
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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I think the census folks take an American Community Survey every year, which is like a light census using sampling rather than a full enumeration. I got one once and sent it in.
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That’s part of the path between their office and Rudy’s. Expect police saturation.
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Dome the lake. Could get a little sweaty in there…
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Buying a New Vehicle in this environment
Texas Jeff replied to Royalfan5's topic in Business and Markets
There is one switch on the center console that you should learn how to use. It switches the car between Econ, Normal, and Sport modes. Econ will save you some gas ... but ... alternatively ... Normal and Sport will make the car more fun to drive. -
Probably lots of little things. It takes a long time for population decreases at the bottom to result in decreased housing demand. When interest rates went low, I would bet lots of wealthy folks purchased a 2nd home. Others bought a new home but kept their old one and AirBnB'ed it. Many people that might want to move now have no financial incentive to do so. Think of older owners who have a large unrealized cap gain in their house. If they sell, they will have a big income tax bill and, in Texas, the property tax on what they buy might go up even if they buy a smaller place. Why move to a smaller place with higher property taxes and pay a big income tax bill to do so? Even those that might want to move up and build a nice custom expensive home may not have the incentive. Why give up their 30 yr 2.5 pct loan to buy a bigger house at 6 percent? Lots of folks are staying put in their current housing rather than moving up or into retirement housing, or own a nice vacation house with a nice low mortgage. That doesn't help supply.
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Buying a New Vehicle in this environment
Texas Jeff replied to Royalfan5's topic in Business and Markets
Yes. I just put down a deposit this week on a Honda Civic that is in-transit. This will be a car for my wife for a bit and then handed to a kid. Here is the process we followed: Get a general idea of what class of car you want. My wife wanted a small car just because it's easier to get around town and park. She wanted options so I made a list of all of the cars in that class and a list of at least one dealership in the area that has that model. We spent a half-day driving around visiting showrooms and sitting in different cars. We were able to eliminate most of the models just by sitting in them and finding something we didn't like about them. I watched some YouTube reviews for in-depth info. Safety and reliability were my top concerns. This pretty much left the Civic as our best choice for right now. My wife wanted a specific color combo and trim. I used the online inventory tools to figure out who had that model in stock or in transit. I reached out via the web site to all of the dealers in the Austin area and one in San Antonio (Gunn Honda) where we had a good experience with another Civic purchased during COVID for a different kid. I asked for an email quote and got back a few PDF quotes and a few email responses and a lot of text messages and other emails inviting us to come on in and discuss it. I did not come on in and discuss it. Just use email to negotiate. Most of the quotes were at MSRP, and a few have created a thing called a MVRP (market value price) which is just a made up number. Know the MSRP for your car. They added difference dealer accessories like tinting, windshield warrantees, paint and fabric protection, what ever. Their goal is to pitch a MSRP price and add $1000 to $1600 in accessories. I was able to find the car and get the price down close to MSRP, plus TTL for an out the door price. Generally, they will offer you a discount on the price but still include the accessories because they put the "accessories" on most of their cars just after they get off the truck. They add some paint protection and take the cars to a tint shop. It looks like you are getting something more but really you are just getting their standard prep package. It is very difficult to NOT buy the accessories. Prices are coming down post COVID and it's hard to tell what a real market price is for the car. During COVID, dealers were charging above MSRP and they are trying not to give that up, but prices are slowly coming down. Showrooms now have cars again and supply is coming up. The more flexible you are with model and color and trim, or purchase time, the more you are going to be able to negotiate or find a deal. You are at a slight advantage if you can close right at the end of a month. Try not to overpay but at the end of the day just make a deal and move on with your life. Look at the car before you drive off for scratches or defects and maybe test drive it a few miles at highway speed to make sure it seems OK. -
Texas Primary turnout, percent of registered voters: Dem: 5.4% Rep: 12.6% Did not vote: 82% Most of the winners are now decided. R's will sweep the statewide races and Trump will get Texas's electoral votes. D's will take everything in Travis County and other local offices in blue areas. Outside of just a handful of races, the fall election does not matter and that sucks. Even worse, a few close races will be decided by party runoffs, where even fewer people vote. We will end up with the extremes from both ends holding office, and they will fight with each other and not accomplish that much. We should have a "top-two" candidate system, where every primary is open, the top two vote getters advance to the general election, and there are zero runoffs. It would encourage voter turnout and attract moderates to run for office.
