As anyone who knows me can attest, I’m cheap. That being said, my wife’s new shopping hobby might seem like a good reason for me to panic. Fortunately, this is not a normal shopping hobby. My wife has figured out how to get many of our every day items for free or nearly free through special forces style surgical shopping assaults.
She recently started a blog to share her deals and invites you to have a look if saving money makes you smile.
Her new hobby combined with the savings I’m expecting on our electric bills from switching to PP&U as our supplier should provide for a surprisingly pleasant fiscal experience going forward.
I’ll try and keep these savings in mind while the $500 tax bill I’m about to receive for our one and only car does it’s darnedest to ruin my month. Our one car combined with our property tax on a modest (being generous) home this year should be about $4300. That’s greater than 10% of the gross earnings of the average East Hartford resident and over 8.5% of the average household’s combined income. Even worse is the consideration that despite our ridiculously high tax burden our tax will fund less than one third of the education spending for one student in our school system. It would fund about 1.5 students at St. Chris or St. Rose however.
Tags: East Hartford, PP&U, Public Education, Saving Money, School Spending, St. Christopher, St. Rose, Taxes
June 21, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I signed up for PP&U this week. The info indicated a 4 to 60 day waiting period. I used Levco/Dominion a few years back… before I switched to clean electric and paid a premium on top of the silly TSO…
I also cancelled my cable TV a few months ago… and I’m proud to say that contrary to my feelings at the time… I was not actually addicted to cable television… and I’ve been living comfortably since I went cold turkey… and the real benefit of cancelling my cable… since I don’t have tv (I barely get the one ABC broadcast channel)… I’ve read before falling asleep. First up… The Revolution: A Manifesto. Great stuff!
June 22, 2008 at 2:05 am
And that’s exactly why my parents moved to Virginia. The people in the more rural areas go ballistic at even the slightest mention of a tax increase. They bought 2 houses on 35 acres and have a total tax burden under $600. In Connecticut they had 10 acres and paid $7,500 in property taxes (in 2002). Now they rent 16 acres to a farmer who pays their taxes.
The stories about tax protests down there are unbelievable. A few months ago the county wanted to raise taxes to what would have amounted to an extra $20 per person. The people protested at a local meeting and not only demanded no tax increase, but a 5% cut. The people won. The county manager said he would cut his portion of the budget by 5% immediately. He looked out in the audience at his assistant and said “you’re fired.”
It’s against the law in Virginia to use a property assessment to raise tax revenue. If the average value of the property in a county increases, the mill rate has to drop by an offsetting amount. During the last revaluation, property values went up considerably. Even though that meant no tax increase for half the people, without exception every single property owner in the county filed an appeal. The county just threw out the last revaluation because it would have taken a decade to review every appeal and the revaluation couldn’t take effect until all of the appeals were comlplete.
Last week they fired the chief of police in one of the local towns because no one wanted to pay his salary.
There are bridges that are half built and then just abandoned for decades because they went over budget and the people refused to allocate any more money towards it.
After the state passed a tax hike a few years back, big “Wanted” posters were hung in post offices with the faces of all the politicians that voted in favor of the tax hike. As each one was voted out, a big red X was put over the faces.
If they weren’t all so high on interventionism, it would be perfect Revolution territory. It still might be, before all is said and done. I saw on the history channel that the last armed rebellion against the US was in the 1930’s in West Virginia. 10,000 Scots-Irish rednecks lost a 3 day battle, but later won in court. It was the same group of people that first rebelled against Washington in the Whiskey Rebellion, and they declared independence from Britain 4 years before the rest of the colonies. To this day many are fanatically anti-authoritarian.
Unfortunately the underground economy is huge, so they don’t pay federal taxes and they just flat out ignore most federal laws, so they don’t bother voting in federal elections.