DrewEckhardt

So then.., you agree that an even trade doesn't produce taxable income. What about an even trade where I trade my time for it's value($40.00 per hour)? The goods you receive are considered barter income. See http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html The IRS considers that a job even when you're not paid in US currency. Yes, and I doubt the IRS will accept 28% (or whatever) + 12.4% + 2.9% of a Jet-Ski as payment (as a self-employed person you need to pay both halves of FICA + Medicare).

The last time I did that it cost me $450. And their calculations were about $500 off from mine. So I spent as much time as I would have feeding my numbers to a computer program figuring out what they missed. Turns out they left off a whole page of a multi-part 1099 (INT/DIV/OID) which the IRS had a copy of. The next year I did my own data entry.

Guys under smaller faster canopies are usually going to land before you. You'll be happier if they pass you at a higher altitude when they're flying straight ahead and aren't going to distract you when you're flaring. Don't spiral. Don't open low. Hang out in brakes when you want to to land later. This even works for 105 square foot mains. It's like getting on a highway - getting in an open spot in traffic (an altitude with good vertical separation from the other canopies) might mean speeding up or slowing down. Where the car coming up is a sports car driven by a young guy you're probably better off waiting for him to pass. Where it's a little old lady you probably want to be in front of her.

Close, but 1) Mass is a cube of height while surface area is a square function so pilot sectional density is higher under larger wings at the same wing loading. 2) Lines get shorter with smaller canopies but don't get any skinnier. which means pilot and line drag is higher relative to the wing's drag on smaller canopies at the same wing loading for a worse lift/drag ratio. Increased drag below the canopy can also push the pilot farther back pointing the canopy more nose down. The bigger canopy will have a flatter glide and more horizontal speed; the smaller one will be more ground hungry with higher air speed and less drive.

I figure I have a duty to serve, was juror #5 and foreman of the jury in a felony child abuse case in county superior court (a mother duct-taped her out of control 17 year old daughter to a hope chest), and would do it again - I made a big difference by talking the 11 other jurors out of a guilty vote on one of the felony charges because the term 'with violence' wasn't met as defined in the law. I didn't and wouldn't dress any different than I do for work or a $200 dinner for two - clean single colored T-shirt without holes, khaki shorts or dockers depending on temperature, and a black fleece jacket so I don't freeze in the air-conditioning. We were all well-behaved apart from a bunch of people trying lame excuses to get out of it and a couple of people who didn't show up and were rewarded with bench warrants. If some one was elbowing or kicking me I'd probably ask the judge if they could be arrested for assault and battery.

I figured a guy imposing his name on his wife was unfair so prior to getting married my wife and I considered a merged last name (none of which sounded good) and cross hyphenation (Mr Jones and Ms Smith would become Mr Jones-Smith and Mrs Smith-Jones). In the end we both agreed that keeping separate last names was simpler professionally and less hassle.

Dude, I know the cost of real estate. I grew up in 94022. Sure I would like to live there, but Prop 13 would not apply to me, and I refuse to pay taxes on a million dollar "ranch" Yes, there are always the upper and the lower ends of the market. I understand taxes, and cost of owning vs. renting. If you can insure that you will have a passive income, then rent till you die. But you better get busy investing, building a business, or something to pay that rent.. when you are unable to work anymore. I'm putting about $20K a year into a diverse portfolio because I'd like to maintain my lifestyle even if 1. Economic problems mean I'm still supporting the next generation of my family so they can have an American middle-class lifestyle 2. I'm forced to retire early or save less due to disability or younger/foreign workers are too much cheaper 3. Government entitlements aren't there to reduce my expenses in retirement because qualification has been made need-based to save money. 4. The amount of money I can safely draw is reduced due to market problems, government interest rate manipulation, etc. Retiring at 60 like my parents and grandparents did wouldn't be bad although I'm not counting on it. True, but I would submit that if you don't get in now, you never will. When I moved to Washington state I bought into the hype and was wrong. Sold at the peak six months later for a $10K loss and since then the Case-Shiller index tracking resales of individual homes has dropped 26%. Talked to a couple last weekend which passed on a $2M home in the last year which has since dropped into the low $1M range. If the banks can't profit from writing ever larger loans regardless of risk home prices must be in line with peoples' salary and wealth. $120K-$150K median household incomes don't support million plus home prices. Start-up options might. Looking at it from a supply/demand perspective housing supply should be increasing as baby boomers retire to assisted living communities and demand decreasing at high prices as people entering the work-force have less available to spend on housing due to lower starting salaries and more student loan debt to service. From which you might be able to safely draw $40K/year in retirement income if you plan on living a while. Yeah, well I could go out and do what most Americans do, and get a car on credit and not plan for retirement, and hope the government or my kids will take care of me, but I guess I am just different. You mis-understand. I'm suggesting that the $5K ($6K for folks 50+) most people are allowed to put into a Roth IRA is too little. Assuming everything goes well and you can safely draw $40K a year - The average nursing home costs $70,000 a year for a private room. Before you get to that point you still have health insurance which can run a thousand a month for an older couple and is increasing substantially faster than inflation, property taxes for a couple hundred, insurance for a couple hundred including liability coverage to protect your nest egg, etc. I'm fond of debt-free living, small homes, decade plus old cars, and diverse mutual funds, but should also be investing in Roth IRA conversions to hedge my bets on taxes in retirement.

