Texas Jeff

Money was cheaper than historic inflation rates. Why not buy something that will probably go up in value faster than you have to pay it back, while having others make the loan payments?

Tours are kind of a junior/senior thing, although you can go earlier. You have plenty of time. For most schools, your kid (or you) books a tour online. You show up to a visitor center and go to a short presentation with some Q&A. Then a current student leads you around campus for about an hour and shows you stuff, while telling you amusing antidotes about the school. You have a chance at more Q&A and they leave you with a coupon to buy something at the campus store, or you walk away with some swag. Time of year does not matter much, IMHO, because you spend most of your time at the visitor center or walking around. You can go during the year if you want, but you are going to mostly see students walking from class to class with headphones in or walking slowly down the street staring at their phones. Some schools have "info nights" on campus, where you can go either virtually or in person and learn about a specific program, or the admissions process for that school. Once you get into senior year, some schools have "admitted students" events. These are all day programs where you go from session to session to learn specifics about housing, financing, a particular major, things like that. These are usually in the spring, between the time when acceptances go out and the kids have to pick one school. But in 8th grade you have a ton of time. I would suggest learning what college costs, how your family might pay for it, and talking a bit with your kid about what they might want to do with their life and what kind of school they like. Like small, medium, large ... public or private ... far away or close by ... on the coast or not ... things like that. You can walk around local campuses just to show your kid what that scale of school is like. Just start thinking about a framework. And, if your kid is in some activity in middle school, gently encourage them to keep doing that in high school, or find some place to "belong" in high school. For my kids, their home was the band hall and they had a ton of fun and personal growth by being in band. Teams, clubs, orgs, whatever ... gently encourage them to be part of something that they enjoy outside of the classroom.

Time to plan for 2024. The tax office values your property as of the end of the previous year, which is now. If you want to protest in May, now is a good time to look around on Zillow or Redfin and print out some comps to your house to use as evidence. If prices are up, you may be seeing an increase in May. If prices are down now, you might be able to argue for a reduction.

One of my favorite Tonight Show clips:

Well, it's part of the original idea behind Social Security. Your benefit is determined by how much you make over your lifetime. And, since there was a maximum benefit, there was also a maximum tax. Beyond that maximum tax, you weren't increasing your benefit at all. So, no additional tax because there is no chance of additional benefits. That was the reasoning. I don't think that reasoning makes sense today.

Well, if you want a Debby downer view of STEM admissions, there's this: https://texadmissions.com/blog/2022/2/21/tips-for-applying-to-ut-computer-science-cockrell-school-of-engineering-and-the-college-of-natural-sciences More concrete data and a little less negativity here: https://texadmissions.com/blog/2019/2/25/recommended-ut-austin-majors-rank-and-test-score-minimums That guy probably knows more specifically about UT admissions that anyone else I found when we were going through it. The short answer is that nobody knows if the 2nd choice is even considered anymore and it's possible that it's not. And if you want a STEM major then your kid increasingly needs to show some interest in the field during high school, like camps or projects and such. However, 6 out of 1200 is top half of one percent, and that's pretty darn high. If the kid really cares about some particular field of engineering, think about something to do over the summer that might be able to "demonstrate intent" in the field. You can take the ACT more than once and bump up the ACT score with a prep class. IMHO the prep classes mostly help to give you practice taking the test and answering the type of questions they ask, so that on test day your kid has been through the timing a few times and knows what to expect. College admissions is a crapshoot. Your kid spends four years carefully polishing a resume, essays, test scores, etc and the admissions person may spend 10-15 minutes on your profile and then move on. They are flooded with applications because it's easy to apply to 10 or more schools today even though every kid will only choose one of the 10. Kids have to submit tons of applications because everywhere they submit is flooded with apps, so their chances at any one school are small. It is a crazy system and not a perfect process.

If you want to play with Social Security reform ideas, you can do so here: https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/ To balance social security, you have to get the trust fund projections above zero by choosing policy reforms.

Social Security is insurance, not an investment. It is insurance against becoming old and poor at the same time. It is a minimal safety net. If people invested it on their own, we would have winners and losers based on the year of the person's birth and how the market did during their working window. And, if you gave people choice in their investments, some would choose investments that would not do well ... and when they were old and poor at the same time we would either have to support those people or put them on a raft and float them out to sea. If you want to blame someone, blame the boomers. They got the benefit of lower taxes over their lifetime because we were paying more into the system than the greatest generation was taking out. The social security taxes they paid went to build bombs and bridges, providing jobs and amenities that would not have been there without the surplus. They benefited from that spending and now they are going to benefit again through FICA taxes charged on younger Americans.

Austin ISD numbers peaked around 2012 and have been drifting lower since then, from a peak of about 86,000 to today's enrollment around 73,000. It is projected to be about 67,000 in 2032. The kids that remain are likely to be weathier and more likely to be white or Asian. The district has about 100,000 seats. They were planning (or hoping) for growth and it went the other way.

