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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
That's good that your are taking the opportunity to talk to her about the way the world was when she was young. I would also suggest you write things down for your niece. This is something you can pass down to your niece.

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That's a great idea. I should do that.

I've been meaning to spend more time at her place. I should make a point of it when the weather gets warmer. She's got about 5 totes full of picutres of people I don't even know from her lifetime. Things that I took great care to save when I was throwing out the hoard that had accumulated in that basement over decades with my uncle and after he passed away. I think she'd get a kick out of going through them, and I could write down things on the back of the pictures.

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I learned a little about the world during the Great Depression from my dad and my mum. Maybe even a couple of things from my dad's sister too. That's another reason why I miss my dad and his brothers and sisters.

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Yeah. Sorry to hear about that. I know when I was younger I didn't place any value on nostalgic things, but as I get older they've become quite a bit more meaningful as people I used to care about aren't around anymore.

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Well, my brain and numbers. So it is easier for me to get someone to do it and most places e-file nowadays but print you off a copy for record keeping. I like that.

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I wonder if Canada makes it easier than it is here in the States. I imagine that they do.



It's insane that with the technology available to us today that filing taxes online is 5 times the ordeal as doing them by hand and making a trip to the post office to mail them in.

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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Originally posted by Brenda:
The last time my mum had a visit from one of her aunt's, I took the opportunity to write down a bunch of information from her side of the family. I still have it too.

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Don't know about the easier. I've heard complaints about the government site being a pain. And these people volunteer to help others do their paper work so they know the site.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
The last time my mum had a visit from one of her aunt's, I took the opportunity to write down a bunch of information from her side of the family. I still have it too.

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That's cool. The only real thing I have like that is a couple of small notebooks that my Uncle tucked away in a tacklebox for me in a place he knew I'd find it before he decided that he'd had enough of this world. It had some cool things he'd picked up while he was in the army overseas in his youth as well, and a bag of weed he never got around to smoking. I've never been able to bring myself to read them, but I still have them almost 15 years later.

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I have a slew of old photographs and I am talking a couple that go back to the late 1800s. They were taken in Scotland and both have written on them who the people are in them but no dates, so the close as I can come is around 1899.

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Nice. My grandma has some really old timey photos in there too. I wonder if she'll be able to put names to the faces or if that knowledge is already lost to history. In any event, it surely will if I don't go over there and spend time with her while looking at them. I don't imagine that any of her kids will do it if they haven't already. They might not even know that those photos exist.

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I'm sure she would and yes, writing down who's in the photograph and a year if she can do that would be good too.

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Yeah. That'd be great.

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Well, my parents were older and my aunts and uncles weren't as close as yours are around you. I knew my family was walking this continent for a long time before I got as much detail as I have.

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Yeah. With a few exceptions we all pretty much stayed around this area. It wasn't really until my generation grew up that the family really spread out. Nobody moved out of the country yet, but it's a coast to coast thing. I hardly ever see any of my cousins anymore.

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Don't know about the easier. I've heard complaints about the government site being a pain. And these people volunteer to help others do their paper work so they know the site.

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At least you have a government site. That alone has to make it easier. We're left with 3rd party for-profit outfits that constantly try to upsell you from free to whatever they charge to make it easier for you to do.

It's so funny seeing it in action for the first time. Having done my own taxes for over 20 years, even when they got quite complicated at times when I did things out of the ordinary like purchasing the house, I knew exactly what they were getting at when they were asking a million and one questions. I know exactly what things apply to me, and the only changes that ever occur to that would be in the beginning of the tax book in a section called "what's changed". If nothing has changed that pertains to me, then I do it the same as I did last year.

My aunt's taxes couldn't be any simpler. Just a W2 for wages from one job. No interest. No investments outside of a company retirement plan.

All it should take for me to file her taxes online is to put in her personal identifying information and the figures. It should be a 2 or 3 page ordeal at most. Not 80 pages to struggle through needlessly.


