Lazy Man and Money

Reviewing my 2020 Goals

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New Year's Resolutions

At the start of 2020, I wrote a post about the goals I’d like to accomplish for 2020. We can all probably agree that goals set in January 2020 are a little ridiculous to look at now. However, I think there’s some value to it. It will help me analyze how to structure 2021 goals going forward.

Due to COVID I’m going to be grading myself very leniently. A lot of people had things more difficult than I did. That said, I couldn’t move forward on some of these while teaching kindergarten and first grade at the same time. It’s also been harder to settle down and write. I sometimes went off to the library and could focus on work exclusively. My wife is home in Zoom meetings most of the day now, and I just can’t maintain the same focus.

Website Goals

I had a pile of website goals. Let’s see how they went:

Content Audit

This task was to review my old articles and refresh them, make them relevant and useful. Search engines like that. They aren’t big fans of the historical context of how I felt in 2008 when the economy was collapsing. I did a little of this, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I still have a about 95% of the website to go. This is an ongoing project that will probably take years. It only makes sense that updating nearly 15 years of articles while writing new articles is going to take years.

Grade: D

Social Media

I did a little bit more on Facebook, but not much else. I still spend most of my time on Twitter, but haven’t grown much from my 6,500 followers. I’m realizing that I don’t know how to get more Twitter followers. I think most people are comfortable with the people they follow now. I should have put more time into learning Pinterest.

Grade: D-

Other Website Stuff

I didn’t improve the design like I had hoped. I did reach out to collaborate with a few bloggers, but I needed to follow through more. I had hoped to publish 100 articles, which I thought was going to be impossible. I managed to publish 86 – many more than I thought.

Grade: B-

Diet/Exercise

This was a failure on the grandest scale. I put on what I call the “Pandemic 15.” We’re staying at home and cooking more comfort food – lots of cheese and pastries. We’re also not getting the same exercise in.

My BMI had gotten up to 29 and that’s just too high. Anticipating this article, I’ve been following my extreme diet for a few days and my BMI is down to an even 28. This is the easiest weight at the beginning to lose, so a core goal of 2021 will be to lose 20 pounds. It’s going to be tough.

Grade: F

Declutter

I didn’t post the 5+ items a month on Ebay/Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace like I had hoped. In fact, I don’t think I sold anything. However, I threw out many, many things and organized a bunch more. In the last 6 months, I’ve made tremendous progress on the basement and the garage. My wife is the queen of Facebook Marketplace and it’s working out well for us.

We’re almost at the point where we can finish the basement and put a car in the garage.

Grade: B

Kids

I had a goal to work on coding with the kids, but I haven’t put together a curriculum yet. We have a bunch of coding toys, but I’d like something more structured that explains what a loop is and why it is important. We’ve got some time before we get started on this.

Overall, we did tremendous amounts of learning in 2020. During homeschool we did almost everything. We were able to do extra during breaks because we didn’t have the option of going on vacation. This fall the kids’ school opened up with extreme precautions in place. We had as many good adventures as you can have during COVID-19. If anything, the kids are too spoiled and have an unhealthy expectation that the world revolves around them. In any other year, I’d give myself a lower grade for this. In 2020, I don’t mind the extra spoiling – hopefully it makes up for not being able to play with their friends.

Grade: A

Money Goals

I didn’t make the $75,000 like I had hoped. Dog sitting income disappeared and I couldn’t blog much while teaching the kids. I was able to make over $50,000 which is good considering the circumstances.

We didn’t get the estate planning done. It’ll be easier when we can actually meet people and talk in person.

Grade: B-

Special Projects

I didn’t create bucket list. I don’t know why I have problems with this. I should have been able to knock this out in a few hours.

I improved my Japanese quite a bit as my Duolingo streak has now reached nearly 600 days. Recently, I started to review Spanish because I was rusty there.

I didn’t create the YouTube Channel, but I’ve been researching it a lot over the last week. I wanted to start a channel with the kids about Pokemon, but it’s hard to find a name that isn’t trademarked and still conveys the idea of the channel. I think I have an idea though. One big breakthrough this year was that the kids had to learn to use a lot of technology for distance learning. They are getting good with their hand-me-down phones (with only wifi access), so they can film each other.

I didn’t self-publish a book – or even begin any kind of work on that one.

