[Doofrat]

[quote=all]Religion helps people cope with mortality.[/quote]
Kind of like saying “Ignoring that growing black spot on my skin helps me cope with cancer”.

[Doofrat]

You can claim anything up to $500 without any receipt or any proof whatsoever, just say I donated $500 worth of clothes each year and nobody will ever ask you anything.

That Said:

You should always get a receipt and you should have at least a basic itemization. You never know what all you will donate later in the year and you’ll kick yourself later if you go over this $500 amount.

If you are donating 6 bags of clothes, you should have a basic list of everything: eg.
2 hoodies – Old Navy
1 Leather Jacket Wilsons Leather
10 pairs jeans – good shape
8 Womens blouses – good shape
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to itemize bags of clothes.

For more expensive items like an air conditioning unit or a coffee table, especially items that are in excellent shape, take a picture to prove it is in excellent shape.

Always imagine that you are sitting in the audit office and you have to prove your case.

If you donate over $500 in one day, you may have to set a cost basis on the items. Generally the cost basis can just be set to the donation price or higher and you’ll be fine. They’re just making sure you didn’t buy a $5000 car for $5 and you are trying to game the system.

IMHO – Unless you really stretch it, you are not likely to be audited on your charitable donations. Anything within reason will not attract suspicion. And if you have an itemization, you’ll protect yourself.

[Doofrat]

We just had an appraisal done on a house that we bought for quite a bit higher than the comps would support. There wasn’t a lot of activity in the area, most of the comps were a few years old and were forclosures, and it appraised for what we payed for it.
One of the factors that I think helped with the appraisal was that there were multiple offers all near the price we paid and that fact was in the appraisal report.

[Doofrat]

Thank You spdrun, looks like those forms will do the trick!
Does anybody have any advice on who the best lender to go through for the mortgage? Anything to watch out for?

[Doofrat]

When I saw that the founders girlfriend was heading up the project, I knew it had about as much chance as MS Bob.

[Doofrat]

[quote=bobby][quote=flu]The only question you need to ask yourself is

do the numbers work out with a decent positive cash flow for any random tenant.

Also imho, if I were you, I’d do myself a favor and rent to a complete stranger, not someone I have any sort of relationship with (professional or otherwise).

Either you’re not going to be happy because you won’t be able to get the best price you can get, or the other person isn’t going to be happy, because they think you’re trying to take advantage of the relationship with you….or both…[/quote]

thanks for advice. will take into account and seek advice from friends also.
the numbers definitely don’t work out. ie the “mortgage”* will be higher than rent. Not to mention taxes and maintenance.

*I put “mortgage” b/c this will be all cash transaction.[/quote]

Why do an all cash transaction when interest rates are so low? Looking at interest rates tracking house prices over the last couple of years, the monthly payment seems to have stayed the same, tracking the prices pretty closely relative to interest rates. If you do all cash, it seems you’re paying a premium price that’s premium due to low rates, but not getting the benefit of the low rate? Or is it because the rates on an investment property are too high?

[Doofrat]

The four most dangerous words in investing: “It’s different this time” Be sure to add a “because” at the end of the statement to qualify why this particular cycle is different from all the others throughout history.

[Doofrat]

A VPN is a way to make certain types of access easier in some cases. A VPN generally will not make an un secure connection secure as you would have to pass authentication credentials across the un secure network to start it.
What’s your specific scenario you are trying to fix?

[Doofrat]

I’ve made millions using my method of “Just Ask”. Sign up for my conference for just $299.95 and I’ll explain the details and provide (for additional cost) materials and templates of letters you can use to “Just Ask”. You’d be amazed at what you can get. I’ve bought near million dollar houses from engineer types for half their value. All you have to do it “Just Ask”.

* “Just Ask” and Doofrat Enterprises are not liable for your outcomes. Your outcomes may vary. The advice provided on this website is general advice only. It has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs.

[Doofrat]

I expect prices to rise as people cut cable, but not drastically, here’s why:

First: History. Remember that when cable internet came out in the late 90s (almost 20 years ago) speeds were about 50-100 times slower than they are today, yet the price has remained about the same even though that $50-$60 you’re paying now would be even less back then. And now Google’s fiber is supposedly 50 – 100 times faster than the current infrastructure, so I think the Internet speeds will catch up to usage as it builds.

Second: Streaming is cached locally near the clients, so when you’re watching Big Bang theory or whatever through a streaming service, it’s probably coming from a caching service like Akamai and your connection is probably never leaving San Diego. It’s not travelling through the middle of America’s Internet from New York to San Diego.

Third: There’s more competition (at least for now) in Internet providers than there is in Cable providers, with more coming. In a metropolitan area, you might only have one “choice” of cable TV provider, but you can choose between several Internet providers (sure, they’re not all so great), but at least there is competition.

[Doofrat]

There are actually several cable television providers in your area: Hulu, NetFlix, iTunes, Amazon, HBO streaming, Rabbit Ear Antennas, Etc. All you need is an Internet connection of which most areas have several offerings.

You get HD, you get on demand for everything, no having to pay extra for HD service, DVR, or extra cable boxes.

If you like watching spectator sports, you won’t get that, and some content is delayed or not available, so it’s not for everyone, but with more people cutting cable, I think it’s inevitable that everything goes to streaming. IMHO complaining about Cable is like complaining about milk delivery or land line phone service, it’s an old technology that’s past it’s prime.

[Doofrat]

Arghhh, I hate it when companies badger their employees for that crap. I worked at Sears way back and they were always badgering you to donate an amount of your salary to United Way. One guy I worked with gave me a great idea to donate 1 cent, his point was it would cost more for both Sears and United Way to process the penny than they’d get, so that’s what I’d do. My manager could then check it off his list that he’d badgered his employee into “donating”.

A couple of years later, it came out that the President of United Way was using the funds to fly on the Concorde and such.

The current president draws a salary of over $1,000,000.

Pretty much soured me on donating money to anybody.

F$%^ The United Way

[Doofrat]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Confirmed, I am a complete paranoid whack Job, but anyway,
They are saying up to 80 people could have been exposed to this guy and his family.

Also a possible case in Hawaii.[/quote]

And my quote was: “Sure, there’s the off chance that you end up on a plane with an Ebola victim who’s travelling on holiday from Sierra Leone to Maui, but that’s pretty remote. ”

I’m skipping lunch today, I’m stuffed from eating my words.

[Doofrat]

I used to write puts on silver back in the day when silver was really low. I’d place them where the percent change / beta needed to move them into the money hadn’t occurred in the last 40 years. Somebody would always buy them. I figured it must be someone hedging like a producer or someone with some trading strategy that needed to cover.

The idea was that Silver (similar to now) was at that time below the production price and a lot of the Mexican mines had already closed and more were closing, so the chances of silver falling much more was extremely slim.

The puts were pretty far outside and so were cheap, and the margin needed to cover these was pretty high, so I didn’t make much on each one when compared to the cost of holding up that margin. I had to stop when silver recovered.

I think the idea behind holding onto physical silver rather than using options is that Silver may take a long time to recover, I remember that even Warren Buffet lost this bet 8 or 10 years back and sold out before silver recovered.

[Doofrat]

[quote=spdrun]^^^

Question is, why not set up the cameras to ticket for a small amount if you just cross the line, rising to a higher fine if you actually enter the intersection above say 10 mph? That would serve both deterrence and fairness.[/quote]

Because they don’t have to, they have you by the balls and they know it. It has nothing to do with fairness or deterrence, purely a revenue generator. The only reason they are allowed to be put in place is that there are enough mush brains out there to buy the line that it improves safety enough to be worth it.

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