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West Lake Hills city tax rate: $0.16 Rollingwood city tax rate: $0.19 Austin city tax rate: $0.54 Other benefits: People you aren't able to vote for are not going to change the zoning on your property. The same folks aren't going to propose a tax for a downtown subway to the airport, and then delete the subway part and the airport part once it passes. No one's cancelling Uber or Lyft. If the Lost Creek mayor went to Mexico and recorded a video telling other Lost Creek residents to stay home, the mayor would be forced out of office upon return. If you do have a city government, you are more likely to encounter people you know and who know your neighborhood. Austin is too big for city staffers to have a motivation to talk to the residents, so stuff happens based on what groups have the time and money to lobby the city.
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The new Zilker Eagle estimated first year ridership (from their website): 175,000 Actual CapMetro Red Line ridership for the last 12 months (from their website): 485,500 The Red Line has 10 trains serving 9 stations and is drawing 3x the crowd that a 1 train 1 station mini-train will.
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BTW, I have been to the new permitting office and I happened to go during an early voting window. For that election, they were offering free parking. The ballot place was in the first floor lobby. I was there for another reason, but a few folks were voting. It's a nice new building close to the new ACC Highland Mall campus. A little hard to find, and I felt that driving around ACC was a bit confusing, but a phone GPS should take you straight there. I agree that Austin is trying some electioneering here that may backfire. They don't want you to leave, so they don't want you to vote, so they are making it difficult. But that may ensure that only those angry enough to drive over there will vote.
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You can’t early vote at the Randall’s in West Lake Hills? Oops, I was thinking about the primary…
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CapMetro's new station is about a third of a mile from their existing station. We paid $60 million to move the station 1500 ft to better serve the needs of the soccer population. It will be used once every 1-2 weeks for four hours during soccer season. Folks on reddit said that to get on a train you had to drive to one of the rail endpoints, park, and hop on there. So to ride the rail to a soccer game, you have to drive to either Leander or downtown and find parking. Then get on a train and ride halfway down the line. Then fight for space on the train on the way back to your car, which is all the way at the end of the line. Or ... you could pay for parking, walk a bit, and save yourself a few hours. Rail is great for a steady flow of traffic but it sucks for special events. Buses are great for special events, like Texas used to do for football games.
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Eastside shut down their varsity program in 2021 for a year. I think they were back for 2022-24 but they played in an all-Austin ISD league. They got crushed by other AISD schools for two years. They are now in 4A with some Austin and some non-Austin schools, and they are probably going to be crushed for two more years by smaller schools. Eastside is only slightly smaller than Austin LBJ, but LBJ has a focus on football. LASA has some decent sports, but football isn't one of them. They went to state for the first time last year in tennis. They may do well in non-contact sports like tennis, diving, maybe cross country. They have the worst high school building in AISD, the second lowest percentage of poor kids, and tons of homework, so any kids that want to play sports need something that is more individual. The parents have the resources to pay for coaching. They don't have team training facilities or decent fields like you would find at Westlake, LT, or really any school west of AISD. Or north of AISD. Or south or east. Eastside has a cool stadium that hopefully AISD will renovate as part of the 2022 bond. It's a historic on-campus stadium and it was the only stadium for Black students in Austin during segregation. Most of the seating is on one side, but that side is a nice hillside with downtown views. Lots of potential for fun Friday night lights at a smaller school.
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Shutting down streets feels good for the one street but it puts extra traffic and risk onto neighboring roads, and for that reason I'm against it.
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As a child who lived through The Catch, today I am gruntled...
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I could be wrong, not sure. I am not an expert. The law changed in 2020 from a lifetime distribution to the 10 year rule. Since then there has been some chatter about if RMDs are required over the 10 years or not, and I *thought* the IRS had landed on requiring RMDs, with some exceptions for those that didn't take RMDs while the IRS was deciding, but I could be wrong. Vanguard has a calculator here to help with inherited IRAs and possible RMDs: https://inherited-rmd-calculator.web.vanguard.com
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Here's a free Monte Carlo-like site that helps model future finances, using past stock market returns: https://www.firecalc.com You plug in how much money you have, how much you want to spend in retirement, and how long you think you will live. It calculates what would have happened to your money as if you had retired in every year going back a hundred or so years. It shows you a bunch of lines and tells you in how many years your plan would have failed (your money hits $0 before time expires) or succeeded (more than $0 left at the end). You can accept their model of what you might be invested in and a constant spending plan, or you can play with the tabs on the site to fit your situation.