Yeah! 3 bedroom/2 bath ranch homes in my neighborhood are now listing with price tags of only $1.3M price tags and selling for just $1.1M. Maybe I'll buy two and make a fortune renting them out for $3000 a month - lesee, $4200/month mortgage payment, $1400 in property taxes, $3600 monthly loss before insurance, might not work that well. While real estate prices have dropped, there are still many places where the cost to "own" (rent most of the money from the bank) is over double what it costs to rent a comparable property in the same neighborhood and school district. There are also places where it's much less expensive to buy than rent although I wouldn't want to live there. From which you might be able to safely draw $40K/year in retirement income if you plan on living a while.

When poverty stops coming with color TVs to entertain us (98.2% of Americans), electricity and a refrigerator to keep our food in so we don't need to shop every day (98.2%).

1990s. Recent enough to have good technology and medical care, long enough ago that housing was relatively affordable and a college education was enough to launch a decent career, and after the 60s-80s so we had the best music.

They're investing in the companies which are profiting from lower labor costs and bigger markets (a little bit from a small fraction of the two billion people in China and India is still a lot of money) and collecting their dividends + capital gains. They also don't have competition for their day jobs in lower cost areas. Most of us use local doctors and lawyers. The guys getting funded by American venture capitalists aren't going to outsource their C-level positions to people in other countries. People at the top want the next level of management nearby instead of on another continent.

The facts do not (once again) support your position. The facts do support that since the early 70's productivity has increased, wages have been flat, and corporate profits have skyrocketed. Correlation does not imply causality. Specifically the rich having more money does not cause the middle and lower classes to have less. The labor market has grown to include a lot more people many of whom live places with substantially lower costs of living that can accommodate lower labor costs. While the global middle class is expanding and able to afford more than the essentials, members making $10 to $20 a day aren't radically increasing the market for goods made with expensive American labor. With total production capacity growing substantially faster than demand wages must go down.

5-10 a day are pretty reasonable after you complete the AFF program; so you could do 200-400 jumps although you'd do better spending some of your time and money at a vertical wind tunnel. iFly SFBay is probably a couple hours from Davis. Eloy is too hot in the summer. Utah isn't a destination drop zone and probably doesn't get enough loads off the ground during week days. California is the place you want to be.

Boulder is very affordable with property prices 1/4 to 1/2 what they are in other nice places with jobs like Silicon Valley. State income taxes are just 4.63% of your Federal taxable income which isn't 60% of what California extracts from me with the 9.55% marginal rate, state disability insurance, and lower deductions/exemptions. Property tax rates are merely OK, but TABOR means they don't really increase in real dollars (total collections cannot increase faster than inflation and population growth without voter approval, so your old depreciating property accounts for less of the total as new scrape-offs get built) even if you move and reasonable property values keep the absolute amounts low - where Boulder would charge be $1800 a year a 1200 square foot town home I'd be spending $10,000 someplace equally nice in the valley. You won't get a single family house for $200,000 although one or two people and their pets don't need one.

Also note the Walnut Brewery which serves real cask ale.

The AVERAGE CHICK is not going to marry you unless she can make babies with you or bring her existing children into the relationship. As of 2008, only 18% of women aged 40-44 had not made children. The odds are a little better among educated women, with a 24% childless rate among women that age with at least a masters degree. So don't date average women of child bearing age looking for mates, where the alternatives are less average, just looking for sex, professionals, and/or procreated long enough ago that their children have matured into human beings. I'm under 40, married, and both our kids have undergraduate degrees plus their own apartments. It is very nice. That's a dead end. A woman with a genetic imperative to have children is likely to make them with or without you. You'll suffer less if you skip to the next one sooner rather than later.

Yes. The Federal Government and state government. Trillions of dollars per year. We're talking between 1/4 and 1/3 of the economy going TO the government. Plus - The financial industry. The government buying and guaranteeing mortgages means that banks don't have skin in the game which means they needn't limit mortgage amounts to levels buyers can truly afford thus causing housing prices to go up radically. Government backed student loans and special treatment in bankruptcy of private loans makes more money available and has allowed the cost of education to increase at 4X the inflation rate. - The health care industry. Special treatment of group plans since WW2 has created a market with little competition and allowed prices to increase radically faster than inflation.

