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JGrayDBU

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Everything posted by JGrayDBU

  1. most one sided 3 point game in history
  2. To honor the late, great Billy Packer "This game is ovah". I think it was a 30 something point lead in the first half of a tournament game when he said that.
  3. so Philly doesn't have to face a 1st string QB at full strength in the 2nd half again? how many games in a row now?
  4. KC will score every possession first half.
  5. I like this topic. My story-I am on an "IRS Hitlist"....probably ever since I did several things to catch their attention years ago. 1. I bought back my time from ERS long after I had left state of Texas employment. - I knew this would be problematic, so I called the IRS and made sure I was filling out the form correctly. I bought the time with qualified money-an IRA, so paid $0. I asked for the IRS agent's first name and badge number, emailed myself the info. ...sure enough a few months later I received a nice letter from the IRS...I filled out the form, referenced employee info. and received a letter a few months later saying everything is ok. 2. I found the MCC years ago, while we were still in the apartment. I found 8396 on the back of the 1040, wondered what that was and boom! An annual tax credit of $2000? sign me up! We had the MCC for 14 years until I left Texas in 2018. $28000 in tax credits!!!! 3. One year I was doing taxes and realized we had about $5000 in tax credits, so I converted my wife's IRA to a Roth at the very rare 0% tax bracket. Now, I get a nice "friendly" letter from the IRS about every other year complaining about something. One year they complained about my educator tax deduction on one side of the paper and on the other side chided me for not filing with e-file. I am making so much money(for a teacher) up here in the Arctic Circle that I finally went over to the dark side about 8 months ago, and have joined the ranks of the masses who have too much $ withheld. I am passively aggressively doing them to death. Here is an example. I had a personal record $39k deducted from my pay in 2022 going into the 457b, while at the same time withholding at the single rate. The only reason I was able to deduct over $30k is that I found the special catchup provision in our plan and used that. Now, this year I have already increased my withholding as a response to the lower amount of $ withheld. I am sure you guys have noticed your withholding has gone down starting in January. I am going to drive the IRS crazy with kindness. Ha! Yes, I am an outlier. Over the top outlier. All of those years of having about 90-95% of liability withheld and writing a super small check to the IRS every April 15 and now it is time to go over to the dark side!
  6. coming from someone who was mostly interested in a good game, the litmus test for me is that when I saw a flag in the fourth quarter, I immediately knew the flag was against Cincy. Especially after the ridiculous play 3rd down again until KC gets a 1st down thing. Was this as bad as 2015 Okstate? Probably not quite, but when you know a flag is coming against one team, it makes the viewing experience, well, less than stellar.
  7. Did my eyes deceive me or did I just see Charlie Strong? or a look-a-like.
  8. still too soon. In fact it may never be not too soon.
  9. "1)Is it worthwhile to buy extra years service in the TRS system? Most calculations I've done show it's not the best use of money." Here are the assumptions: Buy five years at a cost of $64k (calc. from last year). The pension without buying years or working in Texas is $30k. That is a pension based on 23 years. Because of adding one year of working at a much higher salary than existed in 2018 that increases the high five avg. salary, the new pension amount is a minimum of $40k. If I get a high paying teaching job, the pension goes up from there. How long does it take to recoup 64k? With those numbers it takes only 6.4 years, not including potential gains. (10k of gains x 6.4 = 64k) However, I don't plan to be super aggressive with my retirement funds in my 60s, so I am not including the gains in my calculation. Am I going to live longer than 6.4 years after I start drawing the pension? This plan has me starting the pension at age 61. My family tree indicates I should live to at least mid 70s, so that is a no-brainer. If you say you're talking apples to oranges, because of the difference in the high five salary I suppose we could take out the increased salary to simulate making the purchase of credit neutral wrt the high-five salary. If you were to do that, then the 28 years of pension is worth $36,717.66 per year. That is not considering the 29th year, which is the year I work when I come back to Texas. However, a person is not allowed to purchase service credit unless the person is currently working for the state, so it is hard to justify making that calculation, imo.
  10. I"M calling it..timefor a scoop and score to win the game.
  11. no more Zeke!! No more Zeke!!! should be the chant. If Zeke is out there on ANY 3rd plays from now on, the 'Boys deserve to lose... easiest decision in sports in this decade.
  12. wow...bad Dak today...
  13. John Madden style game here. Whoever runs and defends the run better wins the game. I'm still positive the Cowboys D can pull off a couple of turnovers and here's to Dak getting comfortable 2nd or 3rd series. First team to score an offensive TD probably wins the game.
  14. laundry is ready!
  15. all we need now is for Buff to get a call on the next drive and we will know the fix is in.
