One year ago today, we crossed the Texas border.
In this time of
immigration hysteria, let me make it clear that it was the
Texas-Louisiana border.
Yay! We were finally back! We left Texas as adventurous newlyweds for what we
thought would be a short exploration of, to us, hitherto unfamiliar
regions of the United States. It was great fun and I wouldn't trade any
of it.
But last year, we realized that time truly does escape from you if you're not careful. We knew it was way past time to go home. So rather than watch another 12 calendar pages flip past before we knew it, we just packed up and headed
home.
Neither the hubby nor I grew up in Austin. But
our Texas hometowns are both tiny burghs and we still wanted some medium-sized city
excitement, so here we are.
We found it fitting that we arrived on Cinco de Mayo, a day of
celebration and, if not strict independence, one of freedom. In addition to celebrating our return to
our native soil, we also were
celebrating freedom from the tyranny of hurricane season, although
last night's thunderstorms and accompanying power outage brought
back a few unhappy Florida flashbacks.
Growing up in West Texas I always was, and remain, very aware and
appreciative of the historic connections between Texas and Mexico. And
recent U.S.-Mexico disagreements on immigration and drug legalization aside, remember who the Mexicans defeated on this day in 1862: France.
Need I say more?
Plus, how can you not love a day on which consumption of Tex-Mex
cuisine and margaritas is almost a legal requirement? Sure beats the heck out of crepes
and escargot in my estimation.
So viva Cinco de Mayo, viva Texas and
viva home!
Texas transitions: That's not to say that our return home has been without
incident.
Not only did we have to deal with lifestyle issues (different, although mostly better, grocery stores — Whole Foods! Central Market!) and temporal considerations (I'm still having issues with
Central time after all my years on the East coast), we also faced a few financial challenges upon our return to the Lone Star State.
So today, in joint celebration of our Texas repatriation and Cinco de
Mayo, here are five bilingual — well, in numeration at least. I need
to take a Spanish refresher course! — financial lessons we've learned
this past year. Here's hoping that you, too, will find them useful, regardless of where you call home.
Uno
When we went to the bank 11 months ago to transfer our checking account to our new Texas residency, we couldn't because of different banking regulations in each state. We could close our Florida account and open a
new one at our local branch here in Austin. Or we could officially
remain Florida banking customers and simply change our mailing address
on the account.
One local bank rep urged us to open a Texas account. Another said don't bother.
After six years, I had finally committed our bank account's digits to
memory and the thought of relearning new numbers was not appealing. Plus, if we closed the Florida account
and opened one here, I'd have to recreate our online banking and bill
paying system. Whoa! I had enough other stuff going on with the move and house hunting and visiting all my now-closer relatives.
So we still technically bank out of Florida. The only potential
problem, according to the bank rep who suggested we keep the status
quo, is if we ever need to replace our ATM cards before
they are scheduled to be reissued. Rather than walking into our local
branch and getting a new card immediately, we'll have to contact our
Florida office and have them mail us the new piece of plastic. I can
live with that.
Dos
Living in a state without an income
tax means the state will find another way to get you, usually through state and local sales and
local property taxes.
We had already encountered such robbing of Peter to pay Paul in
Florida. But the burden of these taxing avenues was driven home when we
bought our Austin home.
The property taxes on our Florida residence, although higher than what
we'd been paying on our previous Maryland home, didn't freak us out
that much. Plus, in the Sunshine State, the amount a home's taxable
value can increase annually is capped. This basically meant that for
six years, as home values escalated, we were paying lower property
taxes than we should have. Talking Taxes provides a good analysis of this system and the problems it creates in this
post.
But what goes around comes around. We are now paying for all those
Florida years of taxes on undervalued property by remitting ginormous property tax payments on our Austin casa. At least it's still
deductible on our federal returns!
Tres
At least here in Texas, we have a bit of control of those
taxes. You don't have to escrow the property tax (or your hazard
insurance) payments.
I was stunned. I was sure I heard incorrectly.
With every previous mortgage we've had (four homes and three re-fis), I've
complained about this process. How I wanted to have that money so that
we could earn interest on it ourselves.
Plus, if I could take care of this myself, I could quit bugging
the lender to make sure the bills were paid on time or paid early in order to get a
discount.
Now one of my biggest home loan wishes was true and I just couldn't believe it. At every meeting with our mortgage broker, I started out the session with, "Now about this no escrow deal
…"
The hubby finally had to tell me to shut up or she'd pull the loan
because she'd think, since I couldn't get the no escrow concept through
my head, that we (and by we, he meant me) were too stupid to have a
mortgage.
Of course, there was a price for this escrow freedom. We had to pay a
one-time fee of a quarter point at closing. But we figured we'd get that back in a
year or less from interest on the money we didn't have to hand over to the bank
every month.
Anyway, the seller paid all our points, so we didn't actually
have to pay anything. And we got to use those points as a deduction on
our tax return. Yes, seller-paid points are deductible by the buyer.
Ain't homeownership tax breaks grand?
I still, of course, hate writing that one big check in December to the
Travis County tax collector. But I so love being in total control of
the payment.
Cuatro
Hail and wind storm insurance in Texas is very similar to
hurricane insurance.
Both are separate from your regular home hazard
policy.
Each has a separate deductible, with the hail damage portion
computed as a percentage of your insured property's value. In some
cases, this second deductible amount is substantially larger than what
you'd have to pay if you put in a claim after someone broke in and
stole all your high-dollar home entertainment equipment.
And both wind/hail and hurricane insurance operate on a per storm basis
for claims.
So if Mother Nature whacks your house to the tune of $5,000
and you pay a $2,000 deductible to get it all repaired, get ready for a
shock if another storm comes barreling through. When hail from that second storm a month later causes another $3,000 in damage, get ready to pony up
another two grand deductible before your insurer will issue you another check.
Cinco
Finally, I've had one very distressing financial discovery since returning to my
native state. The chances of winning the Texas lottery aren't any
better than those in other states we've lived.
Numerals excerpted from Courtney's Portfolio.
