One Caveman’s Financial Journey

By the time you read this, I will be on the road to my old hometown to visit friends and watch some small town fireworks.  Fortunately, whatever the public show lacks we will make up for with our own show.  No, I’m not foolish enough to waste my own money on fireworks - I let [...]

This weekend I received my property tax bill.  (What a lovely wedding anniversary gift…)  According to the county’s assessment of my property, the decidedly unfair multiplier they use to “balance” the tax load, and the base tax rate, I owe just over $4,800 in property taxes this year.  This amount reflects a nearly 13% increase [...]

Yesterday, I mentioned that we hired an appraiser to come and give us a full appraisal of our house for property tax purposes. When the appraisal came in much higher than expected - $15,000 over our purchase price 2 years ago - I wondered if we could benefit from this dramatic change.
I remembered reading [...]

Way back in January, I wrote that I was challenging our very unfair property tax assessment. Finally, last month, we received the review board’s reassessment. They dropped the assessor’s valuation of our property by $25,000, but it was still $29,000 more than our purchase price from just 2 years ago. My wife [...]

Last night I sat down and decided to figure out my taxes for 2007. In past years, we went to H&R Block and had them do our taxes for about $365. Considering that I make about $32 an hour before taxes, it would be a net profit if it took me [...]