Winter 2015 January 30 Friday

36 degrees this morning, 45:08 minutes walking

Celebrated three birthdays’ last night.  It was fun and somewhat of a marker, although no one had a “milestone” birthday. 

Got my VPN working again yesterday on my Mac.  It involved an update of the VPN software.  It helps protect my information when I am at Starbucks etc., or other places with an open wifi and also is what helped me keep up with Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. while I was in China.  

I don’t understand how the VPN works, but I do understand the protection involved in using it on wi fi networks.  

Of course that is like a lot of things with computers, I know what they do but I don’t understand how it works!  

Getting full speed ahead on our taxes for the year.  I still haven’t decided how we handle the hard part, allocating the income between the two states.  (Well, the hardest part is actually paying the taxes!.)

I have been able to get a lot of the tax forms (1099’s, etc.) over the internet, which has helped me keep working on the tax return.  

I’m not sure where I developed the desire to do my own taxes.  As I may have mentioned before I started doing them when my taxes were easy and they gradually got more complicated.  Maybe I just feel no one else will do them with the same interest I will.    

I used to spend hours reading the tax law and doing my own taxes.  It is kind of like my job here and even as City Manager, it included a lot of looking at a lot of material and determining the best way to proceed. 

Then TurboTax came along and it became a lot easier, if a little more frustrating.

It is hard to explain the pleasure of determining the right way to proceed.  Part of it may well have been the pleasure of finding a loophole, or at least the best way to proceed.  

Even Jim Cramer (Mad Money) doesn’t know the difference between a 457, 403 and 401.  (at least he says he doesn’t).  I am very aware of each one, the good and bad points etc.  (All of them are good, but have major disadvantages.  The best one is the Roth, in my opinion at any age.)

The major problem with anything Congress does is you can always see the figures of the lobbyists in the pie with the exceptions and the “special circumstances” which apply only to certain people or businesses.

Even with my limited experience, I have found the biggest problem is paying the taxes on retirement income!

I think I liked the idea of minimizing taxes to the lowest amount and it became kind of a game. 

It is hard to believe it is Friday already.  Looking forward to the weekend, although I think it is supposed to rain this weekend, and maybe snow.  I definitely felt the temperature fall yesterday from the time I got up until last night.  It was about 20 degrees cooler this morning from yesterday morning.  

That’s it for now, Friday, January 30, 2015.