I’m a fine person to ping. But I haven’t been following this thread, and don’t want to read all of it. Can you tell me about where the finance stuff began?
Or are you suggesting the whole thread belongs in finance?
Not even close. They both paid for college themselves and they attended the same very average public high school.
But husband had a very lucrative career in IT and they live a very modest lifestyle. Zillow pegs their home value at probably about what his annual salary was when he was 40. Most people spend WAY more than that on their forever home, myself included. In fact, going back and looking at what the Zillow value was back when he was actually 40, I’m quite sure that the house was then worth less than one year’s salary for him.
They drive Hondas and vacation means camping in a state or county park and they’re not paying their kids’ college tuition either, reasoning that they both paid their own way so their kids can too.
It’s not the lifestyle for everyone, but everything they have they worked for. And they’re people of faith and I know that they tithe. That’s not very much these days, but when husband was working it was a lot.
My first thought on this was that the EITC essentially refunds their payroll taxes of $3,229. So the money is nice, but it is not a big bonus on top of their income.
However, doing some more looking, it appears that for 2022, $1,500 of the child tax credit is refundable. I think they only get it on two kid, but that is still a bonus of $3,000.
I’ve read that privately owned gas pumps don’t make a big profit, either. The reason is that gas pumps are attached to convenience stores and all the profit is in the merchandise.
It seems that privately owned recharging units would have a similar dynamic. Not identical. Most of their business would be from people making longer trips so the business would be a restaurant.
These stories are always intriguing. When I was a young actuary, I was earning more than my father had and substantially more than my step-father. Our actual spending was about a third of my gross income (treating mortgage interest as “spending” and mortgage principal as “saving”). I dropped out of a phd program to become an actuary, and told myself that if I really wanted to, I could probably pick it up again much later.
Never happened.
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Huh? You already established that the payroll taxes are $1,800. The rest is retirement distributions.
And actually, one of them is in a job that isn’t subject to payroll taxes, so they’re really only paying about $900 in payroll taxes. Probably a little less because the non-payroll-taxing work is almost certainly more than half the total. Come to think of it… some of the other spouse’s work most likely isn’t subject to payroll taxes either. Probably only $700-800 now that I think about it. Maybe less.
I’m not sure why equating EITC to payroll taxes is relevant anyway. But even if it is, you’re not calculating it right.
This is correct. They also get $1,500 ($500 for each of the three kids) that is non-refundable but covers most of the tax on the $43,000. In fact probably all of it, since some of that $43,000 is undoubtedly non-taxable Roth distributions.
And their oldest just started college so until recently they were getting the CTC on all three kids. But now the oldest is only eligible for the $500 credit for other dependents.
And with that in mind I may have overstated their stimulus by $1,400 too.
Actually, who knows what they’re doing with the oldest kid… maybe he’s on his own. He’s got lucrative internships… maybe he’s claiming himself and they’re only a 4-person household now.
you can hate me too then.
I showed my mother how to structure her income between age 61-65 to effectively get free health insurance (premiums) through ACA. Roughly a 12k annual early retirement subsidy. Strategy worked well for 4 years until she got onto Medicare.
I did have to cringe a few times over the years when she was bashing dems and their wellfare programs. But helping my family retain wealth >>>>>>>>>>>>> any stupid pollical statement.
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Agree. This has been the business model for a long time. They get their profit from the snacks and convenience store items.
I would think it matters how much competition there is. My father’s rule is to buy gas at an exit with at least two gas stations as that way they’re competing with each other. I think on average that’s still true. If a station is the only game in town they’re going to engage in a bit of monopolistic pricing and profit off the gas too.
Definitely see that. If you’re the last gas station for several miles you can charge more too.
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Didn’t some Republican recently use a Russian ship sunk by Ukraine in one of their recent adds?
That was for a $24k income – back before you told me they have three kids.
Now I’m using the $42,212 from the post I quoted. $42,212 x .0765 = $3,229.
More new information. What kind of job isn’t subject to Social Security/Medicare tax?
I think some government jobs still have classifications that don’t pay into SS but this if becoming a thread about Twig’s family welfare abuse more than Republicans say the darndest thing tangent.
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I used to fly in and out of IAH a lot, with a rental car. There were two gas stations near the airport, and one was consistently about $0.15/gal more than the other.
And it was because if you were heading TO the airport, one was a lot easier to get into. To save $0.15/gal you had to cross over a busy street, and then it was more hassle to get back in the right direction. Not a ton of hassle, might cost you five minutes. But I always used the more expensive one, because my company was footing the bill.
Economics is fun.
I very clearly said, at least twice, that they are earning in the neighborhood of $24,000 and the rest are retirement distributions. You don’t pay FICA tax on retirement distributions.
Tons of state/municipal/school district jobs.
Thinking about this some more, I think there was a couple of years when they would have had zero income subject to FICA tax, but now a portion of hers would be.
He’s a low-level elected official. She’s a lifeguard and also does some stuff for the local school district. But for a while she was working for the municipal rec center, which is when none of their income would have been subject to FICA tax. Now she’s at a private pool so she’d be paying FICA on the lifeguard income, but he certainly isn’t, and she wouldn’t be for the school district stuff. They also work all of the polls, which is also not subject to FICA tax. And no, certainly not in his district as that’s definitely not allowed.
His annual salary is published on the city’s web site and is $12,000. She probably makes similar.
Jury duty income is also not subject to FICA tax, although not applicable in their case in recent memory, but another type of income with no FICA tax.
Is it abuse or an unintended consequence?
They’d probably do pretty similar as they’re doing even with none of the incentives. They’d literally have to lie on their taxes to not take advantage of the largesse.
Their plan was always to stay off Medicaid and there’s just about no way to get decent individual insurance these days without going through Obamacare.
I think some old RR unions are exempt.
I recall seeing references to that a lot when working in pensions.