Grade: C+

Final Goal Thoughts of 2020

When I created my goal post, I had the intention of following it, but that simply didn’t happen. I don’t think I can blame COVID.

I need to come up with more of a system or a set of habits where I “check-in” during the work day and move forward with an item on the list. Instead almost every day is about getting the kids ready for school, laundry, lunches and dinners cooked, grocery shopping, etc. In between, I spend time on deal sites, reading news, watching my stocks – not things that move the productivity needle. In 2021, I’ll need to work on the good habits more.

Another Job Hunt?

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The following is from frequent contributor Kosmo

Three years ago, I was in the middle of a job hunt.  I took you along for the journey.  I eventually landed a position about a month before my old job ended.  For those of you who weren’t along on that journey, the company decided to get rid of remote workers, and I was one of hundreds affected.

I’ve been in my current role since March of 2018, and it has been an enjoyable experience.  The work has been interesting, and I’ve worked with great people – both my co-workers and the business partners we create systems for.  I’ve even interviewed for some manager positions.  It has been pretty awesome.

A reorganization was announced a couple of months ago.  One hundred and fifty people in our IT department were laid off.  The programmer who sat next to me was one of the people affected.  I was moved to a new team and immediately went from being the top expert on my old systems to a complete novice on the new ones.  Even the potential of a manager role became less interesting as a result of the changes.  This isn’t the first reorg in recent years, but it’s the first one that has had a direct impact on me.

In the coming weeks, I lost much of the fire that had made me a dynamic employee.  The effort to handle the fallout of multiple recent reorgs is taking time away from more productive work.  It’s frustrating.  I want to do work that is difficult and challenging.  Many of my recent tasks fall short of that bar.  Eventually, I made the decision to begin a new job search.  This job search is different than the previous one in a lot of ways.

1. Urgency

My previous job search was driven by the fact that I would be losing my job on a particular date.  I left no stone unturned in an effort to make sure I had a new job by the time the old one ended.  I ended up in one of the best possible jobs.  A lot of the jobs I applied for had some serious warts. Many weren’t a great fit for my skills or had long commutes.

There is no urgency in my current job search.  Although my new area doesn’t see me as quite the rock star that my old area did (and still does – as I’m still pulled in when needed), I’m relatively safe in my position.  I can afford to take my time and wait for the right position.

2. Preparation

When I kicked off my last job search, I had been caught completely off guard.  My resume was outdated and I hadn’t done even casual job hunting in a decade.  I wasn’t even sure how the industry even referred to someone with my skill set.  It took quite a bit of time to get my resume squared away and to get my job search focused on jobs that would be a good fit.  I needed to figure out a new-fangled thing called LinkedIn.

I have made an effort to keep my resume updated recently.  Every couple of months, I pull up my resume and make relevant changes – adding recent accomplishments, new responsibilities, and any recently acquired skills.  At the same time, I also removed aspects that are no longer relevant.

3. Location

My last job search was limited to companies within an hour drive of my home.  We have roots in this area – my wife’s career is with a local organization, and we have two kids in school.  Relocating for a new job was a last resort.

As a result of COVID-19, A lot of companies have become more accepting of remote workers.  Some even advertise themselves as “remote first” organizations.  This means that geography is no longer a limiting factor.  If I can work from my dungeon basement, it doesn’t matter if the team is located in New York City, Miami, or Topeka.

The flip side of this is that the companies are also able to cast a wider net.  They aren’t limited to employees in their geographical area.  So, while there might be more potential jobs for me, there are also more potential applicants.

Overall, I see this as a net gain.  I should be able to focus on the jobs that are the best fit for my skills, instead of simply looking at the jobs that are nearby.  Being located in Iowa also gives me a cost-of-living advantage over applicants from large metro areas.

The search begins

I’m writing this on Christmas Eve.  I kicked off my job search on December 12.  How’s it going?  Well, it’s definitely starting off better than the last one.

A friend and former colleague works at a company about an hour south of where I live.  It’s a considerably smaller company than the one I currently work for, but still a company that does more than a billion dollars of business every year.  The upside of a smaller company is that there’s considerably more autonomy and not as much red tape.  In other words, more time spent on productive work.  It’s a similar position to my friend’s, but with a bit more focus on technical skills, such as a bit of minor data wrangling.

