Update: A Way to Get Around Obama's Tax Plans

This is the first of many plans yet to come down the pike in the way of tax avoidance during what is feared to be the highest-taxing Democrat administration of all time: triple tax-free muni bonds.

Don't be scared by the name--it only means "municipal bonds" and it's a way to invest in your state (or any U.S. territories) without incurring taxes at any of three levels: federal, state, and local.

Since this is new to me as well, I Googled it. Investopedia says:
"An investment (usually a municipal bond) featuring interest payments that are exempt from taxes at the municipal, state and federal levels. Also known as "triple tax-exempt". Municipal bonds often offer triple-tax-free interest payments to investors because the U.S. Constitution forbids the federal government from taxing interest earned on loans to municipalities and states. The state or municipality issuing the bonds makes the bonds tax-free to encourage investment, and the remaining state or municipality offers tax-free status to the issuer at its particular level of government as a courtesy.

However, tax-free status on earnings comes at a price to investors, as these bonds usually offer lower returns. This may or may not be made up to bondholders depending on the amount of income tax they pay: higher income earners will gain more from tax-free investments than lower income earners."

A fellow blogger at Municipal Bond Investing has this to say about munis: "Traditional tax free municipal securities are normally tax free at the federal level but subject to state and local taxation.

Some investors can receive interest on Municipal bonds exempt (tax free) from federal, state and local tax. In most states, if you buy a muni bond issued in your home state, that investor can avoid paying the 3 levels of taxation. This is why most investors buy muni investments issues in their home state. Familiarity and the tax free benefits make that a wise tax based choice.

Another situation that allows for triple tax free status is when a bond is bought that is issued by a U.S. Territory. Examples include Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and Guam.

Creating a portfolio of municipal bonds makes sense, because of the exempt status at the federal level, the tax free yield, the credit quality and the possible opportunity to buy muni bonds that can take advantage of the triple taxation exemption."

Okay, so now we know that municipal bonds pay for things like roads, bridges, nuke plants, schools, airports/airport improvements, or anything the city or state needs substantial money to build. We also know that this is something the rich usually invest in because of the low returns (it takes large sums of money in these to make a decent return), and we know that triple tax-free ones exist that will shelter us from the Obama Nation (or as I call it--The Abomination). We make little or nothing in the stock and bond markets NOW, so what's another low return? We should be more interested in preservation of capital here, and not huge profits and returns. Even zero means you haven't lost anything!

Here's another, more complete source of info: Investing in Tax-Free Muni Bonds For Dummies. In this instance, I count as a dummy too.

If Obama begins taxing us into oblivion, and indeed raids our retirement money for taxes, look into muni bonds in your state NOW (or a muni bond fund at Vanguard or some other mutual fund dealer, being sure to designate REINVESTMENT OF INCOME, DIVIDENDS, AND CAPITAL GAINS to avoid actually receiving any money in hand) to have some sort of back-up plan and escape pod for your money. Hopefully when he leaves office, the markets will come back, and you can sell out of your munis and into stocks once again (depending on the tax status of your retirement money).

Pray for a Republican successor, and pray Obama is a one-termer if you pray at all.

Updated: Floating Back Down to Earth

Original article written back in 2005.
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Do you remember where you were when the unmistakable popping sound occurred in 2000? I sure do—in front of this terminal furiously trying to day-trade it away. The same popping sound could be heard again in late 2007, only in the real estate arena, and again in 2008 in the credit arena.

Many of us who once lived on lofty perches before the stock market, real estate, and credit bubble burst found ourselves having to make some rather unsettling choices in our lives. The sweet smell of success suddenly became the cloying stench of EXCESS.

To wave the stench away, some of the lofty perch residents made rather humbling and humorous-sounding post-bubble choices:

THEN: Designer bottled water.
NOW: Refilling designer water bottle from a hose or public drinking fountain.
2008: Good old tap water in a glass fills the bill.

THEN: Going out to clubs and hanging with the “in” crowd.
NOW: Standing outside a club and mugging the “in” crowd when they stumble into a dark alley.
2008: Going in after the crowd with a loaded gun.

THEN: Gourmet lobster bisque.
NOW: Ketchup soup.
2008: Ketchup soup with Spam chunks in it.

THEN: Handcrafted leather briefcase.
NOW: Plastic grocery bag.
2008: Your kid's backpack.

