The Illinois primary is in two days. Illinois uses an open primary system, meaning when you go to vote you can choose either the Republican ballot or the Democrat ticket. I consider this a great way of doing it, because you are not locked into a single party. There is a wide spectrum of candidates on either side of the aisle.
You might have already voted if your state is one of the earlier primaries, or you probably already know which presidential candidate you plan to vote for. Just today, Trump stopped in our town for a last minute rally. About 3000 supporters turned out, and about a third of that in protesters staged outside. We steered clear of the whole mess.
The local elections are far less fiery and in my opinion far more important. The Republican ballot has a senate race (incumbent) and a county coroner contest (incumbent) in addition to the presidential nomination. The Democrat ballot has just the presidential and senate race.
The last time the coroner was on the ticket there were a total of 6800 votes.
Yesterday morning I felt great when I woke up. Feeling rested and energetic, I took Frugal Boy for a sprightly run at 6:30. This morning, Frugal Boy was eager to repeat the antics of the day before, but my body wasn’t. Still, I pulled myself from bed at his beckoning and went downstairs to put on my running shoes.
Shae was already down in the kitchen putting together a breakfast snack cup for our son. She had picked up a dent and ding clearance box of Special K cereal for about 49% off.
“Huh” she said. She had stopped opening the box and was just standing there. I finished putting on my shoes and a bit annoyingly asked, “Huh what”.
“We won”
“What? It’s probably just some gimmick”
“It says that we won”
I crossed the room and looked inside.
I was still highly skeptical. We have received instant winners in the past that contain a lot of fine print and aren’t actually winners but instead are entries to be a winner. She opened up the other dent and ding box, and there was no winning sticker inside of that one. We put the box aside and went for our run. It was a good run and helped to wake me up. Shae is angling for a sub 25 minute 5k this year. We did 1.5 miles this morning at a 9 even pace, so I feel optimistic that she will achieve her goal.
Coming back inside, we read the fine print. I was inclined to believe it was for real when the instructions said to send the winning piece by certified mail.
The abbreviated rules on the bottom listed the odds at 1:32,500
Here’s to you dent and ding box.
Shae nor I have ever won an instant sweeps. The only person that I know that has was my oldest brother when he was in college about 40 years ago (okay, maybe not that long). He won a tv.
No, we aren’t going to buy a lottery ticket or alter our behavior in any way (read here for the abysmal odds on that). Sometimes you are just in the right place at the right time. It doesn’t make you special or right.
The extent of my baking knowledge up until now has been to follow the instructions on the back of the ready mix boxes. Come along with Shae and myself as we embark on a six week baking challenge where we push our comfort zones and try baking recipes we have never done before!
Week 4 – Apple Turnovers
We chose apple turnovers because we wanted to make a puff pastry. In particular, we wanted to make a full puff pastry. Normally, a turnover recipe has you use pre-prepared pastry rolls from the store, and while that greatly cuts down the work and time required, it doesn’t teach us anything about the process!
So how does one make a flaky, crisp pastry dough? Easy! All you need is flour, water, salt, and a metric ton of butter.
We all put our aprons on, Frugal Boy too after much convincing, and got out the stand mixer to combine 5 cups of flour with a teaspoon of salt and 2 cups of water. You’ll want to add the water in slowly otherwise the dough gets very hard and tough to roll out.
While you are doing that, you’ll want to get out a block o butter. This recipe called for 2 cups worth. Sandwich it with plastic wrap and get out something heavy, like a rolling pin.
Then pound the butter flat and stick it in the fridge to chill.
After the dough has rested, and the butter has chilled, you can roll out the dough.
And yes, that is the manliest apron we have.
Once the dough is rolled out, place the butter on top. We are going to start laminating the dough and butter.
Here begins the lengthy part. In order to laminate the butter and dough together, you will repeat folding the dough and butter into thirds, rolling it out flat again and sticking it back in the refrigerator to chill. You don’t want the butter to melt into the dough. After about six times of doing this, you will end up with a nicely layered dough/butter creation.
The whole point of layering butter in the dough is to have it expand (some might even say puff) when baking. The butter steams up and gives a wonderful flakiness to the finished pastry.
Now that you have your finished pastry dough, you can roll it out to a 1/4 inch thickness or thinner and shape as desired. Traditional apple turnover recipes call for cutting out squares from the rolled dough, placing the apple filling into the square, and folding the dough over before baking. We opted to make cups instead.
Look at those beautiful layers!
We finished off the apple cups by adding a sugar glaze.
They are best eaten fresh from the oven. Over time they will get soggy and lose their crispiness. If you buy the pastry dough pre-made the recipe only takes about 60 minutes to make. If you make the dough from scratch, it will take several hours.
We have two weeks left on this 6 week challenge. Leave a comment on what we should try baking next!
I just submitted our Federal and State income taxes for 2015. The numbers were very similar to 2014. We had an effective tax rate of 11% with total income compensation that would place us in the 25% bracket.
This year, like previous years, we did our taxes ourself using pen and paper. Maybe sometime in the future we will switch over to an accountant or software, but our situation isn’t overly complicated (yet).
One W2
1040
Ordinary/Qualified dividends
Schedule C (business income)
Schedule SE (self employment tax)
Schedule D (capital gains tax)
Form 8949 (helper form for Schedule D)
I like doing taxes ourself because it forces us to learn about the tax code and helps identify what changes we can make to reduce how much we pay. Software tools such as Turbo Tax like to advertise guarantees for the best refund possible, but they don’t give advice on how to improve for next year.
For instance, this year I learned that we did not qualify for the dependent care benefit. I had written previously about using both a FSA, flexible spending account, and the DCB but it turns out that our FSA of $5000 disqualifies us from any DCB credit. What I did learn however is that it would work with 2 or more dependents. Tax software isn’t going to tell you that.
Our goal for 2016 is to dump as much money as possible into tax protected accounts. Taxes in general, but especially income taxes are our largest expense now that our house is paid off. In 2015, federal income tax, state income tax, property tax, and sales taxes took about a twenty thousand dollar bite out of our budget. Ya, I don’t like taxes.
Yes, the four horsemen are indeed coming. Hell hath frozen over. Aldi takes credit cards.
I had heard on the frugal grapevine that they were rolling this out and that many stores had secretly been accepting credit cards for months, but now it is official.
The local elections are far less fiery and in my opinion far more important. The Republican ballot has a senate race (incumbent) and a county coroner contest (incumbent) in addition to the presidential nomination. The Democrat ballot has just the presidential and senate race.