My friend – let’s call him Bryan, because that’s his name – has mentioned the position to me multiple times in the past few months.  It has always sounded like a great fit.  The reason for my lack of interest has always been the same – the commute.  A commute of an hour each way isn’t the greatest sacrifice in the world, but it’s simply not something I’m interested in doing.

I pinged Bryan a few days ago to ask if there was any chance his company was considering 100% remote candidates for this position.  No, but they were looking at 2-3 remote workdays per week.  I spent a weekend thinking about this and decided that a split of 2 days in the office and 3 days remote would be acceptable.

Bryan put my resume in front of his boss on Monday.  His boss reached out via email and we set up a call from Tuesday afternoon.  I wasn’t technically a candidate at this point – I hadn’t formally applied through the standard process.  This was probably the first time in my life where I had used my social network to gain an inside track for a position.

Interview

Tuesday’s call went well.  The position seems interesting.  I would basically be coordinating a multi-year implementation of a new HRIS (human resources information system) system.  I’ve taken a look at the vendor solution and it looks like an interesting and complex system to implement.  Lots of moving pieces.

The manager is a little bit on the fence about whether the position will require two days in the office per week, or three.  I’m pretty confident that if everything else aligns, I can convince him to do two.  The company’s location works against them in attracting candidates.  They’re located in a small city (those of you from large urban areas would call it a town), and it’s a fairly long commute from any of the surrounding metro areas.  They’re growing and want to attract high-quality candidates.  To do that, they’re most likely going to have to be more flexible on work from home.  Management is slowly coming around to this idea.  Their employees have been working from home for about nine months now, and they’re realizing that an employee who’s working from home is actually working – they aren’t just playing Mario all day.

At the end of Tuesday’s call, the manager asked me to formally apply for the position, so that we could move forward with the process.  On Wednesday, HR contacted me to set up a panel interview for the first week of January.  Things are moving about as fast as possible, considering the fact that it’s impossible to arrange interviews during the holidays, due to too many key players being out of the office.

The future

My friend won’t be a part of the interview panel.  This makes sense, as including him would compromise the integrity of the process.  He has, however, been able to give me good insight into the different roles within the company.  I’ve also asked him questions about how the company approaches certain problems.  At this point, I’m getting a lot of good answers.  Although it’s a smaller company than my current one, it seems to be well-managed.

I’ll spend a lot of time in the next week preparing for the interview – and watching football.

We’ve (Almost) Survived 2020

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(I’m not a fan of clickbait titles. I wrote the title meaning that 2020 is almost over, but I now realize that it could imply that my family didn’t survive 2020.)

This is the Christmas week post I thought I’d ever write and certainly not the one that you probably thought you read. Like everything else this year, the words, “But here we are!” apply.

I thought I might write a review of the last year. That’s typically what I do this time of year. For the first time ever, it seems that everyone can agree that we don’t need that.

Still, some things stick out in my mind and it’s worth a quick look back review.

I remember when I started to realize that COVID was going to be something different. It was February 24, when The Atlantic put it bluntly, You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus. I remember sharing that idea in a conversation with a medical professional and having it dismissed. After all, there were only 35 known cases in the US at the time (note there was almost no testing available). Three weeks later, much of the country locked down. Personally, our Rhode Island location was sandwiched between big NY and Boston outbreaks.

The lockdown was a very strange time. Remember being told not to wear masks because the frontline professionals needed them and that they wouldn’t work? As we learned more, we found that masks were perhaps our greatest defense (along with social distancing).

My biggest COVID story (so far), was trying to run to separate schools, kindergarten and first grade, in my house at the same time. My wife was virtually deployed and could help out for a couple of hours of the day, but it was exhausting. Our biggest expense is a private school for the kids, so paying tens of thousands of dollars to teach your kids was an extreme disappointment, to say the least. It also meant that I couldn’t blog and lockdowns meant that my dog-sitting business went to zero.

I complained about everything, but the reality is that we were healthy and our finances were doing well (despite the loss of my income). Our kids were learning. Sometimes life throws you a curveball and it’s all you can do to foul it off and get another pitch to hit. Everyone got a curveball in 2020. I hope you were able to foul it off. I think that in 6 to 9 months from now, we’ll be primed to knock the next pitch out of the park.

Reviewing the “Good Stuff” of 2020

As I wrote before, no one wants to review 2020. However, what if we focused on just the good stuff?