THEN: Sitting with a circle of friends around the ski lodge fire.
NOW: Standing with a circle of new friends around a trash can fire.
2008: Sitting around a foreclosed house on fire, or sitting around the fire of a flaming car that's slated for repossession.

THEN: Having food--Maintaining life function.
NOW: Not having food--Sweet release of death.
2008: Still not having food, but getting it from churches, food banks, and other bleeding-heart magnet places.

Oh how the mighty have fallen! This is what happens when the candle burns at both ends…even aromatherapy candles.
2008: Those candles would be made from soy these days.

Planning Ahead for Next Christmas (Again)

Originally written back in January.
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When is a good time to shop for NEXT Christmas? Right now--actually, any time between Black Friday and April 15th.

Why? Because retail inventories need to be sold off as much as humanly possible in time to be excluded from their taxes. Inventory carried over is inventory unsold, and technically becomes property of the store, tax-wise.

Now April 15th isn’t necessarily tax time for all retail stores, but most of them have a fiscal calendar that doesn’t match up to the regular calendar, and their particular tax doomsday may be extended past January 1, depending on when they started doing business. A few have tax deadlines AFTER April 15th, but not many—mostly the ones who don’t regularly do a lot of discount selling.

Regular retailers (not wholesalers) like to have their floors cleared out of old inventory no later than April 15th, because the summer selling season merchandise usually arrives by that time, and summer being a “high” season means fewer discounts until the back-to-school season arrives, which leads us into pre-Christmas blowouts.

With our economy not performing as well as it did in years past, due to job losses, home foreclosures, gas prices, and extreme weather, you can expect year-round sales to be fewer and farther between as well.

The time to start saving for next Christmas is when you get your tax refund back—or if no refund, start a savings account (non-Christmas club, if you please). Designated Christmas club accounts will expect you to withdraw your money by a certain date to count as Christmas savings—usually by December 31. Since they pay exactly the same rate of interest as regular accounts, why not open a regular account with no withdrawal timetables built in? That way, you can use the Black Friday-to-Tax Day shopping method and get the most bang for your gift buck or gift card over 5 months and a week of prime discount shopping time.

Sure, your gifts will seem so “last year,” but you will have saved enough money not to care one way or the other. Besides, that’s what return desks are for—so the recipient can either exchange it for something “today,” or for whatever cash the item’s worth now (and it usually has left the system some time ago, so no return value can be assessed to it). As an alternative, they can re-gift the item elsewhere, or donate it to charity. It really doesn’t matter, because you will have spent so little for the item in the first place.

Try thinking ahead on holiday shopping by planning NEXT year’s gifts THIS year during the heavy-discount period. This should work all the way up until the retailers finally figure out what we’re up to, and delay discounts to later in the year, or worse—lump them all together in June. Then we really WILL have Christmas in June! Whatever they end up doing, they will always have to mark down to avoid taxes on unsold merchandise—we can wait ‘em out, can’t we? We have a plan.

Holiday Rerun: This Thing Called Hunger Part 2--Parental Abdication

Originally written back in 2006, but very appropriate for this time if year, as I'm seeing more of the same crap I saw back then. Here are Part 1 and Part 3.
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I saw something on TV (back in 2006) that nearly made me jump out of my skin with anger—a woman asking for donations of food for a program she created to send food home with kids in special backpacks. I didn’t get her name or the name of the program.

This food wasn’t for every kid, mind you—only the “special” ones who made ample use of the school breakfast and lunch programs.

She then began the old sing-song about children going to bed hungry, going to school hungry, and how malnourishment affects their ability to learn. I agree that malnourishment affects learning ability, but she was asking for donations to programs in big cities only, and for donations of foods that can easily fit in backpacks that kids will eat on the weekends—in short, this program is NOT for the families, but the children themselves, and is filled with junk foods.

When pressed for the types of foods to be donated, she expressly mentioned gelatin cups, fruit cups, pudding cups, snack-size bags of chips, cookies, and crackers, fruit roll-up-type snacks, yogurt cups, fun-size candy bars, applesauce cups, etc.

The yogurt I could get behind, but that was all. The rest is high fructose corn syrup-laden garbage as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not contributing to the dental and health delinquency of a minor!

It’s bad enough that parents who can’t afford to have these kids in the first place abdicate their care and feeding to the public in wholesale lots: public school and Head Start breakfast and lunch programs, soup kitchens, church dinners, food banks, and now weekend food donated by other parents. This woman’s program would leave only one meal a day to be fed by parents themselves to their own children, if that.

