Robert

I am WAY behind watching shows I'm wanting to see. I'm at a point now where I have more time for catching up on shows.

My problem now is being able to find and get them while they are available. I could buy seasons if I had to, but I prefer to watch once and move on. I don't have cable either - I rely on Netflix DVD and Amazon Video mostly. Amazon isn't real good in TV selection for titles/seasons that are free with Prime and Netflix DVD is hit/miss on shows and seasons (though much better than Amazon). I may get Netflix streaming too at some point, but have plenty to watch between the other sources. My main problem is that my Netflix DVD queue only holds 500 titles (and a single 6 DVD season of a show counts as 6 titles!). So my queue is always full after about a dozen shows are added (all available seasons of). I have, so far, been watching series straight through from episode 1 to last episode. I'm thinking about changing to putting season 1 of all shows I want in my queue so more seasons are "tracking" in my list and then as I watch a season, I order next season at the end of my queue and just cycle through all the shows. This might make the shows a bit more interesting by mixing it up, but am worried that some shows might have seasons leave Amazon and Netflix before I get to them. I'd hate getting 10 seasons into a 18 season show to have the remainder gone before I can watch them. Suggestions - keep going straight through shows or mix & match shows, or other?

My wife and I both have home based businesses that utilizes the internet. It also serves as our home internet. We have three computers, three phones, an Ipad and a Blu-ray player all drawing from single home router (all on Wifi except 1 PC and Blu-ray player). We are on a simple 75 MB plan with 1TB monthly data cap. Speeds of upload/download can be poor at times. I don't really want to spend a lot of money for major speeds (like 150+), but as I can expense it I wonder if I should. Is it better to maximize internet performance despite extra cost and expense it or to save on internet costs and use the money elsewhere? Thoughts/Advice?

Every mortgage I've had allows for extra payment to be made and they ask whether to apply it to principle or interest. If I apply it to principle, the base goes down resulting in less interest. But if you made extra payment to interest, your base is the same - so what have you gained? Is there any advantage to extra payments applied to interest?

I have monthly reports with multiple sheets that feed data to each other and calculate results. I use this report every month and have to have data from the monthly reports to an annual one (ie I have 12 such spreadsheets per year feeding a 13th one). The tab that sums the data that feeds the 13th report has lots of Div/0 and Value errors. These reports need to be uniform and account both for when data is there and when it isn't (because the groups on each spreadsheet and products they have change month to month and group by group). I'm trying to find a simple command that will change all instances of DIV and Value errors to zero so that I can move forward with reporting. It needs to also be a soft replace such that should the value change to a real number it would show the real value again or vice versa (for example let's say January report group A has no disability coverage renewing, so there is nothing there and thus feed through results in Div/0 error, but they then decide to move up their renewal to January so now there is valid data with valid results that need to feed through.

Any ideas that don't involve having to manually add a formula to the top of every column or every sum column formula?

I have about 180,000 tracks in my WMP library (about 90K are music and rest are audiobooks). My library appears to have become corrupted, so found an eHow article on how I need to delete a bunch of files and then re-open WMP and it should rebuild. I did this and it started rebuilding, but VERY slowly - originally about a track every 2 or 3 seconds....but now it is doing a track about every 20 minutes. Any ideas how to speed it up?

My parents are old and trying to reduce their estate. They have been gifting what they can and making arrangements for their estate. I have a successful, growing business for which I'm sole proprietor. If my parents invest in my company what they were going to leave me in their will - would that resolve passing the money free of taxes? In normal circumstances, I think I'd owe an investor the money back and if they dies, then owe it to their estate. If I'm the beneficiary of the estate as well, couldn't I then dismiss the debt my company had to the estate - thus keeping the investment vs it getting taxed as inheritance?

I'm having trouble lately when trying to work on the computer where my body won't respond to the directions from my mind. For example - I may have Excel, Outlook and a couple other files open, but I need to go to the Excel file and am fully aware that's the screen I need to go to - but I just sit there rather than my hand moving the mouse to the Excel icon. It gets to where I may have to verbally say "open Excel" several times before my body actually does this action. Sometimes it will hover on the right icon and just as I'm about to click, my hand bumps it to the next icon over opening the wrong screen instead. Similarly, I may open a spreadsheet that I know has the information I need and I know it is in view on the screen without need of scrolling but I simply can't focus on the right information unless I stop looking and try "find" search. Not sure why my body is not properly following the direction from my mind. I'm 46, so it seems it might be a bit early for something like Alzheimers but who knows?