“Good stuff?”, you ask?

Yes, there was truly good stuff in 2020, Virginia

Here are a couple of examples:

  1. 50 Surprising Wholesome Christmas Gifts – Warning: Your heart will grow three sizes while reading these.
  2. Wired’s 20 Positive News Highlights from 2020 – Warning: Panda Sex!

We’ve had big achievements at the science and history level… and big achievements at the personal level.

With that in mind, I’m going to close out the 2020 review with a personal review. But, before I do, I expect to publish a goals review for 2020 next week. Hint: It is going to be ugly! Early on in 2021, I have some timeless tips to reset and move forward. I also have some investing tips and one thing new that is motivating for 2021. I rarely plan a week of posts in advance, but here I am with three weeks of posts.

Lazy Man 2020 Reviewed

  • January
    We started the year, literally Jan 1, with a kid who got scary sick. He wasn’t able to eat or drink much for a couple of days. We brought him to the peditrician and she sent him to the state hospital on emergency appendicitis speculation. Without thinking much about it, I offered him a full-sugar Coke on the way. We don’t allow the kids to drink much (maybe 3 times a year), but he drank it down on the way to the hospital. There they performed all the tests and came up with nothing. After an IV, he was mostly a normal person.

    We all got sick a week later. We were told it was a virus. Was it COVID? I doubt it, but we certainly thought more about it in March.

    My favorite part of the review is my new 6-year old building an extensive Pokemon Mew model. We were all sick so he was on his own. I also taught my 7-year old to add some two-digit numbers, and he came up with the best strategy with the ones he didn’t know: “Ask dad.”

    This month was packed with a trip to Ice Castles, hitting 100K miles on a car (remember driving?!?!), archery practice, and skiing. The sky was the limit in January 2020.

    My least favorite part of the review is about how spry my dog was. He’s going to be 84 in dog years and is not very spry anymore. Hopefully, some supplements we have in the mail helps with that.

  • February
    My wife and I had our annual overnight at a romantic hotel. Unfortunately, that’s not possible in 2021. We also had a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner, where we ran out of conversation in the first 10 minutes of a 3-hour meal. We’ll try again in 2022.

    I went ice skating because the kids made it a condition of them doing it. It was a horror show, but everyone had a good laugh. Most importantly, the kids learned that they can be better than their dad if they try (or in this case, just exist).

    The highlight was Mardi Gras night at the local Navy Base. My wife didn’t want to do it because we knew we wouldn’t know anyone. We danced the night away and no one had more fun than my wife.

  • March
    The start of COVID of course. You can see a downturn in my tone.

    My wife bought me some great steaks for my birthday. I’d rather go out to dinner, but we have to do our part.

    I have a picture of my dog on a beach walk with a caption of, “Before they closed the beaches…”

    The kids school has a normal March break where we usually travel. We couldn’t travel as we expected, so I ran my own “homeschool” consisting of chess, scootering, Mythbusters Jr., Ruff Ruffman, and anything else I could do to keep kids mentally and physically engaged.

    The highlight was one snow, just one inch, the only one of the year. It turned to rain briefly and froze over. I rushed the kids to a hill and we got an hour and a half of sledding on icy snow. They could go a mile on that icy inch of snow.

  • April
    April was the most challenging month of the pandemic. Trying to teach two curriculums is tough, but it rain almost every day. We weren’t just locked down from seeing other people, but we couldn’t easily go walk the dog down the street.

    We had some help from Jack Johnson (a video concert), learning how to cook, Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand, a visit from the Easter Bunny, and a Harry Potter puzzle.

    The highlight was simply having the energy to move forward and try to turn this negative situation into something positive. That burst of energy, unfortunately, didn’t last long.

  • May
    I thought April was the worst with learning how to homeschool in daily rainstorms. May brought police brutality and system racism to the forefront. My personal finance annual conference, FinCon, got “cancelled” due to some controversial conversations from the founder.

    Kids continued to cook and hike. They camped out on their floor under a tee-pee. We took the Mustang convertible for a ride – the first time the kids were old enough to be appropriate seats that worked. We even had outdoor dining.

    The highlight was that we can look back on those pictures and realize that, under the circumstances, we’re doing well.