This made me think of all the other programs in the area and how they’re easily abused by slacker parents—around here, we have an area-wide school supply drive for so-called “needy” kids, then a yearly Angel Tree to provide so-called “needy” kids a brand new Christmas present, then a community-wide Easter Egg Hunt in a large city park, and various canned food drives throughout the year. Combine these with the school feeding programs, church clothing drives, church and soup kitchen meals, food banks, WIC programs, and unnamed wealthy people donating large numbers of brand new sneakers to various “needy” children, and I began to see how it is that so-called “poor” people can actually get by quite comfortably, and with little personal effort or outlay. Needless to say, there are many children signed up for programs who don’t rightly belong there!

2008 update: it gets better--now we have "anonymous donors" sending tens of thousands of dollars' worth of Thanksgiving turkeys to churches for distribution, as well as not-so-anonymous church pastors creating "turkey savings accounts" with collection plate contributions, and individual business people also getting into the church turkey giveaway act. Now I realize individuals have free will to make their own decisions, but to do this NOW in a time to tight business credit? C'mon! How many of his employees are going to get fired in the next few months because he spent money on turkeys for the so-called "poor"? Again, no income verification, and no screening of any kind--hell, Warren Buffett himself could've gone down there and gotten a free turkey or two. I shudder to think how many something-for-nothings got in those lines!

There's no incentive for parents to do better for themselves and their kids, especially when free stuff is being given away throughout the calendar year.

2008 update: it's only going to get worse now that we have a Robin Hood president in power.

Why should I feel sorry for people who can’t (or in some cases won’t) feed their own children? Instead of providing food for these “special” backpacks, I’d like to provide boxes of condoms or even sponsor Mirena installations for the kids’ parents—but that would be politically incorrect and frowned upon as insensitive. Besides, condom use by these people would inevitably put the food bank, Angel Tree, school supply drive, and school breakfast and lunch people out of jobs.

If you think about it, you wonder just how many parents out there have abdicated the job of feeding and clothing their kids to other people, whether truly deserving or not. Exactly where are the checks and balances for programs such as these? Who is checking for income verification? Last I heard, it was “sign your kid up and get started” for most of these programs, and there wasn’t a time limit or kid limit for them. Not even guilt prevents some people from incorporating these programs as the “norm” in their lives—free stuff is free stuff, no matter where it is and how they have to get it.

Some families have been using these programs for years, and for successive children, because they know the safety net exists. This net is so sturdy, they have come to rely on it alone for feeding and outfitting the kids—and they continue to have more.

Are any of the kids actually hungry, going to bed hungry, or in a continuously hungry state? Of course not, but now we’re supposed to be concerned about what these “school food program” kids are going to eat when school’s out for weekends and the summer.

If you can't feed your kid, then it's time to give it up for adoption to someone who can. It's also time to be responsible for once and stop making more kids.

At what point do the parents step in and do the job of providing, and at what point does the rest of the general public get to say “enough is enough”?

I’m continuing to say no to all donations, drives, and holiday volunteering, because I don’t know that who I’m giving for is in real need of my stuff and services, or just another slacker relying on his fellow man to get him by. It’s a shame that it’s come to this, but I’ve long-since grown weary of being taken advantage of—the cleverest marketing pitches don’t even get my attention any more.

So call me Ebenezer—I don’t care. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to some, and bah humbug to the rest (you know who you are). Nobody’s getting the fatted goose in the shop window unless they can pay for it.

Just In Time for Black Friday: Loss Leaders and Human Psychology

Something for you to think about as you form plans to shop at 5 a.m. this coming Friday--something called "implied scarcity."
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Do you ever get a feeling of superiority when you hit a sale, use a coupon, or whip out your store savings card? Did you know that’s what the store managers intended for you to feel, carefully crafting their ads and displays to make you think you’ve conquered the food budget?

Some examples of store tricks used to make us think we’re getting a real good bargain:

· Green beans were being sold for thirty cents per can, and they weren't selling at all. The price got changed from thirty cents to 3/$1.00 (that's a price INCREASE). The green beans started selling like hotcakes.

The following week, some of these same green beans were moved to the end of the aisle in a special display—no sale price or anything—just moved to a new location with the regular price on them. The end display sold more green beans than the regular shelf stock AT THE SAME PRICE.