I bought a 2016 Nissan Leaf with the deluxe Bose package to replace our totalled 2004 Ford Taurus. Aside from a 2007 Highlander Hybrid, this is the first car I've bought in many years, the first electric car, and the first time I bought a deluxe model.

What concerns me are the speakers. The front ones are flexible in volume and clear, but the rear speakers are very quiet, even if I use controls to shift all sound to rear. I took it in to the shop and they replaced the amplifier, but it still seems just as quiet. Is that how speakers are supposed to be these days? Maybe some feature to keep the folks in the rear seats from getting deafened by loud stereo? Advice?

I have AnyDVD, VLC Player and DVDShrink. Several DVDs and I want to rip them to my PC and backup to cloud. I want ability to later put on USB and watch on my TV via USB port. Most of my DVDs are TV series, rather than movies. What is best way to rip (ie .iso or copy (vob)) and does it need further conversion to be USB playable on TV? I want a solution for longterm DVD storage so I'll still be able to watch my DVD data on TV after DVDs and DVD players become obsolete. Any advice on best way to accomplish this - preferably with just the tools noted above, or minimal (free) additional steps? I would do something like Vuze, but don't want to pay again to backup DVDs I bought the first time.

My parents are old and are trying to move their estate gradually to the children and grandchildren so there is less to contend with when they die (ie estate taxes and burden of such assets post-mortem). They have already informed me of the sum they intend for me to receive upon death, but in addition have been gifting money to our family and my sibling over the past few years.

Last year I started a rental property business (up to 8 properties at present) and am looking to get to 20+ by 2020. I've been looking at traditional lenders, but with mixed results. A thought then occured to me - what if my parents invest what they intended to be my inheritance into my business? I'd have the business capital influx early for investment, they would have the money out of their estate. Is this a viable means for them to liquidate their estate without getting hit with either gifting or inheritance taxes?

Would their investment mean they have shares of business that become part of estate? Thoughts or solutions on how I can best coordinate something to make this work?

The following are known incomes:

About 82K salary

About 10K Amazon & Ebay

About 60K Income from Rentals

50K Roth IRA Early withdrawl (est 30K were my contributions)

250K Traditional IRA early withdrawl.

I expect my taxes will be really high, but I don't know how high. In addition to my standard salary tax withholdings, my Employer takes an additional $1,000 per paycheck. I am also paying 10K per quarter to IRS as estimated tax (started 2nd quarter). I have 3 rentals I bought last year for about 180K that have depreciation value, and 5 I bought this year for about 300K that will have depreciation. Aside from that, all I have for offsets are standard deductions for married with 2 kids and my home residence mortgage interest. I've tried finding online calculators, but none seem to address this complexity.

Can someone give me a fair ballpark amount on what my likely tax burden would be, preferably with some pointers on how the figure was calculated? Thanks

Traditional IRA - You invest pre-tax and don't pay taxes until you take the funds out.

Roth IRA - You pay taxes upfront and then get tax-free benefit when you take funds out.

Roth makes some sense, because you don't get taxed once you invest the money, so whatever you gained in interest over the years isn't taxed. However, you still lose the access and flexibility of those monies over that time.

Traditional IRA, however, what is the point? If you kept it as income now you get taxed on it. If you take it out later you get taxed on it And what you made in interest. If the whole thing is income subject to tax be it now or later, why wouldn't it be better to simply keep the income (taxed now) and simply use the money for needs and investments outside of the IRA that may get you equal or better returns while maintaining availability of the funds?

Assuming you didn't spend the money foolishly, and made efforts to maximize your income stream through wise investments (stocks, properties, whatever), couldn't you as easily match or exceed the income an IRA could achieve?

Granted it wouldn't amount for much either way - but does the gas bear weight, so you lose weight by farting or does the gas make you lighter, so releasing makes you heavier?

Just thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows.

