

Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Cheers!

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