· On another occasion, a store was trying to get rid of some Swanson potpies. On the sign with the price, they wrote "Limit 3." People started buying them up. They even saw people buying three, going out to their cars, then coming back in and buying three more.

To really make them seem special, some of the potpies got moved to a small freezer display on the aisle end with the same sign. Guess which ones sold fastest?

Stores do stuff like that all the time, and that’s why it's a good reason to know general prices of things you usually buy.

Why do retailers bother to put limits on loss leaders? To limit their own loss on these products…same for coupon cards, membership cards, VIP cards, coupons, rebates, etc. Giving a feeling of exclusivity to some customers makes them feel more important, and thereby giving them all the psychological fuel they need to spend more. The store is already taking a loss on the product by discounting it, but they can further reduce the access to that discount by throwing a hurdle in your way through store discount cards, coupons, rebates, etc. Meanwhile, your “discount” experience is boosting your feeling about going there and spending more—about 26% more—than you planned to, even with a list in hand.

Why put limits on regular-priced merchandise, such as the potpie example above, or the flat-screen TVs, or I-phones, or X-box game consoles, or whatever else stores plan to sell far below normal price to get you in their doors on the coming Black Friday? To imply scarcity--the feeling of getting them now while they’re hot. Nothing moves slow-moving merchandise faster than implied scarcity these days.

With rampant unemployment, don’t we have enough to contend with while trying to feed our families and get by this holiday season? Now we have to watch out for implied scarcity and exclusivity tricks while we try to shop!

Remember that we’re not special and we don’t care if they run out of something at the regular price or higher. Besides, when the hoopla's over, the stuff usually goes on sale for an even CHEAPER price after the door-buster event's over.

Just for fun, keep track of the Black Friday prices on some coveted items, then keep track of prices on those items after the event--all the way to January 31st. I bet you'll find that lower prices will be had on the items after the door-busters and holiday sales events are over, because retailers have to clear their inventory for year-end taxes. They'd rather rack up a tax-deductible loss than hang inventory over into another tax year, making it worthless.

It really DOES pay to wait, and a smart shopper does his/her shopping the tax season before the scheduled holidays in the same year anyway--this means your holiday shopping for 2009 (and beyond) should be done after Christmas (every year) from now on.

One of the Dem's Evil Plans For Your Money

From the Wall St. Journal. This originally came out in October, but I didn't hear about it until yesterday, and never saw anything about it in my usual news sources.

Basically, Congress is hearing proposals to end tax-deferred retirement savings accounts as we know them, and substituting a government-run Social Security-like account in their place. Apparently they don't think we can invest our own money well enough, and they need our money under their control to use as collateral for more borrowing.

Now you know why the rich have offshore accounts--I suggest you start looking into it yourself until someone can come up with a better way to avoid all this. Meanwhile, I'm paying attention to what happens with the capital gains rate--converting "non-taxable" accounts to "taxable" ones may be less damaging to our plans overall than simply surrendering them to the like of Nancy and Harry for a meager guaranteed 3% annual return.

This is going to be one hell of a tax increase for ALL of us--at least $20.5k in added individual income when shelters are done away with ($15.5k for 401k's and $5k for IRA plans). Gosh--I wonder what Congress itself is going to do...oh, wait--they have pensions!

Another thought: you can legally make a withdrawal from retirement accounts to buy your first home--perhaps we can withdraw all of it, and start buying homes in cash with our retirement money. We can all live in huge mansions just to protect our money just like the rich.

One Nation Underachieving

I pledge allegiance to the bailout of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation underachieving, indecisive, with liberalism and social justice for all.

Who needs terrorist attacks when we’re destroying ourselves from inside?

Election Day may have given us Obama as our next president, but Peggy the Moocher is our REAL leader now, and she was right all along—we won’t have to worry about our mortgages, our bills, or anything else, because Obama will take care of us.

Of course, Obama isn’t doing it alone—Congress-critters have gotten a head start on him with proposed bailouts for everybody and everything. People, businesses, and whole industries are lining up with their hand out, and even changing the nature of their businesses just to fall in line with bailout requirements to make them more eligible. It’s welfare taken to the ultimate degree.

It’s bad enough that we’ve come to this point, but what did it take for us to stoop so low? We lowered the bar, the supports, the grounds, and the bleachers, and still are handing out trophies just for showing up.