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Kinda depends on what you inherited. Stocks get a step-up in basis, so you will want to figure out what they were worth on the day of her death. An IRA account or a Roth IRA account becomes an inherited account. You have 10 years to take the money out. You have to take some required minimum distributions each year. You will be taxed on the normal IRA distributions, but anything from a Roth is tax free. Real estate should also get a step up in basis, so you need guess of what it was worth on the day of death and you''l have to figure out what you want to do with it. Real estate is tough to split if you end up sharing it with someone else and they want to sell and you don't. Some stuff may have to go through probate, but other accounts where you are named beneficiary can be transferred pretty fast.
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It’s free for a hour, but after that it adds up. You can visit for free but it’s not a place you can spend hours for free with a car. My neighborhood used to have a bus route that went right downtown, but it was cut during cap remap. The sales tax that funds the bus was not cut.
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Which train? In Austin, you have to be specific... Cap Metro funds the Red Line. It is running at about 1/10th of the original projections. Way to go, planning people... City of Austin taxes us for Project Connect, which goes to the Austin Transit Partnership, where some of the money is swizzled around and comes back to the City of Austin to prevent people from being displaced by the new train that does not yet exist. Some of the ATP money goes to Cap Metro for stuff like the new Red Line soccer stadium station. So Cap Metro funds the Red Line except where it doesn't, which comes from ATP, which comes from the CoA, which comes from you the taxpayer who thought you were funding a rail system to get to the airport. It's almost as crazy as Austin school taxes. You pay taxes to your local school board, but half of that money goes to the state because other districts need the money because they are poor, and yet half of Austin ISD's population is economically disadvantaged. But as a wealthy district we must do our share so we send half of the money to the state, where they DO NOT SPEND IT ON EDUCATION and instead give everyone a break on their property taxes. Madness...
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City and state policies have created a ton of dead space around downtown. I visited the new library three times, and the third time an insane homeless person was running around in front of the circulation desk yelling and lunging at people, while city employees were calmly trying to help people checkout books. For my family's safety, we nope'd out of there and I haven't been back. It has to be the largest collection of staircases west of the Mississippi. The library has a great service that moves books between branches and I do use that, but because of that I have no need to go to the downtown location. The Faulk library, which the new library replaced, now appears to have no role. it's on the same block as the Austin History Center, which was the library before the Faulk library was built. The AHC is a cool historic building .... but Austin now has three libraries downtown. On the other side of Guad, two entire city blocks are worthless because of city and state capitol view corridors. These two blocks are someday going to be right next to a rail stop. A rail stop for who? People will get off the train and wonder why two blocks of downtown are either parking lots or one story buildings. Other than riding the rail to the courthouse once every two years for jury duty ... there's little point. Austin should be thinking now about what CVCs should be revised. There is still a CVC from Mueller airport, which was put in so that new arrivals could see the capitol building as they were taxiing to their gate. No one has landed at Mueller for a very long time, but the CVC persists. IH-35 has corridors from an upper deck that is about to be torn down. Get rid of them and open up downtown's east side. Austin ISD owns Pease Elementary, another cool historic building. AISD is going to reopen it as a child care center, but it's taking up an entire city block. Child care is needed, but it is the best and highest use of that land? How about maybe a new taller building with a child care center in it? Trinity St is almost 100% parking garages from 12th to MLK. Seven blocks of dead zone. A lot of land is there, it's just covered by a policy preventing its use, or owned by a government that does not want to let go.
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A story about a pathetic man's downfall [34 Felony Convictions]
Texas Jeff replied to Francisco 2.0's topic in Cloak Room
Based on the MAGA demographic, I bet they would refuse to buy her CDs, burn her cassette tapes, try to clog up phone lines when her tickets go on sale. Stuff like that… -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Texas Jeff replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
One of the candidates argues like a five year old. That’s pretty much all you need to know. -
How do high school football programs attract and compensate "elite" football coaches? Do the boosters just pay the coach a bonus? I understand that it's attractive to have a nice stadium and facilities, but school districts are kinda broke right now. Do they just make football a priority and fire a science teacher so that they can pay the coach more? Looking at Lovejoy's website, they have all kinds of stuff about budget woes, needing to charge students for bus transportation, charging out of district transfers tuition, having a tax-rate election to access copper pennies (basically taxing yourself more when you know that some of the tax is going to go back to the state). They have maxed out their bond debt at 50 cents by building facilities. They are a wealthy district but a small school and they don't seem to be in the financial position to go for an elite coach.
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My wife's AISD room has seen temperatures varying from 53 to 93 degrees during school hours. Neither the school district nor the teachers have much control over the room temps. The HVAC in many of the schools is shot and the buildings are poorly insulated.
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