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Pretty sure that’s not a requirement.

I heard that, everything has to be redo after getting citizenship.

Regarding property tax filing, is it possible to delay until Jan/2020 in Texas to bunch 2019 and 2020 taxes together to get itemized deductible more than standard deductible during alternate years. My tax is paid by mortgage company using escrow account. Not sure if i can call them ask them to delay the payment.

Thanks

Probably depends on the due date. In my experience escrow pays ON or just before the due date.

I think someone already asked this question, was it you?

I would verify this strategy with someone in your state that is more knowledgeable than me. I live in WA state and the due dates of our taxes don’t allow this strategy to work here in my county, but it looks like TX assessment is done beginning of the year and sent out in Oct but not due until Jan 31st the following year.

It looks to me that you can pay your 2019 taxes in Jan 2020 and pay your 2020 taxes in Dec 2020 to bundle your tax payments into one calendar year. With TX being one of the highest property tax states this would be a huge benefit to itemize property taxes (but only up to $10k).

I would call your escrow company to see when they pay and cancel to pay it yourself if you can.

It depends on when the taxes are assessed and when they are due.

If the assessment occurs in the current year and the taxes are due in the next year, you (or your servicer) can pay them in whichever year is more advantageous for you.

Keep in mind that total state and local tax deductions are limited to $10k.

My error … I should have said marketing lists.

It is $10k max for one tax filing year? My property tax is $10k+ per year. I guess there is no use of bundling 2 years of taxes into 1 year payment. Thanks for the information.

To those of you with bank accounts that require a certain number of transactions per month to remain fee free, or to guarantee a higher interest rate… what do you do to meet your minimum number of transactions each month (assuming it isn’t your main bank account)?

Actual debit transactions are too risky** and time-consuming, which is why I’ve never bothered with this. Some of the more interesting ideas I recall and would consider doing myself are amazon GC reloads and small ($1) charity donations, executed on a schedule using a script / batch file.

**because the high interest checking account with many thousands in it could be drained if the debit card data is stolen, causing the account holder to deal with restoring those balances, reversing overdraft fees, waiting for a debit card replacement, and losing interest income.

Some older links on the subject, which might warrant a separate thread if we don’t already have one:

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@scripta thank you. These are the exact links I was looking for. I couldn’t remember if they were on here or DoC. I agree 100% with you on the high interest “rewards” checking accounts. I refuse to chase those rates with those accounts in part because of what you point out. In my case, I just got $200 of a $300 checking account bonus, but the final $100 is paid on the 1 year anniversary. Instead of keeping $2,500 in it for a year to keep it fee free (and sacrifice ~$50 in interest), I’d rather keep a low balance and do 6 ~$1 transactions. And then close it when the $100 is paid.

Is refinancing 15 year to smaller duration worth it?

There is a small rate advantage to go from 15 to 10 years, but nothing like changing from a 30 yr to a 15. The closing costs would probably not make it worth it in most cases.

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Looks like Amazon Allowance is dead as it requires $5 per transaction for recurring loads. Square Cash is also no good as it requires $10 per transaction for recurring loads. I guess I’ll just have to remember to do them 6 times each month.

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On second thought, I think I am going to go with Square Cash even if it’s $10 per transaction. If I keep $100 in the account and set up a monthly transfer in of $60, I can pretty much automate it. And since anything in my Square account is still cash, the only real non-automated transfer will be the $60 out of Square each month.

Just go with Amazon account reloads. You cant automate it, but 6 x 50-cents takes less than 90 seconds once/month.

And no, Amazon isnt inclined to freeze your account over multiple reloads, even if there are a handful of random horror stories implying as such.

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To meet bank account transactions, I make 10 one dollar and one cent incremental billpay payments at comcast.com to pay for my internet service (ie: $1.01, $1.02, $1.03…$1.10 per each card). Comcast makes it super easy to billpay online but you have to increment the payment because you can’t make the same exact payment on the same card in the same day. This also makes it easier for me to keep track too though.

You can always pay online towards other utility services too. I can make 30 billpays per month in about 15 min.

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This is a good general rule for anyone making repetitive payments. If a payment ends up missing, do you want to have to chase down one of 10+ possible transactions with a CSR, or would you rather know right away which transaction is missing?

I had an issue with a larger payment that went missing, where there was merely 4 identical payment over more than a month, and over two years later I’m still waiting to get my money back because they can’t even figure out which one went unpaid, let alone where the money went.

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I checked and it looks like this is an option. I went ahead and tried to add my utility bill as a bill pay merchant on the bank’s site. This bank’s interface is terrible. I can’t even tell if it worked. We’ll see if this works. If not, maybe I’ll try from the utility’s end. Thanks for the idea.

Billpays? I thought you needed purchases with your debit card? If it’s just unspecified transactions you need, you can send yourself billpay checks for as much of as little as you want, s often as you want.

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