Right. I've been noticing a collision coming between first and developing worlds for years (ex - http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2873232;search_string=wages%20cost%20of%20living;#2873232). Wages and the costs of living in real terms are going to decrease here while they increase there. Eventually we'll have a more uniform, industrialized world where the standard (and cost) of living is higher elsewhere and lower here. We just need to figure out how to keep that as reasonable as it can be - with the worlds' poor becoming like our own (less than 2% of us lack refrigeration and color TVs) and our middle class not living 10 to a room. Covering the symptoms with band-aids like immigration limits and import tariffs affect how we'll get there but won't stop it, and may make things worse - is it better for companies to hire immigrants here where they need to pay enough to support our costs of living, or to expand to foreign countries where semi-skilled labor is $150 a month and college educated people cost $5000 a year?

You, LLC can provide certain benefits to you, your employee with pre-tax dollars. Health insurance was a big one before it became an above-the-line deduction for self employed people. And assuming you opt to be taxed as an S-corp: You, LLC pay you, personally a fair market salary which is subject to FICA/Medicare but can take profits beyond that as distributions which are only subject to ordinary income taxes. Talk to your accountant about what's reasonable.

On that day Dwain was a selfish idiot. I watched him collapse his wings to turn a sure thing into a mess, fly into the bridge railing ten feet away, his container open from the impact, and what was left of him land on the nearby wall. My wife (you can hear her screaming in the video) was also not happy about Dwain risking the largely whuffo crowd's lives and ruining the event for the rest of us.

I knew some of the people on that bridge and they were not at all happy about the proximity. Of course no one had any idea of what he was going to try. We figured that Dwain and Jeb would fly a prudent distance above and under the bridge respectively with a healthy margin for error. Jeb did. Dwain decided to fold his wings up a bit to pass closer.

GM also contributed $28.9M to schools in Congressman Rangel's state when he dropped his opposition to the tax break they wanted' I can't afford to spend that much on reducing my taxes.

As long as you have enough money in the bank: Having a CEO who does not listen to facts, forbids people with decades of experience from doing their jobs (the experienced who hadn't been forced out or quit ignored him while we could and put up with his tirades, the inexperienced made messes which took months to clean up and got competent people with VP titles but no authority due to dotted line reporting structures blamed for it and demoted), and spends an hour plus of your time each day on meetings which accomplish nothing although he gets to incorrectly tell you "you're wrong" leading to your co-workers comment "I've never seen your ears turn red before" (literally) is worse than having no job. Management asking you to work on non-revenue generating trivialities for over a year putting a key feature on the back burner until it was realized it was "the most important thing in the company" at which point your Gantt chart showing nine man months of work is irrelevant "we're not going to have the whole company working on it" and it needs to be done as soon as possible at which point you work 105 hours a week for months only taking a break for a few beers Thursday nights and to take your wife out to dinner twice. After that it's determined to be taking too long and work re-starts from a couple of guys' prototype duplicating what you demonstrated to the board over a year ago. Then the company spends over a man year making that work with you cleaning up the messes which had already been addressed. Worse than no job. The CEO probably having an affair in a different state, opening an office there so he could spend more time with her, and hiring an executive team out there which built their own team out there, forbid the original group's participation in the hiring process after they had the audacity to ask a "senior" candidate technical questions, hired a bunch of incompetent people, and put a guy with no experience beyond his PhD in charge who wrote one white paper in over a year in when everyone else was working 60+ hour weeks. The west coast team had a secret plan to create a new product which bypassed the senior members of the original team and was announced the day after they laid off half the company, cancelled the original product we'd been working on 60-80 hours a week for two years, and gave me another 50,000 stock options to stay. Before that tempers were fairly mercurial and the CEO made my manager (a guy) cry. People got divorced from the stress, lots of people saw shrinks, one guy had night terrors and couldn't work for a year, another guy quit the business and became a real-estate agent, and everyone in my group who wasn't laid off quit. Worse than no job. I did get the satisfaction of the original CEO telling me I'd been right about the new hires taking over when I visited him in his corner office where he'd assumed window watching responsibilities (mostly playing video games because he'd been replaced but not fired). This ignores lesser issues, like spending 20 hours a week for two months dealing with an off-shore group "just as smart as you guys are" to get 2 weeks work done and cleaning up their messes in addition to doing your work. Or executives moving from a facility with offices for the employees to one next to a golf course without where it gets so loud you can't hear yourself thing and people scream at their co-workers to shut the fuck up. Prudent financial planning dictates having at least six months of living expenses in the bank although a year plus is better. Every few decades if the stress gets too much too soon to get a new job whilst still working you quit, keep skydiving and dining out, eat anti-depressants like candy, and find a new job.

Or rent it out at a loss and move to a less expensive place in the city.

Nope - they're usually made to measure (and you get to pick colors too).