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My ex & I just closed on the sale of my old place, formerly known here as the Abbey. A painfully polite man - he stands when ladies enter the room - in a painfully white shirt had us sign a stack of papers that was, surprisingly, not painfully thick. It's been nearly sixteen years since I sold a house, so I'd forgotten about that.
How do I feel about ditching a house where I lived for ten years, and where my son has spent the bulk of his life? It never really felt like home to me. If you looked around, it reflected Ex's personality way more than mine, even before I moved out. Mostly I feel great about (nearly - read on) getting this final divorce chore out of the way, and reaping the dividend, specifically...
...I've just rejiggered the allocation of my paycheck to reflect the divorce settlement. This basically means that I get more cash. A lot more cash, which not even having my son over at my place more can soak up. The reason why this is copacetic is that Ex downsized, and the old place was in Kirkland sandwiched between the main Microsoft campus and the growing Google campus, commanding a premium despite being smaller and older than so many.
The settlement says that Ex & I will split the difference between the net from the house and the value of my 401(k) plans. That works out to a few tens of thousands of dollars, which Ex says she can't pay all at once because she has a new house to set up. Uh. Bitch better have my money, is all I have to say about that.
I'll be helping her with set up her garage sale on Saturday morning. Watch this space for a friends-locked post with the address. I'm deeply grateful that I promised the Wendling we'd go to Emerald City Comicon on Saturday afternoon; he even took the day off. I loathe running garage sales. I also made a date with the Tickler for later that evening. We'll see how long I last.
After the house-selling excitement, I helped my son do his taxes. Jeez, the 1040EZ has gotten significantly more complicated since I last did one. I ended up needing to look up the instructions on my phone; the ones that come with the form itself don't cover it anymore. I sense the malign influence of H&R Block et al.
How do I feel about ditching a house where I lived for ten years, and where my son has spent the bulk of his life? It never really felt like home to me. If you looked around, it reflected Ex's personality way more than mine, even before I moved out. Mostly I feel great about (nearly - read on) getting this final divorce chore out of the way, and reaping the dividend, specifically...
...I've just rejiggered the allocation of my paycheck to reflect the divorce settlement. This basically means that I get more cash. A lot more cash, which not even having my son over at my place more can soak up. The reason why this is copacetic is that Ex downsized, and the old place was in Kirkland sandwiched between the main Microsoft campus and the growing Google campus, commanding a premium despite being smaller and older than so many.
The settlement says that Ex & I will split the difference between the net from the house and the value of my 401(k) plans. That works out to a few tens of thousands of dollars, which Ex says she can't pay all at once because she has a new house to set up. Uh. Bitch better have my money, is all I have to say about that.
I'll be helping her with set up her garage sale on Saturday morning. Watch this space for a friends-locked post with the address. I'm deeply grateful that I promised the Wendling we'd go to Emerald City Comicon on Saturday afternoon; he even took the day off. I loathe running garage sales. I also made a date with the Tickler for later that evening. We'll see how long I last.
After the house-selling excitement, I helped my son do his taxes. Jeez, the 1040EZ has gotten significantly more complicated since I last did one. I ended up needing to look up the instructions on my phone; the ones that come with the form itself don't cover it anymore. I sense the malign influence of H&R Block et al.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-07 04:54 pm (UTC)From:Yes, just did a long-form 1040 with all the non-resident schedules thereto, along with [redacted name of state] the state-level tax return and its own set of bloody-minded schedules.
Had never really thought of it before, but sure! increased complexity of tax forms enures to the lasting benefit of tax-preparation firms and also to tax-software firms.
Here in our far-off, fog-shrouded portion of maritime Cascadia, the Revenooers are pushing hard to have everyone do online filing, despite:
-- it requiring the purchase of private preparation-service or of Revenooer-approved software, and
-- last year (now largely forgtten?) there being a huge-assed network outage followed by large-scale theft of tax-return information from the government servers.
Want to place bets on a Trojan (horse, not condom) being still emplaced out there somewhere?
- - - -
So, anyway, we went ahead and spent the time to do our 1040 paperwork, and the T1s for each of us, and the various T2s for the businesses we control. Aiee, the only sure winners are the paper-mills.
Have fun, and be safe,
/elane
post-script: when it comes to certification of a health-care insurance plan that meets the minimal requisite standards, it is entertaining as all get-out to be able to simply scan and print a copy of a provincial health-care card, of the sort carried by folks in our little corner of Cascadia. "Suck on this, insurance-industry vampires!"
second post-script: being now Officially Retired and (by certain metrics at least) in my golden years, it's fun to be able to check all the ticky-boxen that offer additional deductions and tax breaks. Double bonus marks for being able to substantially write-off the operating and depreciation costs of our stand-alone office -- it's so much easier to have the office **not** be under the same roof as the house.
colophon: user-icon is of the gilt-embossed spine of a volume of The Girl's Own Annual, which seems appropriate for tax season.