I think the problem is two-fold. Not only are they trying to confuse and frustrate the tax payers here, but they're also counterintuitively trying to dumb it all down to the lowest common denominator as well.

The worst part is, other than giving her more guided experience using the internet in general, she didn't really learn anything about the tax prep process that will help her in the future. We used a company that backed out of the free file this year, but allowed free filing on its own until the end of next month and then they won't have free filing for anyone after that. I won't let her pay somebody to file her simple taxes online in the future, so that means we're going to have to see how it is next year and I'll figure out what the best way to do it then will be.

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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh what kinda nd of unit?

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
We got the expected cool-down and drizzle yesterday early AM, but then a fast-moving unexpected storm blew thru in the evening. It got dark and gusty, and there was lightning starting northeast moving south to our southeast but none overhead. Looks like Orange County might have gotten some rain tho!

Cold weather meant soup for dinner!

I
And this AM I saw TWO scrub jays picking up peanuts! They must be nesting nearby! I thought that maybe since our backdoor neighbor cut his jungle down they would have moved away, but I guess they found another suitable home!

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Good luck SIG.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Good luck SIG.

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Thanks. Don't expect to see me around much (rescheduled, sigh).

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Back from my walk and had a nice cup of coffee with one of the ladies that used to come and help me look after my mum.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Sorry, don't mean to complain about the weather! I'm perfectly happy with ours the way it is!

Yours sounds beastly.

Wish there was some way to make it better!

Maybe ... you're almost thru winter?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Back from my walk and had a nice cup of coffee with one of the ladies that used to come and help me look after my mum.

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That sounds so nice! It's always good to keep in touch!

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What is with the double posts???

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Sounds like a great visit Jack. You are lucky to have living members of your family that old. There are times when I really miss my dad's oldest sister but all his brothers and sisters are gone now and I never knew my grandparents on either side. They all died long before I was born.

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I try to talk to her about old things now when we talk. About what she thought of the world when she was young. She's really my only opportunity to hear about what somebody thought life was like during and right after the Great Depression. I wasted that opportunity with all of my other grandparents.

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Yeah tax time is b&tch no matter where you are. I will soon have to get mine done. And we have on line things up here but I can't be bothered.

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I actually don't mind doing my own. Paper and mail is the way to go, even though they penalize you and hold your return hostage for an extra month or two if you mail it.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
That's good that your are taking the opportunity to talk to her about the way the world was when she was young. I would also suggest you write things down for your niece. This is something you can pass down to your niece.

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That's a great idea. I should do that.

I've been meaning to spend more time at her place. I should make a point of it when the weather gets warmer. She's got about 5 totes full of picutres of people I don't even know from her lifetime. Things that I took great care to save when I was throwing out the hoard that had accumulated in that basement over decades with my uncle and after he passed away. I think she'd get a kick out of going through them, and I could write down things on the back of the pictures.

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I learned a little about the world during the Great Depression from my dad and my mum. Maybe even a couple of things from my dad's sister too. That's another reason why I miss my dad and his brothers and sisters.

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Yeah. Sorry to hear about that. I know when I was younger I didn't place any value on nostalgic things, but as I get older they've become quite a bit more meaningful as people I used to care about aren't around anymore.

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Well, my brain and numbers. So it is easier for me to get someone to do it and most places e-file nowadays but print you off a copy for record keeping. I like that.

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I wonder if Canada makes it easier than it is here in the States. I imagine that they do.


It's insane that with the technology available to us today that filing taxes online is 5 times the ordeal as doing them by hand and making a trip to the post office to mail them in.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Sounds like a great visit Jack. You are lucky to have living members of your family that old. There are times when I really miss my dad's oldest sister but all his brothers and sisters are gone now and I never knew my grandparents on either side. They all died long before I was born.

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I try to talk to her about old things now when we talk. About what she thought of the world when she was young. She's really my only opportunity to hear about what somebody thought life was like during and right after the Great Depression. I wasted that opportunity with all of my other grandparents.

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Yeah tax time is b&tch no matter where you are. I will soon have to get mine done. And we have on line things up here but I can't be bothered.