We’re rewarding failure, and as an unintended consequence, people and businesses are failing ON PURPOSE just to get some sort of reward. People went from accidentally or unknowingly getting in over their heads, to PURPOSELY getting in too deep because they now know somebody in Congress will make a law that will bail them out in some fashion. Obama will save them.

So what’s to stop anyone at all from marching out RIGHT NOW and securing a million-dollar mansion (with adequate FICO score), buying top-of-the-line cars, commissioning custom-made furniture, designer clothes, starting a business (good or bad), and getting 5, maybe 6 credit cards? Nothing—especially when they KNOW it’s all short-term, and have no way at all to pay for any of it! Hope Now (or whatever the final mortgage bailout program will be named) will rescue us from our mortgage debt, and the bankruptcy laws will take care of the rest until a new bailout package can be designed by Congress to take care of the rest. Heaven forbid should anyone have to suffer or lose! As we speak, there are people working on their SECOND mortgage default--they were early to sign up for a Hope Now workout, and have consequently let that new payback plan fail too.

Tell me what's to stop us all from simply giving up and going for the easy rewards of a discounted mortgage, and debt forgiveness for our car loans and credit cards--the precedent has been set for us by Peggy, the financial industry, and Hank Paulson.

Why are we failing to pay our bills in the first place? Because we don’t make the money to support the debt—we’ve either lost our jobs due to our own inability to recession-proof our positions, or we’ve bitten off more than we could chew in the first place trying to get our piece of the pie. Tell me something: does Peggy the Moocher look like she has a job that’s recession-proof, or is surrounded by things in her life that are extravagant compared to her income? I doubt it.

What Peggy (and all the other Peggys of America) likely DOES have is a lifestyle built upon failure and the backs of other hard-working people, making her pretty much recession-proof, fool-proof, and success-proof.

This is how low we’ve sunk as a culture and as a nation.

The rewards for failure have been happening for a long time—the most notable to me was when Carly Fiorina got millions for running Hewlett-Packard into the ground. She is heralded as being one of the most powerful women in America, but I see a rat that left one sinking ship (Lucent) for another, only to cause the new ship to sink too. But we’re supposed to give her a pass because she’s a woman, right? Wrong!

In my mind, she even managed to help sink John McCain’s campaign with her stupid remarks about Viagra and birth control pills, and why one is covered on health care plans while the other isn’t. I actually wrote to the McCain campaign explaining that Viagra is actually a heart medication, and that a pleasant side-effect was over-marketed to the point that it was commonly thought to be the main reason for the drug. Marketing—Carly should know a thing or two about it, because she came from Lucent’s marketing division.

Let’s not forget about Enron, Adelphia, Dynegy, and all the other companies of that particular time—ones that got run into the ground while we stood around the edges of the hole and barked. More recently, banks and other financial institutions, individual small businesses, home builders, and retail chains are heading the same way (or are already there), and once again, all we can do is bark at the hole.

So what can we ordinary people do to solve this crisis, besides throwing money art the problem? Obama was briefly on the right track, but dropped it in favor of some other charismatic expediency: personal responsibility. Add some character to it, and you’ve got a winning recipe for success without cost to the taxpayer.

If each of us, regardless of status or position, showed a little more personal responsibility and character, we just might be able to help our incoming president AND ourselves from ever having to endure this again. Let’s all work to make Peggy the Moocher a myth in the future, because all the green jobs, infrastructure spending, and re-alignment of the auto industry isn’t going to stop the root cause of this fiasco—individuals being EXPEDIENT by acting in ways that will get them rewards without the hard work that usually precedes it.

And lastly, once personal responsibility and character are learned about and achieved, each one of us must teach one more. Each one teach one to avoid coming back to this spot in the future.

Layaway—Boon or Burden?

I recently came across an article on MSN Money about how layaway is making a comeback in these difficult times. This instantly reminded me of something very valuable I learned while working retail many years ago about layaway programs.

Now I share the secret with you: layaway is nothing more than a storage program. It only works to your benefit if you keep up the payments and retrieve your merchandise by the due date. Otherwise, you’re paying to store the retailer’s merchandise in a back room for a specified period of time and with specified payments. This is exactly what you do when you put things in a storage unit.

If you end up not making your due date for payoff and pickup (and as many as 2/3 of us don’t), the money you’ve been paying all along the way simply goes into the retailer’s pocket—that’s money YOU’VE lost! Now the retailer gets to return the merchandise to stock, mark it down if need be to match prices with existing remaining stock, and laugh all the way to the bank. You’ve pre-paid his “losses” on the new sale price. Now this merchandise will sell much faster because it’s now marked down, insuring less future loss.

