Mom's going back to VN again

Just took mom to the airport. She will be staying in Vietnam with her relative for 3 months!

Prior to going traveling I make sure she has enough medication to take along for the period. Fortunately, all the mail order prescriptions are for 3 months period.

Mom is forgetful so she often misplace the unused medication and sometime try to get me to order more than necessary. It's a good thing that the mail oder web site keep track of order history and I can use it to prove to her that she should have the medicine already! She has always been able to find her medicine after some searching around her room.

Mom wants an IPOD!

Mom has been talking about MP3 players and how they can store "hundreds" of song!

I ordered an ipod nano for mom last week and it has just arrived.

I hit a snag when installing ITune and it gave me error "invalid character" in folder path. After a few Google searches, I found that the error came from my previous Quick time install where I had set the start folder as "Accessories/QuickTime" (note the wrong slash character). A quick regedit took care of this problem.

Mom is back

Mom is back from Vietnam after nearly 2 months!

Medical stuff:

• Took mom to dentist for checkup. She has several bad teeth. Two will need to be pulled and several will need to be patch or old cap rebuild. She does not have dental insurance so it will be expensive. She's considering going back to Vietnam to do most of the dental work.
• Made appointment for mom to visit Mayo clinic for her 1 year checkup after last year ovarian operation.
• Made appointment for mom to visit cardiologist for her 6 month pacemaker checkup
• Took mom to have blood test for calcium deficiency. Need to call family doctor for appointment to discuss result.

Mom seems a little sad to be back. She still has many relative members back in Vietnam. All her friends are back in Hawaii so she's a little lonely here since I'm mostly busy with work and stuff around the house.

Mom is going to Vietnam

Tomorrow, mom is going to go to Vietnam to visit her other half of the family. She has not visit them for over 5 years now. She has planned to go back in 2005 but then my step father fell ill. She has been looking forward to this trip for quite a while.

I've had the travel agent notify the airline to help her transfer between terminals and provide wheel chair service as needed. I hope this will work out.

Check list: Medication for 1 month, visa, passport...

Signup for Social Security (SS) direct deposit

You would think this is pretty simple eh...

Go to http://www.socialsecurity.gov/
Hunt around a bit to find the menu Question?->Checks and Payments->Direct Deposit
Found form 1199A. It said to fill it out then take it to your financial institution.
Filled form - no problem - Took it to mom's local Credit Union and here's where it gets dicey.

The form's instruction said "Financial institution should refer to Green Book for further instructions". It also said "The financial institution should mail the completed form to the Government Agency Identified".

The lady at the credit union did neither. She filled out the bank section 3 info then handed it back to mom. She said "we don't do direct deposit request" you have to do it! She did not fill in section 2, the government agency address that mom should mail the form to.

No problem, I can do that. I searched the web for the "Green Book" and found it at http://fms.treas.gov/greenbook/enroll/enroll-d4.html

It said to verify in section 2 "federal agency name and address" because this is where most errors occur. I followed contact list link. The contact list has misspelled link back to www.socialsecurity.gov where I searched in vain for several hours for an address to send in form 1199A. I gave up.

There is the telephone alternative.

I tried it and, after navigating through complicated button, voice and more button menus, it couldn't find mom's record. I gave up again.

There is the online alternative.

I did an online request for mom. She is now waiting for a letter from the SS office with instruction to create her online account. With this, she should be able to do an online enrollment. We'll see...

This is not good.

Preparing tax return for mom

Well, this is the first of what I hope to be many posts on taking care of elderly parents. So here goes...

I'm doing tax for mom and I thought it would be simple and easy. She has a small SS pension, interest income from the proceed of selling her home, a small IRA distribution, etc...

First, I neglected to have tax withholding on her interest income. I didn't think it would be so much! So it looks like she will own the IRS about $1000. No problem, she didn't own any taxes last year so there won't be a penalty.

Next, I see this 1099-R form that says mom earned $11000 from an annuity she had setup eon ago. She has just cashed it out to put into her bank to get better interest rate. This pushed her income over the $25000 limit so her SS income will be taxed! Now she own $4000 total tax! She is effectively paying 27% tax rate on that annuity income.

So the lesson here is: Watch out when your parents cash out any sort of saving. With our curious tax law, even a small amount may set off a chain reaction of tax rules that will just eat up their hard earned saving.

Mom took over my garden

Mom pretty much took over my back yard garden. She is planting and caring for various hot pepper and mint plants. I don't know if they will survive the 100+ Arizona summer.