  16. but of course they eschew the run and SCORE!!!
  17. Cincy should run the ball on this 3rd and goal to make Buff use a TO.
  18. Love that Cincy mixes it up so well, with running. I'm thinking 17 to 7 at half.
  19. play of the game so far coming up. IF Buffalo wants to stay in the game they have to hold Cincy to 0 points this drive. I am so impressed with Joe Cool. Is it possible he is cooler than OG Joe Cool? (Montana)
  20. wouldn't surprise me to see Cincy win this. Not calling it, just saying not a surprise.
  21. Depending upon inflation, the numbers are solid, as in pensions from both my wife and myself equaling $47,000 per year - Non COLA and every time I calculate every expense known to this man I get a number just south of $40,000 if buying a small home with cash-----if renting a small apartment the expenses number is more like $45,000. Then the second wave of benefits comes in a few years later- with social security---hers $12000 per year and mine about $6000 per year. Mine is low because of the GPO. Those numbers do not count my job during retirement, which should yield at least 20k per year in deferred income. Deferred accounts project to total $320k at age 60 for me before buying a house with cash and buying years of service. After those two big ticket items, deferred accounts should be in the 100-150k range. I have heard of Monte Carlo simulations and wonder if that is realistic thing to look into? I imagine planners charge a lot of dough to do Monte Carlo simulations?
  22. 58 year old teacher in Alaska, away from the wife for year 2, except for Christmas and summers. Year 3 is almost certainly my last year away from the wife and I will come back to teach special ed in Texas. I am thinking no problem getting a teaching job in Texas, but we will see. Total of 6 years in Alaska(1st 3 were with the wife) will need to be purchased from Texas TRS.....no problem, because by then I will most likely not be maintained in the Alaska system. The "maintained rule" says I cannot purchase more than 5 years of service while maintained in a retirement system in another state. Alaska does have a bill in the legislature to give all public servants a pension, but this is all very iffy. This governor reminds me of Bill Clements, with his anti-spending stances on just about everything. I will take the retirement acct. from Alaska and roll into an IRA. After the first semester teaching in Texas, I am able to apply to buy the years and the service purchase should be complete by March 1. Have been very fortunate in my ability to save for retirement the last 2 years. Am trying to figure out how much emergency fund to bring with me to Texas. No housing ready in Texas at the moment. Wife has been staying with relatives, working, and paying off her debt. wife will most likely have an apt. mostly furnished, sometime in the next 4-6 months. Since I worked for the state of Texas for 6 years, I can choose which retirement system to retire from. I am that guy who calls ERS and TRS about once every 6-9 months and takes about 20 minutes to run down everything I have been told and at this moment I am still looking at being able to choose which system and the obvious choice is to retire from ERS, with the promise of a free health insurance premium for life for me and 1/2 off for the wife. We are both very lucky the legislature has not taken that benefit away. I still like the traditional, deductible IRA. I plan to contribute $7000 for 22 and $7500 for 23. Doing that reduces my possible emergency fund down to maybe $40k instead of $54k or so. When I land in Texas I will be 59.5 years. My income tax bracket now is much higher than I plan for it to be in retirement. One variable is the summer job market. I am looking for a summer job this summer for the first time in a while. In Texas I always worked at least one part-time job and sometimes 2. I don't care what I do, but it would be really cool to teach summer school as well as work another job to stay busy and continue to save money. Any guesses on Texas summer job market? From now to June 2025 is the final push to save as much $ as I can, and the plan is to retire from education June 2025 at age 60.5. Wow! As recently as July 2021 I had age 67 in mind to retire from education. Will continue to work in retirement, and defer all new income up to the max per year. Retire from everything at age ? Questions: 1. What holes do you guys see? 2. How bad are the utility bills? I was the guy who had the lowest possible utility bill. 3. Any guesses on job markets-specifically summer jobs this summer? 4. I keep up with inflation wrt grocery prices, so that doesn't scare me. Other areas of severe inflation?
  23. That's right.
  24. First, my alma mater's fight song was the standard. Not even close to unique, but the tune is the standard for all fight songs. On ye dragons, on ye dragons, on to victory Do your best to beat your rivals, glorify your name, fight, fight, fight On ye dragons, on ye dragons, on to victory etc. Sadly, there had to be at least two other schools in our district that played the same song. This was the old 14-5A district. We are the Round Rock Dragons, when we first moved up to 5A in the late 1970s, the schools included: Temple, Killeen, Killeen Ellison, Bryan, etc. The most unique occurred to me when I went with my then girlfriend to Pearsall. Pearsall was playing against another team with green as the school color. Their song started with the pre-amble to the Aggy fight song, but then went into the body of Texas fight. Really, really weird.
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