Partist, I find it interesting that you consider tax deductions a form of entitlement. I guess I see them as an attempt at social engineering where the gov't is trying to reward certain behaviors. (i.e. having kids (read future tax payers), donating to charity etc) I would like to see a new flat tax system but I would be against the removal of all deductions from the current system based on the fact that eliminating deductions would give the gov't more money that it would leverage to get into more debt. I don't want to make this a political debate because I don't currently agree w/ the politics of either party. Either way, we will never see a tax system that does not have deducitons or loop holes. D's and R's reward their constituents by changing the loop holes to favor their side. Politicians would loose too much power if they weren't allowed to put loop holes in tax laws. Brining this back to the original discussion, if we live in a society that is going to have a social engineered tax system that favors certain activities, I believe that having children and education are some of the activities that should be favored. There would be severe economic issues that would arise if we faced a decreasing population or a decreasing level of eduction of the population. If you want to get rid of entitlements, I'd like to start w/ getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then we could eleminate the coorporate welfare we are doling out to AIG, GM, Citi and the others. Once that is done we could shake down the dept of defense for their waste (they may be the least efficient organization in the world). After that we would need to do something about healthcare inequality where our taxes pay for lifetime healthcare of federal and state workers but almost no private companies offer that benefit. I think our quest for elemination of entitlements should start there and not with working parents trying to find suitable daycare for their children.

Annoe wrote: " jamies, it's not 37% of half...it is 37% instead of 50% so if your DH gets $1000 at full retirement age you'd get $500, but at 62 you'd get $370...." YES. At 66 the spouse can collected 50% of the benefit. Maybe this helps, from the SSA: " A spouse receives one-half of the retired worker's full benefit unless the spouse begins collecting benefits before full retirement age. If the spouse begins collecting benefits before full retirement age, the amount of the spouse's benefit is reduced by a percentage based on the number of months before he/she reaches full retirement age. For example, based on the full retirement age of 66, if a spouse begins collecting benefits: At age 65, the benefit amount would be about 46 percent of the retired worker's full benefit; At age 64, it would be about 42 percent; At age 63, 37.5 percent; and At age 62, 35 percent. " Here is a link that might be useful: Social Security Spouse benefits percentages This post was edited by maddielee on Mon, Apr 15, 13 at 15:24

I recently lost both of my parents. I have four brothers and sisters and most of them have children. The possessions are not worth a ton of money and luckily none of us are really fighting over anything. Everything is supposed to be divided evenly between us kids. Two important things that I have learned from this experience: Online wills or cheap easy to fill out wills do not hold up in all states. Very few states will recognize a hand written will anymore. My parents did the cheap online version and we had to take everything through court to have it approved by the state. It didn't cost us much but it did drag things out a bit. Saying things like, "when I go, you can have such-and-such" does not mean anything AFTER they die. If someone wants to give you something, they need to hand it over to you BEFORE they die. After they die all their possessions become part of their estate and are no longer theirs to give. So if you father would like to reward one of his children for whatever reason, he could give them something valuable before he dies and then let his will be an equal split. It could be a way around hurt feelings when things start to get divvied up.

@k8cd I’ve actually been told by two locals now that the rental market is even more insane here than the home sales. One person suggested renting out our house because apparently SFH’s in this area are hard to come by. The only way I could make that argument with my husband would be to show that it would be extremely lucrative, though, because neither of us are interested in being landlords. @elcieg Why, yes, and I’m starting with my HOA’s parks and rec committee chair position! Ha! (I really have thought about joining the board, but it would be completely self-serving, so that doesn’t seem like a wise idea.) And thank you for bringing up misophonia. Although I was aware of it, I hadn’t really taken it seriously before now. I did more reading about it today, and I definitely plan to bring it up with my physician this week.