Before you go rushing to your local layaway retailer, sit down and do the following so you’re prepared:

1) Get all information about the terms and agreement on the layaway program itself before signing anything and laying anything away. Most programs won't let you put away merchandise already marked down, but some will take markdowns of items in layaway when they go on sale, and credit the difference to your layaway balance.

2) Realize that you’re putting away merchandise at FULL PRICE, when you will have an opportunity to purchase it at a discount later on if it returns to stock—whether YOU lay it away or someone else does.

3) Ask yourself if you’d rather have the merchandise NOW (or on your program’s end date) or if you can wait a little while for it to go on sale or clearance. Is the potential discount worth the wait, and how would it compare to the potential loss of a failed layaway scheme and no merchandise at all?

Like me, I believe you’ll most likely take the “wait for the discount” choice. I learned about this after having to help clean out a Christmas layaway storage room one year, and taking all the clothing from it back to my department to mark down to current prices. After looking up and marking down clothing that was never picked up from layaway, I asked my manager why people do this if they never intend to pick it up. He told me, “I don’t care why they do it—just that they KEEP doing it. This is a good money-maker!”

Can YOU afford such a loss in times like these? Don’t fall for this marketing trap.

Annual Rerun for 2008: Why We Skip the Holidays All Together

Yep, Wenchypoo and Wenchmaster skip the holiday hullabaloo altogether and here’s why:

• We have no children to obligate us to participate.

• We have no friends or relatives that need impressing.

• We’re Atheist, but that doesn’t even matter. Most of what we consider “holidays” are actually Catholic railroad-equivalents to original Pagan holidays.

• Holidays have become excuses to consume, wildly distorting the original meaning for celebrating these particular events.

• Most holiday traditions have become rip-offs.

• We have cats that climb Christmas trees, steal turkey from the table, walk through the Easter egg dye, etc. On second thought, I guess we DO have kids…

• A lot of holiday stuff just gets thrown (wrapping) out or flushed down the toilet (food), and it costs money.

• What do you get people who already have everything, besides more of it? This is pointless and senseless.

• We “celebrate” all year round, so why are some particular calendar days so special? They aren’t.

Remember when holidays (originally Holy Days) meant something? Families used to gather together from far reaches of the country, perhaps attend some religious service or other, and have a nice meal afterward—the intent being to gather and share a meal.

What has happened since those good ol’ days? Everything. Mostly, businesses picked up the scent of profit, and followed it to the current conclusion.

Rather than participate in all this madness we call holidays, we just sit them out and focus on the days that are meaningful to us: birthdays and anniversaries (the big 24 is coming next week). Gift-giving in both our families has been boiled down from the frivolous to the practical, then to the spiritual. When we need what we need, we go out and get it instead of saving it up for some trumped-up “holiday.” What WE wait for is sales, not special reasons to buy.

My dad used to complain about how President’s Day and Veteran’s Day became excuses for stores to have white sales. “We fought for your freedom to go out and buy discounted bed sheets, by golly, starting with George Washington!”

The fact that we’re Atheist doesn’t really matter in this issue, because if we believed in a god, we’d pay homage and honor him every day, as a good believer would. Attending services once or twice a year doesn’t adequately pay homage for a true believer, I think.

As I’ve written before, when it comes to holiday food, especially whole turkeys, many of them are rip-offs. Hollow carcasses ridden with ice don’t make for a pretty picture at the register or for the cost per serving—especially when sold by the pound. Besides, turkey is cheap year-round—sometimes cheaper at any other time of year besides November. Obviously they freeze well, so why save up the turkey-buying for November?

The same holds true for lamb, ham, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pies and casserole, and all the other food rituals we save for special days.

To waste our time spending good money on things that nobody really needs or wants, or that aren’t really worth the money in the first place, is truly a waste that we no longer care to indulge in or afford. To have no real reason for indulging is another reason why we just sit them out and watch you guys go bananas over at the mall or over in the turkey aisle. My favorite is the fistfights that break out at WallyWorld over some heavily-marked-down electronic doodad or other, or the poor people who get trampled by the crowd gathered outside the stores at 4 a.m. when the doors suddenly open. I watch these disgusting displays of greed and hedonism from the comfort of my own home, and for some odd reason, these things make the evening news every year!

