If you filed your federal return electronically, I found a nice little resource over at TaxAct.com that can give you an idea of when your refund should arrive. Basically it looks like they divide filings into weekly cycles that start and end at 11am EST on Thursdays, with direct deposit refunds being sent the following [...]
My wife and I just purchased a new home in November, and the experience is reminding me of the many pitfalls that are out there to take advantage of homebuyers. With that in mind, this is the first in a series of posts about the raw deals to watch out for in buying a home. [...]
Frequent readers of my blog will know that I am not exactly happy with the huge growth of government we’ve seen of late, so this post shouldn’t come as a big shock. This was inspired by listening to a recent episode of The Survival Podcast, a favorite podcast of mine that discusses various topics related to [...]
Here in Texas there are only two certainties in life: death and property taxes (and probably mosquitos). Property taxes out here are ridiculous (for my home, I pay a rate of about 2.5% of the taxable value of the property every year), so there is a lot of incentive to protest your assessment. I did [...]
I posted earlier about my attendance at the Houston Tea Party, and here are some of the pictures I took from the event (except for the first that was taken by someone else). An aerial view from an adjacent building in downtown Houston. I think that is definitely higher than the 2,000 the NY Times [...]
The wife and kids are out of town visiting family this week, so I decided it was time to let loose and get a little crazy. Yes, I and thousands of other rightwing extremists attended the Houston Tea Party protest yesterday! Unless you are watching Fox News or reading some blogs, you may not have [...]
I don’t consider myself to be a particularly lucky person, at least when it comes to contests and drawings. Until yesterday, my biggest win ever had been a baseball cap that said “The Advocate’s Fantasy Football” in a random drawing when I was 14 (note: I am referring to the Baton Rouge daily newspaper, not the [...]
The economic events of the last several months, and the “response” to those events by our government have been troubling me greatly recently. For a while it didn’t make any real sense to me as to why it was so troubling. I have what I consider to be a good job, modest expenses, considerable savings, [...]
Where will the insanity end? A proposal under consideration under the name ”Credit Score Enhancement Program“, the City of Houston would use surplus funds from a program to repair Hurricane Ike storm damage to pay off debts for first-time homebuyers to help raise their credit scores so they could better qualify for a mortgage. The program would have provided [...]
I found this very interesting article on Marketwatch.com discussing the little known option of deducting losses on 529 plans. It is an interesting concept, and is quite logical. Here’s the rundown: losses on a 529 are deductible to the extent they exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income. To be able to claim the loss, [...]