engifineer

Our county just raised my property taxes 67% last year. And a lot of people got it worse. One womans value was increased on her house, and then increased another $35k for her "outbuilding" which was about a 6x8 shed that you have to duck to walk into (a shed kit). Plenty of other ones that bad or worse too. The county was taken to court for it by the state and lost, it was ruled they broke the law with the assessment amounts and that money is due back to the homeowners. The county literally said "there will be no refunds, that money is already spent!" and also stated they will keep fighting this and if this did not change there would be other tax raises to compensate. So in other words, FU taxpayers, we will get our money out of you one way or the other. Businesses all over have petitions sitting out to remove specific people from their positions over it. Complete an total BS. I can afford the increase but it sucks. But there are some in a bad position now.

zeroptzero

^ Try living in a country that has a carbon tax - it has caused wild inflation that affects everyone. The carbon tax affects everything we buy , from apples to vehicles and homes, and guess what , emissions have not improved - surprise surprise. We just get robbed of our hard earned money, billions upon billions collected from us and nothing to show for it. It has ruined our once great country, currently run by idiots and zealots.

rrounds

engifineer,
Can't you recall the people that make the tax increases? If not, recall their bosses.
Even through I live in a high tax state,we the people said hell no to high property taxes.
We had old people that paid off their home years or decades earlier that were losing their home because they couldn't pay the property tax. We the people passed prop 13 in 1978 that put a cap of 2% on how much your tax could go up a year. I've lived in my home for 44 years and my property tax is so low. It's based off of the value of my house back when I bought it back in 1980($44,500) it's valued now around $550,000 but my tax can't go up more than 2% a year. I love "the power of the people"

Rod

cosmomiller

I saw that happening when I lived in Minnesota after getting hired by Northwest. All kinds of retired people bought years ago and paid off the mortgage, now living on pensions. Unfortunately the property around them exploded and their modest homes suddenly became very valuable. With property taxes approaching 3% those retired people were forced to sell and move and take on another 30 year mortgage living in a less desireable location.

Thank goodness we in California passed prop 13. It has kept my taxes just a fraction of what it is in other states. A good friend of mine lives on Long Island. His property tax is 3 times what I pay. Ca residents just get nailed on income and sales tax but that is life. I have retired and never been so happy to make such a smaller amount to not pay those taxes!

boltonblue

I will refrain from comment to keep this out of politics.

zeroptzero

Costco is a bit of a conundrum for me. I can go to our preferred grocery store and get everything we need to last us about 2 weeks, and we may spend about $200. If I go to Costco I will spend well over $300.00 and I can't get everything we need, we do get a large quantity of certain foods but we don't get everything we need just larger quantities of some foods. I am also big on shopping local for meats, fish, and fruits and vegetables, so we don't buy those foods at Costco. I know many people go to Costco and stock up on large packs of processed food, my sister shopped like that for her family. I guess a lot of people prefer to feed their families like that, my wife and I don't cook pre-made food at home. We also use a mini-freezer only, it is pretty small so we don't stock up on big quantities of frozen food

AP1ZE1

First week of September Costco brought back their F1 burago collection. Still for $29.99. There was also Red Bull package for all the Max fans

boltonblue

hmmm

zeroptzero

As my wife and I get older, and I seem to be working more with business, I really cherish the ability to get our grocery shopping done quickly and efficiently. We live in a town of about 40k people (pretty small), we get to our preferred grocery store in five minutes driving time. We get in and out of the grocery store on most visits in less than 15 minutes, with fast moving check out lines and easy parking. So we get our grocery shopping completed from home to store and back in 25 minutes max. Time is extremely valuable to me, even if I don't get the "best" price on all grocery items.

robb

I check the flyers every week for sales. The supermarkets that are 15 minutes away from me are generally very expensive but occasionally they have decent sales and it saves me in gas and time. This week they had a few things that I generally buy for buy 1 get 1 free so it worked out well. I went twice this week and got forty dollars worth of food for less than twenty bucks each time,