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I actually don't mind doing my own. Paper and mail is the way to go, even though they penalize you and hold your return hostage for an extra month or two if you mail it.

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That's hogwash.

I used to file my returns every Jan 1st, and would get my refund between 10 and 25 days later.
If you are waiting for the deluge of hundreds of millions of returns before filing yours, then the only delay is them working through the backlog.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I suggest recording video. Prop a phone or cheap vid camera to capture the conversation. Then the vid will also show what the photos looked like when they are described, so the specific pic can be closely looked at decades later when reviewing the vid.
Take notes like an interview, mostly for when topics arise that you want to return to later, but without disrupting the flow of story being told. Older folks disgorge more info, and better details when not interrupted. When names are mentioned, follow up later with spelling's and clarifying specific relationships, date ranges, locations.
I started doing Family Tree questions when I was in Jr High, and notetaking will never keep up with the narrative, and you'll miss key points. I learned stuff that my parents and grandparents never knew.
I was conceived around the time JFK was assassinated. I did ask my mom about that time, how the nation seemed, how could the nation swallow all that malarkey about Oswald being a lone gunman at a time when people were supposed to be able to think for themselves.

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Technology has nothing to do with it.
Thank Billy Boy Gates for turning promising computers into useless paperweights.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Sorry, don't mean to complain about the weather! I'm perfectly happy with ours the way it is!

Yours sounds beastly.

Wish there was some way to make it better!

Maybe ... you're almost thru winter?

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Sounds like a great visit Jack. You are lucky to have living members of your family that old. There are times when I really miss my dad's oldest sister but all his brothers and sisters are gone now and I never knew my grandparents on either side. They all died long before I was born.

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I try to talk to her about old things now when we talk. About what she thought of the world when she was young. She's really my only opportunity to hear about what somebody thought life was like during and right after the Great Depression. I wasted that opportunity with all of my other grandparents.

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Yeah tax time is b&tch no matter where you are. I will soon have to get mine done. And we have on line things up here but I can't be bothered.

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I actually don't mind doing my own. Paper and mail is the way to go, even though they penalize you and hold your return hostage for an extra month or two if you mail it.

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That's hogwash.

I used to file my returns every Jan 1st, and would get my refund between 10 and 25 days later.
If you are waiting for the deluge of hundreds of millions of returns before filing yours, then the only delay is them working through the backlog.

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I have no idea how you were filing returns on January 1st since nobody gives you the W2 statements that early, unless you were always doing contract work. I filed mine at the end of January this year, on the very day that the document I needed was made available online. It couldn't be filed before that day.

They usually don't take 6 weeks, but if you go to the IRS website right now they will specifically state that you aren't supposed to expect a return if you mailed it for 6 weeks or 21 days if you efiled. They've said that for years. It might take longer now though since we went into this tax season and there were still 5 million altered returns that still hadn't been processed after they changed the rules on unemployment income after Biden* was sworn in.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Not sure if you are being sarcastic.

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A couple times I got caught after having the whole return prepped early, then got some bonus at Company Party on Dec 31. So had to make those specific changes to include that income, before mailing on Jan 1.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
JSF, why do you have to post everything in such a hostile manner? Yanno, ppl might accept your info more readily if you stopped sprinkling your posts with insults. I can't imagine how you get on with ppl if you behave that way IRL

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
JSF, why do you have to post everything in such a hostile manner? Yanno, ppl might accept your info more readily if you stopped sprinkling your posts with insults. I can't imagine how you get on with ppl if you behave that way IRL

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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if you idiots don't want the info, you don't need to strain yourself reading it . Dummy.

Yeah. Sarcasm doesn't translate well.


Anyhow, if it is a more pointed comment or critique, maybe you will remember it easier. I might not be around next time to remind you again.
If I don't bother addressing your delusions and mistakes, assume it means I don't care whether you leArn or not.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Just had some music on today. Started with a CD of music from the tv series "Miami Vice" then some Tim McGraw.

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