I've had some doubts. For starters, my wife rarely will have sex with me (once a year or so). This has been the case most of our marriage. My daughter, now 13, is obviously mine as it is clear in her looks. My son looks nothing like me. He does apparently look a lot like my wife's brother when he was little, so he might just have her family features.

However, she used to be really good friends with a couple we knew back then and the lady died from cancer. When she did, my wife spent the next year over at the man's house everyday and watching his kids at our house while I'm at work. I came home unexpected one day during my lunch break and the kids were there, as I was leaving to return I tried to give her a hug and instead she just shook my hand and said goodbye, see you later, like I was some visitor. Made me think maybe she was covering for the kids as they might have seen her affectionate to their dad and she didn't want them to realize this lady is affectionate to "another man". My son does look a lot more like him than me. Same hair, same brow.

I've always treated him as my own, and he very well may be. There are just times when I get stressed with life and my marriage and I question if I've been duped all this time into raising some other man's child by my wife?

Am I just nuts? Should I test him or just try to believe he is mine? Or should I test him to know for sure?

I bought a house and had hardwoods put throughout the house as my wife does not like carpet. After about three months, the boards in one basement room buckled. We had them replaced. Then a second room in the basement buckled, then a third, then the first one buckled again. I'm looking for something that is easy to clean, looks nice and is not real expensive, but not carpet.

I sent my wife and our kids overseas to spend a month with her relatives. While they were away, some neighbors volunteered to help me dig and setup some raised garden beds in our backyard for my wife's garden as I mentioned I thought it would be nice to do as a surprise for her return as she had not had time to do them this year at our new home. The neighbors said their helping me was all just something they like to do and I can tell my wife I did it myself. I did help a lot on the project.

From the moment she saw it, she's been asking who did the job for me. She says the beds are too even for them to have been dug without a special sod machine (there wasn't one used). I have repeatedly told her I used a shovel to dig up the sod and there was no machine. I really did dig up a lot of the sod with a shovel.

Tonight again she was mocking me in front of my 13 year old and 11 year old about how foolish I am to keep claiming I did the work and used a shovel instead of a sod removal machine. She says she wants to borrow the machine and it is dumb that I won't just admit that somebody else did the work with a machine.

Am I right in feeling offended by this? I feel that she should be thankful the work was done and accept that I did it for her. If she has doubts, she should keep them to herself. Or am I wrong in not admitting others did a lot of the job?

Scenario: Child gets house and has 250K mortgage with parent as the lender utilizing appropriate rate of interest for IRS standards. The parent separately gifts money to child and child's spouse up to annual gift limit. Child uses the gifted money to repay the loan to the parent.

Would this work?

I borrowed about 130K from my life insurance that I don't really ever need to pay back, but it does accumulate 4.5% interest (interest goes to my account not insurance company). This does not hit my credit report.

I also have about 250K mortgage with 29 years left on a 30yr mortgage. This is at 4.35% interest (which is paid to a bank). This does hit my credit report.

I also have about 30K on credit cards on 0% interest. I can also go up to 50K on such offers pretty much whenever but with a 3-5% processing fee. Credit card balance hits my credit report however.

Essentially, the 250K mortgage is on a primary home and the other two amounts are money I used to buy a few rental houses over the summer.

I'm currently paying $2K/mo toward the mortgage (actual owed is like 1500/mo). Paying about 3K/mo to credit cards, and 1k toward life insurance.

Assuming I always have 6K/mo available and that the credit card offers remain available, what would be the best way to pay off these balances? Should I concentrate on one at a time? Redistribute weight of payments toward each? Use the credit card offers toward the other two? Give me your best advice.

Example: Bob and Joe each earn 100K a year. They each owe $300K mortgage and each have $20K in credit card balances.

Bob has a 30 year mortgage with 4% interest. His credit card balance is on an 18 month no interest offer.

Joe has a 15 year mortgage at 8% interest. His credit card balance is due in 3 days and is subject to 27% interest on unpaid balance.

Bob is clearly the better risk, but credit companies consider them equal risks. Why?

How come they overlook the importance repayment term and interest rate factor into the equation?

Enscription on the Lincoln Memorial itself:

IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER

It is a temple with a giant image of Lincoln sitting on a throne cut in white stone (symbolic of "the throne of God?)