6ixString's Home Improvement and Mindless Ramblings Thread....

Update to the tax scenario....

It's even better than I thought.

I just assumed the 1% tax cap on property value plus the huge voter approved changes would dictate the price, so as of yesterday I thought I saved (Only ) about $650 a year.

I did a little research though......

I won't give exact numbers, since all of this stuff is available online and I wouldn't want anyone to figure out who I am, so let's just say my property assessment was lowered to an even 100k from an even 150k.

BEFORE:

Assessed value of $150,000, using the math that will be explained below on the new figure ended up with a tax burden of $2579, but was reduced a few hundred because of the 1% tax cap.

AFTER:

100,000
-
45,000 Homestead Deduction
-
19,250 Supplimental Homestead Deduction (35% of value after HD)
--------
35,750
*
.037795 (Local Tax Rate)
--------
1351.17 !!!!!!

In actuality, it's quite a bit less than that if I used the real value in the equation.

So instead of shaving about 25% off of my taxes, the real number is much closer to 50%.

Without getting into actual numbers, the amount of cash I need to shell out for this years second installment is just shy of 5% of what I thought I'd be paying come November after my first installment overpayment, and I'll be paying little more than 100 bucks a month to the government for the privilege of living in my own home.

I know people who pay that yearly amount in apartment rent every month.

Don't let people scare you out of doing things when you know in your heart you're right. I almost didn't do this for myself for fear it would backfire on me, but I'm so glad that I did. This doesn't just benefit me today, but every year I live in this house.... maybe even until I die.

Get your facts straight, make a plan of attack, word your thoughts on paper just right, dot all the I's and cross the T's and I think you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

I thought this would take months, maybe even years to get satisfaction. Not only did it take only about 2 actual hours of driving time and time spent in the assessor's office, but the end result was double my best case scenario and triple my worst case scenario going into it.

That's about 170 hours less I have to work at K-Mart to pay the bills per year

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Just thinking about REM and how bad ass they were.....

And of a little known show by Bill Murray's Nephew Chris Elliot called "Get a Life"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Life_%28TV_series%29

Sure, it's sad to be 12 and your hero is a 30 year old guy living with his parents delivering papers on a bike only to crash at the end, but I blame REM for that....

The song was just that awesome.....

What's cool to me is reading that Fox Exeuctives HATED the character of Chris and HATED the show. I don't think anybody at Fox HATED Firefly. Chris died 12 times over the short series run, but every episode reset.

I've only had the pleasure of being able to see 4 episodes on a re-released DVD about 10 years ago. As far as I know the series was never re-released in it's entirity.

The only memorable line from the show was Chris breaking the 4th wall and saying to the audience "No offence to our Italian American Viewers" after the words "guinie pig" were used.








Anyway...I had no idea how awesome the song was back then and that it was a lot longer.

REM kicked ass...

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I liked that show! I got wun on a tape here sumwer. The wun wer he goez hunting withb hiz dad & buddy and they get wakt out frum eating halucinojenic berryz.

Chris did hiz best stuff on Letterman - The regulator guy, the guy under the seats, hiz spoof uv Morton Downey Jr. - a bunch uv great stuff!

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Good for you on working out the property tax thing, it sounds like it worked out optimally for you.

So how long will you let this thread go before you start another instead, 200 posts maybe?

I have Kathy Bates on speed dial, mwa ha ha ha (in exaggeratedly evil voice)

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya.

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by JO753:
I liked that show! I got wun on a tape here sumwer. The wun wer he goez hunting withb hiz dad & buddy and they get wakt out frum eating halucinojenic berryz.

Chris did hiz best stuff on Letterman - The regulator guy, the guy under the seats, hiz spoof uv Morton Downey Jr. - a bunch uv great stuff!

---

Haha... I remember that episode! My favorite one was when he became a food inspector for the FDA and was taking bribes of nickels and 5 dollar bills to let rat turds in the processing plants slide. It was playing the song "Money, Money, Money, Money....... MooooNay!" while the nickels were stacking up. I just remember him showing off his pinky ring and asking how much Bill Murray's brother thought it cost him and when he guessed 5 bucks, he pulled out his other hand and said "No.... 2... for 5 bucks!" I'd sure love to see the entire run on DVD someday.

I've never seen any of his Letterman stuff. I should check it out. "Cabin Boy" was unbearable, but he was good on Groundhog day, and he and David Cross were the only 2 funny things about Scary Movie 2.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by RionaEire:
Good for you on working out the property tax thing, it sounds like it worked out optimally for you.

So how long will you let this thread go before you start another instead, 200 posts maybe?

I have Kathy Bates on speed dial, mwa ha ha ha (in exaggeratedly evil voice)

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya.

---

Thanks Riona,

SUPER Optimal! I moved in here originally, perfectly okay with the idea that my "rent" to the government would be nearly 200 bucks a month. I figured that was the best I could do if I wanted to be within driving distance of my family and any decent jobs. The unique situation I'm in with the flood plain in an area that doesn't have many houses at all designated as such allowed me a TON of weight on the re-assessment. I just can't believe that NONE of the previous owners ever brought it up. Hell, because I didn't get a mortgage, I wasn't forced to pay $1,200 bucks a year for FEMA flood insurance by a bank, so I wasn't even aware it was on a flood plain until my neighbors let me know.

So... rent now is about 100 bucks a month! Yay!

I know people who pay 3 hundred bucks more than I do a year to rent a one bedroom apartment in Chicago.



I'm still blown away by how wonderful the assessor's office was about the whole thing. All it took was an offical packet from the town stating I'm on a flood plain, and about 30 pictures of the mold damage and the changes were made, no questions asked. The fact that I got about 350% more of a reduction than I was hoping for is just amazing.

I knew there was a better reason than to just stroke my ego that I've taken about 600 before and after pictures since I've started working on the house. I had no idea it would ever pay out these kind of dividends though. If there were zero inflation for the next 20 years I lived here, and my property taxes never went up (both not possible), I just saved about $21,000 in property taxes over the next 20 years




About posts... hmmmmm..... I didn't really think about it. It was an issue with the first post because there was no way to just show 50 or less posts like we can now and it was taking JO 3 minutes to finish loading the thread. Seems that Haken fixed that with the new build. This is just kind of my "Journal", and it's cool that it's interactive and other people can post here too. It really is cool to do it this way and be able to look back and see exactly which day I was doing what, and seeing how much has gotten done in a certain amount of time. Really, this is my only means of keeping track of how long projects are taking me since I'd never sit down and hand write an actual journal.





Had my first night of work at "The Mart"

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