  • June
    We took the opportunity to escape to Block Island. It’s the smallest town in the smallest state – a great place to hide from COVID. We were fortunate that we could vacation in our own state. The local mom and pop hotel we usually stay at called and asked us to come. The entire island is summer tourism and COVID hit them bad.

    We didn’t have school or camp for a time during this month. With my wife working full time, this put me back into “Dad school” mode. This is when having STEM toys really paid off.

  • July
    The kids started camp and it went well. We had them signed up with a lot of exciting special camps, but they all canceled. Outdoors with masks in a place with very few COVID cases was a winning combination. The kids got a lot of beach and swimming time in. They also picked some blueberries.

    My wife and I had an outdoor anniversary celebration as well.

    This was the start of learning to adapt to life with COVID. That said, our area’s circumstances allowed to have a very good summer.

  • August
    We went back to Block Island. My wife became obsessed with finding one of the glass orbs that they hide every year there. I suggested that we make it a competition and we divided into two teams. Team Floppy Whale (me and my 6-year old) against team my wife and 8-year-old’s team Fire (something). We made up shirts and flags – turned it into a whole event.

    Neither team found an orb. It usually takes a few years to find an orb. There’s always next year.

    We lost electricity as Hurricane Isaias knocked out the power. I thought we might be out for days, because it takes time to restore power to an island. We fled until we got to a place with electricity so we could at least check the news. (There’s no news when local cell towers and radio stations don’t work.) It wasn’t bad, so we enjoyed a meal and went back. My 6-year-old asked for only brown M&Ms in his dessert so he could make his gummy play. I explained how ridiculous the request was, but the restaurant did it anyway.

    The kids played with Gravity Maze and we watched the Trolls World Tour movie for free from Redbox. They learned some sweet dance moves in the special feature.

    The highlight was the trip to Block Island, but there was an honorable mention. The kids got to go to a local water park. “Water park” may be stretching it for two water slides, but it’s 2020. For 2 hours, the max allowed, they got about 12 slides each.

  • September
    By this time, you’ve noticed that I’m happiest when the kids are happiest. That’s why almost all of these reviews go through the kids. My wife and I are working and we don’t have much to share from an adult perspective. Plus, I don’t think you’d want to know it anyway, right?

    September was the start of in-person school. However, we still had a corn maze to do. The kids started in-person karate. They love it! I think this will be a thing that lasts for many months. We also went to a food truck event.

    We did a family event called the BouldrDash. It’s one of those “extreme” obstacle courses but designed for a family with young kids. My anxiety level went to 11 before the event but wasn’t bad at all.

    Lastly, our 7-year old turned 8. We had a socially-distant birthday party. We also had our annual Gregg’s birthday cake. (Gregg’s is a Rhode Island restaurant chain.)

  • October
    We did more cooking with the kids. The kids also learned how to play Stratego. We had “the best Halloween yet” that was just a trunk or treat with a lot of candy. We even got to see some friends, because that was something we could do.
  • Novemeber
    My 6-year-old built a Nintendo Labo Robot. I needed to help him a little, but not too much. We did a lot of cleaning of a new rental property (we sold one and bought one). We had a good Thanksgiving and set up the Christmas. I shared some of my 6-year-old’s unique thinking on homework – change the problem and solve that one instead.

    • We’ll get December next month because we’re still living it.

    Wrapping up 2020

    It’s fitting that on Christmas Eve I’m wrapping this up and putting a bow on 2020. Please note that all the family stuff above is the top 10% of everything and not the typical 90%. I recommend going through your phone and seeing if you can find some good moments in 2020.

Lexus’ December NOT to Remember

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Lexus December to Remember
Lexus December Not to Remember, right?

When I first wrote this article in 2006, I played with the titles of “Surprise Honey, I Decided to Postpone Our Retirement” and the much more boring “I Still Don’t Like Lexus’ Holiday Commercials.” I finally settled on, “Surprise Honey, I Added $60,000 to our Debt!” Instead of all that, I went with the obvious this time.

I’m bringing this article back up because Saturday Night Live recently did a commercial around the same theme. It’s hilarious! Give it a watch:



There’s a reason why my article is a bunch of text on a page and SNL’s is a comedic masterpiece that has the internet buzzing. They covered all my feelings and added some extra crazy for good measure.