For now…

A short history of recent impeachments: Everyone during Nixon: "OMG, WTF Nixon, you are an idiot. You were WINNING! You WON! You shouldn't commit crimes and stuff. Here comes the impeachment." Nixon "Later..." R's during Clinton: "Dude you were getting blowjobs from an intern in the Oval?" Clinton: "No .... hang on ... actually yes" R's: "Here comes the impeachment" D's during Bush 2: "Hey, uh, we noticed you invaded TWO countries after 9/11, and one of them we're not so sure about" Bush: "Gonna impeach?" D's: "No, we're just pointing that out" D's during Trump: "Hey, everyone's saying you pressured a foreign country to investigate Hunter Biden, to make Joe Biden look bad." Trump: "So?" Congress later on: "Hey, you can't just storm the capitol if you lose an election. This is our spot and people died." Trump: "And?" R's during Biden: "Hey, we're thinking about thinking about impeaching you." Biden: "Why?" R's: "Mostly to investigate Hunter, to make you look bad."

They didn't lose a forest fire, they just ran out of trees.

If you go look at the Austin High vs Westlake game on Youtube, the football team leaves the field at about 1:20 into the video. The bands are clear and the teams run back on at 1:51, 31 minutes total. That game was right before the contest performance for both bands, and both Austin High and Westlake have drill teams and large bands with props, front ensembles, etc. Maybe 500 people on and off the field with both schools combined. Pretty much the worst case for halftime length. If you go to one of the early season games, it's about 22 minutes for both bands and drill team. It might feel like an hour to football parents but it's really not that long.

OK, to get this thread back on track I would like to get Aggie tears and Longhorn Band in the same shot: Band is fun my friends, high school or college, especially if you get to go to a game like that with your band friends.

Band performances are 5 mins to get on the field, 8 mins to perform, 2 mins to exit. Max 15 minutes. That's the UIL rule. And that's at the end of the season when they know the entire show. Earlier in the season it's less than that because they only know half the show. Add three minutes for the drill team's performance. That's not a lot of time to ask during a three hour event. Also, in Austin ISD, most bands practice on parking lots. They have no access to turf fields. The shows they do at football games are important because being on turf is totally different than being on asphalt, and the competitions are all on turf fields. You can see this in the first few games of the season where the kids are all over the place on the field. It may not be your thing but it's important to the kids in the band and they are students at the school, enjoying their high school years.

https://www.statesman.com/story/business/real-estate/2023/07/21/upscale-condo-project-proposed-for-austins-clarksville-neighborhood/70439464007/ 247 condos with all the railroad traffic and high voltage power lines that you want. Would be great to have some low income units for Austin High teachers, which it does not.

Well, if you have some time: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/f155e1e0-bec0-40cf-a707-2d117ba4f714 My answer is that the folks in the “eastern crescent”, the traditional non wealthy neighborhoods, may be most at risk. Old non-eastern neighborhoods have deed restrictions and newer neighborhoods have HOAs. But, the city does not enforce deed restrictions, so if you have construction starting on your street, it is up to you to sue to enforce the deed restrictions. Wealthy folks will have the time and knowledge and money to do that, non wealthy folks not so much.

UIL page with school enrollments and cutoffs: https://www.uiltexas.org/alignments

Yep. But her house is a single family dwelling on 6100 sq ft of land, at a corner lot, with no neighbors across the street. It's not even legal to park in front of her house. In other parts of Austin, it will soon be legal to divide that parcel into two (with HOME phase 2) and put three homes on each of those smaller lots. Leslie will never have to worry about someone buying the property next to her and redeveloping it, because the HOME rules do not apply to Mueller.

Leslie pre-purchased a second home in Mueller, where these rules do not apply. She's good. When her term ends she can sell her current home for top dollar and move to the protected house, which is not subject to the new rules.

Northeast ECHS, which used to be Reagan HS ... as in John H. Reagan who was in Jefferson Davis' cabinet, which is why it was renamed. The shooting could have been at the high school or Nelson Field, which is across the street, slightly northeast of Northeast.

In a random collision in Austin, the chance of that happening is like 1 in 3.

A few years ago y'all approved a $250 million bond for affordable housting. As part of that bond, Austin is partnering with the Austin Housing Conservancy to buy old apartments. The two paid $35 million for 200 apartments, of which $15 million came from you the taxpayer. That's $175,000 per apartment ... the city part is $75k per apartment. These are old but cheap run down places. According to this article, the current owners raised rents up to 25% on existing residents prior to closing on the deal, as a condition of the sale. From the article: “The city was wanting us to raise the rents and to start charging for utilities and trash pick-up and pet fees,” said Reese, who left Central Properties a couple of months before the sale was finalized. “Which didn’t make any sense to me because they said they were (creating) affordable housing.” One of the buildings was renamed "The Adler" in honor of our former mayor: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2023/12/austin-helped-buy-cheap-apartments-with-the-intent-of-keeping-prices-low-instead-rents-went-up/

So UGA needs to score 13...

The ESPN predictor favors Texas over Alabama, should it come to that. Alabama and Texas must win to be in, that should be obvious. Should Texas and Alabama both win, Texas gets a spot in every scenario. In that case, a Michigan loss puts both Texas and Alabama in the playoff. A Michigan win has no effect on Texas, they are in ... but Alabama must then rely on a Florida St loss to get in. There are only two "SEC shutout" cases, and they require wins by Alabama, Michigan, Texas, and Florida St, however these cases represent about a 29% chance of occuring.