Table of contents:
Daylight Savings Time – what is it?
Tax Deadline
Banking Information
American Slang
Driving Tips
Spring forward…..fall back.
Saturday night before you go to bed move your clocks ahead one hour. Yes, this
means you are losing one hour.
Daylight-saving time is when we turn the clocks forward one hour from standard
time in order to save energy. During the long days of spring and summer, we
are awake during daylight and use less electricity. This idea of daylight-saving
time has been around a long time, but was widely instituted in the USA in 1966.
There are still areas where they do not observe daylight-saving time, like Hawaii,
parts of Indiana and most of Arizona. If your area uses daylight-saving time,
the clocks should be set forward one hour the first Sunday of April at 2:00am.
Many countries around the world utilize daylight-saving time, each to its best
advantage. The change back to standard time occurs the last Sunday in October.
If you have worked and received money in the year 2003, then your taxes must
be post-marked by April 15, 2004.
If you have not worked and not received any money you must fill out Form 8843
and it must be post-marked by June 15, 2004.
Staff in the ISSS Office is not able to answer questions regarding Taxes.
You should not give your bank account number to anyone. Recently students have gone into the local banks and said they wanted to deposit or withdraw money from a friend's account. The Bank cannot give you any information, so don’t ask. It is against the law.
If you are going to be out of the area or country and want to give a friend
access to your bank account you should be giving them “Power of attorney”.
To do this you should see the school lawyers and they can help you with this.
To find out more about scheduling an appointment with the school lawyers go
to: http://www.union.rpi.edu/legal.asp.
As you start getting ready to go back home for your summer vacation, consider
checking the status of your bank account before leaving the country, especially
if you plan on using your credit or your debit card while you are away.
Most of you probably have a checking account accompanied by a debit card. The debit card enables you to take money out of your checking account, so the limit on your drawing is determined by the amount of money you have put in your account. Once you have reached the limit, however, your card will NOT be deactivated. Instead, the bank will allow you to keep purchasing with your card and overdrawing your account, but it will send you a notice that it has charged you an overdraft fee and will keep on charging you for every withdrawal and every 4 or 5 days (depending on the bank) until you have put money in your account to cover the overdraft. Of course, if you are out of the country, you might not receive these notices and you will not know you have reached an overdraft.
This can potentially be a very troublesome situation. One RPI student was charged over $400 in total fees for a two-week overdraft last summer. She was charged $60 when she first overdrew her account, and then she was charged additional $30 for each usage of the card, regardless of the size of the payment or withdrawal, and $30 for every four working days during which her account was overdrawn. As you can see, the charges the banks put on the accounts they advertise as free checking are enormous, so you really need to be careful if you will be using your card while being away.
Some things to consider:
• if your bank gives you the option of online banking, make sure you
sign up for it before you leave so you can keep track of how much money you
have in the bank even if you are abroad
• change the mailing address from your local to your permanent address
so you can receive bank notices while you are at home
• put enough money in your account before you leave and make sure that
you are aware of how much you are spending. If you have a savings account in
the same bank, do NOT count on the bank to cover your overdraft by transferring
money out of your savings into your checking account. Banks DO NOT do that!
For them, each account functions separately even if they belong to the same
person. You can however, ask the bank if they can link the two accounts and
use the money in your savings account overdraft protection.
• many banks offer overdraft protection plans. If you prefer not to have
to worry about keeping track of all your expenditures, you might want to look
into any of these protection options before you leave the country.
If you have been watching “The Apprentice” you heard the term “Look
who’s calling the kettle black”. An example would be, If Fred always
complained to his friend when it snowed, then one day Fred’s friend Mary
complained because it was snowing and Fred said, “you should not complain
about it snowing”. Mary could say, “look who is calling the kettle
black”. This means you do it all the time also. Another phrase that is
used more widely but has the same meaning is “look who’s talking”.
Spring is here yes, BUT remember:
If it is raining and you are using your windshield wipers you are required by
law to have your headlights on. Even if it is during the day.
When it is raining you still have to be careful about how fast you are driving.
If you drive to fast you could hydro-plane.