In 2006, I thought that Lexus would get canceled due to a deluge of bad optics of a commercial campaign suggesting that giving a Lexus for Christmas is a good surprise. Maybe cancel culture wasn’t a thing then. I had also assumed that they either didn’t test market their commercial or that I was in the vocal minority. I can’t say which is more correct. Since they still have the campaign, it has to be working for them. However, there are mainstream parodies about how idiotic the concept is. Honda roasted them badly with this one:


Honda Commercial – "Car Gift" from Thought Division on Vimeo.

I hadn’t realized that Lexus’ December to Remember campaign started back in 1999. I wasn’t blogging about how to FIRE back then, so I may have just given it the stink eye and moved on. In any case, the 2006 commercial started off with the husband calling his wife and lying to her about being stuck at work. If you know you are going to be controversial, I guess a white lie to your wife isn’t too bad, but you’d think they could come up with something better. The wife leaves the house to pick up their kid at sports practice and there’s a new Lexus with a bow waiting in the driveway.

In 2006, I imagined the reaction my wife would give if I did something like that. I would surely be in the dog house. Guess what, in 2020 it’s still the same! It might even be worse of a dog house now with responsibilities like our two kids.

There are normal Christmas gifts and there’s giving one that’s 50% more than what the average household earns in a year. The only way I could ever get away with a Lexus for a gift is if I also announced that I made a million dollars earlier in the day. Since that million dollars would be around $600,000 after taxes, I might be able to get away with using 10% of it for an extravagant toy. However, even that is stretching it. My wife would much rather quit her job and take at least a year trying to decide what to do for a second act.

Is there a circumstance where you would consider a $60,000 purchase without discussing it with your significant other? Let me know in the comments below?

Further Reading: Annual Rant: Cars are NOT Gifts. She alerted me to the awesome Honda commercial mentioned above.

P.S. I originally linked to a Lexus’ Flash page at: http://www.lexus.com/promo/flash/dse/DSE_LandingPage.swf so you can watch the commercial itself. Obviously, Lexus doesn’t still have that page up. Back then, Google had just bought a company called YouTube the month before. I remember laughing at their terrible decision to pay so much money for a website that didn’t make any money and cost so much money in bandwidth to run.

Originally Published 11/27/2006 – (Image Source)

We’ve Stopped Our Retirement Contributions. Here’s Why.

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Today’s update is going to be very quick. We’ve got a storm, so the kids are home from school. My wife has 4.2 zillion Zoom meetings and I have a lot of snow shoveling to do. We haven’t had a storm in a few years, so finally the kids are old enough to pick up a shovel and help a bit too.

It was back in middle of January this year that I asked, Is it okay NOT to save for retirement. Some stuff happened since then*, and now it’s time to announce that we’ve decided not to save for retirement… at least for the next 6-7 months.

My wife won’t add funds to her government TSP plan (like a 401k). I won’t add funds to my solo 401k. We’ll still max out our Roth IRAs, but that is only because we can withdraw those contributions at any time without penalty.

Why the move now?

A lot of it has to do with the way the stock market has gone this year. I’m not referring to the drop in March. Back in January, I had felt like our retirement accounts were getting too high in comparison to the liquid cash we had on hand. It wasn’t like we were each 401k millionaires with 30 cents to our name, but it was lopsided nonetheless.

And here we are in December. I look at our retirement accounts and they are up 27% for the year.

We do have more liquid cash than we did at the start of the year due to less travel, grooming, and eating out. At the end of the day that 27% gain moves the needle even more past the point where I was questioning it before.

There are two other things weighing on the decision:

  1. More liquid cash now means my wife can choose to retire when she wants to. In some ways she can with a great pension already vested. There are some golden handcuff issues to consider. Also, sometimes she seems to be on the fence on whether she wants to retire or not. In any case, having more cash on hand makes that easier.
  2. If we invest some of this money in dividend stocks outside of retirement, we may end up paying fewer taxes down the line. If we take money out of a 401k plan we’ll have to pay taxes at our regular income tax rate. With my wife’s pension, that income tax rate may be fairly high. Well, it wouldn’t be too high, but it would be much higher than what qualified dividends get taxed at. Since our Roth IRAs are not taxed, we can pull out that money without considering tax rates.

There’s more detail in the original article that I linked to above. That’s about all I can do for today.

* Understatement of the year, right?!?!

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