What you think is a discount to you is still someone else’s profit. Why give them the chance to profit, when you yourself could reap the rewards of re-thinking and scaling back? Screw social expectations and put yourself and your family first. Choose what means the most to you and go with it.

As for me, I’m going to “hell” (if you believe in it) with a fistful of pumpkin pie and a smile on my face, regardless of time of year. If you care to join me, do bring some whipped cream. Satan asks if anyone’s bringing a covered dish. :)

Updated: Fun With Reverse Shopping

Forward shopping is when you go out into stores, buy something, then bring it home—whether it has a pre-designated need or not, whether it has a pre-designated spot or not.

Reverse shopping is exactly the opposite—taking something from the home and returning it to a shop (thrift store or yard sale, or giving it to a friend because it no longer fills a need and you want the space it occupies returned to you.

If someone were to propose to you a year-long trip to Your Personal Fantasy Land, all expenses paid (including home bills), would you go without hesitation, or would you freak out and turn the trip down for fear of losing contact with your precious possessions?

If a year is too big to digest, try asking the Personal Fantasy Land question in shorter time frames: instead of a year, try six months, or a season. Which possessions could you live without making daily contact with, or monthly contact, or seasonal contact, or longer?

It’s now time to begin packing for your Fantasy Land trip, or rather, planning the Great Jettison Party. Here’s how it goes:

The scenario--you have stuff in boxes you haven’t even unpacked from three moves ago. Boxes and boxes of stuff you haven’t looked at in ages, given to you by well-meaning relatives. In the “spare bedroom” there exists various organizational storage devices, but you still aren’t organized—just better disguised. Closets heap with unseen stuff on shelves and in corners. Yet more boxes stored away from home in storage centers, garages, and basements.

The scenario could also include things like a recently deceased relative's home that needs cleaned out for an estate sale, an attic, or even someone else's clutter nightmare--especially those who are inclined to hoard.

The remedy—invite your friends over to a Great Jettison Party, complete with real invitations and some sort of food incentive (maybe a pizza), where they help you sort possessions into three boxes: KEEP, TRASH, and SALE/DONATE. They each get a box of your stuff to sort out, and they continue sorting into “keep”, “trash”, and "sale" until the job is done. After screening for heirlooms, the trash then goes out to the actual trash can, while the “keep” and "sale" boxes get further sorted by friends—they get to go through it and keep whatever they want. You keep or sell/donate the rest.

The Great Jettison Party is a way of de-cluttering and having some fun with friends without the emotional attachment of acknowledging each individual possession. It can also mean a new source of income, depending on how spare the “spare bedroom” actually becomes. The party also makes the job go faster, because more hands are involved.

Tax Protection from an Obama-Nation (or Abomination, if you please)

Here's some moves that will get you through tax year 2008 (for 2009 filing). When we find out more, and when we find out what changes to the code Congress will pass, Jeff Schnepper (the tax god) and I will let you know.

As far as fighting off the zombies and something-for-nothingers his administration will create and maintain, get yourself a gun (before they're outlawed) or a big sharp stick. Instead of the standard "brrrains", these zombies will instead utter "subbbbsiddddies!" Already there's a viral video of a black woman rejoicing loudly (after voting) that she won't have to worry about any of her bills once Obama is in power--he will take care of her...at our expense, of course.

Next year would be a real good time for unemployment. If you don't make any money, he can't tax the bejeezus out of it. If you DO make money (hey, we gotta eat, right?), I will keep you informed as to how to hang onto more of it despite the Utopian ideal tax changes.

Now that the something-for-nothing crowd has spoken, here's what you can do between now and the invasion...oops, I mean inauguration day.

One thing I can tell you now: a second stimulus package is being bandies about rather heavily, so expect yet another advance on your tax refund in the mail. One way to make it work twice is to deposit it in your retirement account so you can at least get money back for it. If the check arrives before April 15th, you can deposit and declare it in your 2008 taxes, making your money on both items in the 2008 tax year.

History has shown us that both a Democratically-controlled administration and Congress (simultaneously) have given us the worst market of all, so don't expect much in the way of stock market returns for the next four years. I suggest you go to cash (MMFs, CDs, or high-yield long-term bonds if you can find them) and vote the mongrels out with each and every coming election, no matter how small, restoring the balance of power to 50/50.