Taxes Hurt!

We just talked with our accountant and he said that we are going to have to shell out quite the check to the Federal and State governments. This is mainly due to the sale of our rental house last May. While we still came out ahead, it is REALLY expensive to sell a house especially if it is not your primary residence. Ultimately where we thought we had a nice profit margin from the sale, we are only walking away with about 40% of that. Sixty cents of every dollar we made went to either tax, fixing it up for the FHA requirements or the realtors and closing costs! That is insane!

property-tax-bill

We were bracing for this tax bill ever since we sold it, but it still hurts when the time comes. I can see why the government does tax withholding on labor income because even though we paid way more than this amount throughout the whole year in automatic withdrawals (from our employment), it hurts a lot more to just write the big check all at once.

The thing about taxes is that it pays for many good and important things in society, but your contribution just feels like one of many and the roads and schools and things would still be there if you weren’t there (or hadn’t sold a house). Unlike a direct purchase where you get to use it right away and see its direct effects, taxes are much more ephemeral.

As it might be fun to get a little card in the mail like those programs in Africa where you feed a child and they send a note from a full-bellied child thanking you for your donation, it would be nice to get a thank you card that says “so and so street was built due to your generous tax contributions” or “this and that fire station” or “some war was paid for because of you” (well maybe not that one so much). But you get the idea.

Oh well, it’s a part of society and as they say there is nothing certain about life except death and taxes. In the mean time, I am dropping the Rincon progress vine down just a bit to adjust for this big bill. :-p We’ll make it up, we always do, it just hurts for a while. And we can’t lose the perspective that we still made money on the whole thing. Just not nearly as much as we thought.

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The Waiting Room

After we got our new carpet installed, we decided that anything we weren’t going to be using right away, would go into the empty upstairs guest bedroom. We called it the “waiting room” as all the items in it would be just waiting to be sold or given away. We made a goal of listing at least 3 items on Craigslist each week with the hope of selling them.

Dresser
We sold this dresser in about 10 minutes!

We really don’t have that much stuff if it can all fit into a 11×11 room. But it is still enough that we have to figure out what to do with it. The hardest is stuff like my shoes and closet full of clothes that I love, but will have absolutely no use for down there and which, to be perfectly honest, I really don’t wear that much here anyway. I have about 5 pairs of shoes that I always wear. Similar story with my clothes. The rest are just for fun or special occasions. So far I haven’t sold any of my shoes, but I hope to at the right price. It would be a shame to have to toss these nearly new shoes and boots!

Shoe Collection
Some of my shoes I have collected over the years

We also have all of our various houseplants and gardening tools to contend with.

Lime Tree
We sold this beautiful lime tree and I think we made some new friends in the process as well!

Germination Station
We also sold this germination station heat pad super quick!

We’ve also made some bigger sales including one that is pending and Britton has started to go through and sell his old records like this autographed Guns N’ Roses album that he sold on Ebay.

IMG_2823
Guns N’ Roses Album

It’s been a lot of fun going through all of our stuff and selling it in sort of a laid back garage sale sort of way. Craigslist is cool because unlike a garage sale, people aren’t just browsing…they actually want your stuff, like we did with when we bought a  Kitty carrier we found on there. It’s not as cheap as garage sale prices, but it’s a LOT less than full retail and you can do it any time of the year.

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Puerto Rico’s Spot in the Limelight

It seems that lately there has been a flurry of activity about Puerto Rico in the media. I watch the NY Times for news about Puerto Rico on the national level, but there is not usually too much that hits that level. However, lately there has been the in-depth NPR series on the migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland U.S. and more recently, and locally to Rincon, the episode on Hotel Impossible of Casa Verde Hotel which is much less serious than the NPR piece.

Casa Verde

It is funny because I have mixed feelings about Puerto Rico being in the spotlight. On the one hand, more people will know about Puerto Rico and on the other hand…more people will know about Puerto Rico, if you know what I mean. Basically, I feel like it is sort of a hidden treasure to most mainland Americans and I kinda like it like that. While the island certainly has its serious challenges, it is also an often overlooked gem.

It is so cool that we will get to know this place at such an intimate level as calling it our new home!

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How Does Coincidence Work?

My friend Sean, Cassie and I were talking about coincidence yesterday over some nachos.  It would seem that we all believe that strange coincidences happen to all of us and that it is kind of magical.  Like just as you talk about someone; they call you on the phone. Or just when you need something it appears as if out of nowhere.

When I was younger a friend of mine saw a hat that he really wanted.  He was dirt poor so the chances of him getting it were practically non-existent.  Later that day we were driving down the road and he saw something in the middle of the street and made us pull over.  He ran out and picked up, you guessed it, the EXACT same hat that he was looking at earlier.  It was as-if the universe had sent it to him.

In the most recent case Cassie and I had a $20 gift card to use at Safeway (our local grocery store).  We had received this gift card through our participation in the Weigh and Win program at the Library.  Anyhow, we were gathering a few items at the store; seaweed, a couple apples, trashbags,  oranges and a hand of bananas.   When we were using the self checkout we had put everything on the scale except for the bananas and it came to around $19.76.   Hmmm that’s close and we still had these bananas to weigh.   I looked at Cassie and said “Well…The bananas are going to throw us over $20 if we buy them.”  She looked at the bananas and with her out of the box thinking replied “Well..What if we buy just 1 banana?”.

You see I had viewed the bananas as one item.  I sometimes forget to use my brain and instead revert to what I am starting to call “Default thinking” which is just programming and isn’t really thinking at all.

So we picked one banana and threw it on the scale.  To our surprise this is what we saw:

safeway
A .23 cent banana to EXACTLY $20 Total

We could have picked any other banana, or checked out in any other order and it wouldn’t have turned out this way.

How does coincidence work? Is it some kind of non-local dark energy at work? Science is now seeing evidence of a “fifth force” that controls an invisible “dark energy”.  Perhaps this has something to do with it?  Some kind of quantum entanglement?

In either case coincidence needs more attention.  The next day we saw a robbery at Safeway and I am not sure how this all relates yet.  I have a feeling it has to do with helping others as the robbers simply ran out of the store with a cart full of food.  They started to throw it into their car and drive off.  These people needed food so badly that they stole it and here we have free gift cards in our pockets.

I suppose this is where religion and spirituality or just higher purpose comes into play which would be our next logical step as  humans.  We have our basic needs met and are trying now to expand into the next layer of hierarchy of needs.   Instead of thinking about the robbery from our perspective as witnesses we are now thinking about it from the perspective of the robbers and the store clerk who attempted to stop them by standing in front of the escaping car, and how we are more connected to the event than just watching it unfold.

In our pockets we had received the gift of free food.  How do we connect this with those who truly need it before they rob a store?  Apparently being on the front of the local newspaper promoting it isn’t enough.   And maybe this is looking into things too deeply…lol.  In any case life is much stranger than it appears on the surface.

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