The Wandering Minstrel

How’s this for BUYcotting Arizona? Today is the first official day of construction of our new home. Our builder snapped this (clickable) image of the first scoop of earth for the foundation trench. We hope that in about 120 days we can move in.

We got a lot of business done over the past week and a half. Most importantly, we registered both of our vehicles with ADOT MVD. We’re waiting to get our custom license plates, but they issued a new standard plate for each of us to use while waiting.

As for firearms and shooting, we both have been exercising our Constitutional Carry while on this side of the border but won’t be going to the range until the weather cools off a bit. We will get back to guns more as we settle in to the new home.

Two weeks ago, I posted about Groundbreaking Set for New Arizona Home. At that time, I thought the building permit was imminent. Last week, I discussed the delay with Kevin, our builder and he told me that there were going to be a couple of issues with the permit that probably could be resolved by the end of this week.

When we were in Wickenburg, The Better Half and I walked around the lot with Kevin discussing how the structures would be situated. We made a couple of quick changes to the original plans, like increasing the size of the garage, orienting the garage door toward the east and adding a pull-through RV pad with full hookups.

I obtained the clickable image above from the Maricopa Assessor’s on-line map page and modified it to show roughly where the structures would be placed on the lot. The orange represents the house and garage while the gray represents the location of the RV pad. The Lot size is about 0.55 acres and the size of the compacted pad where the house will be is roughly 0.23 acres. The California lot is a mere 0.15 acres.

The Better Half and I won’t be able to go to the Buycott Arizona rally tomorrow in Tempe but we’re doing our own sort of Buycott - we just closed escrow on a property in Wickenburg and the title has been recorded in our names.

We’re now one step closer to being Arizonans, and in the legal sense, we are already eligible to register our vehicles and obtain drivers licenses there. We’re also able to get a PO box in town and plan to do that on our next trip when we plan to start building our new Territorial Cottage.

In a way, we like to think that Arizona Governor Brewer and the State Legislature have been getting the place ready for us by beefing up immigration and gun laws. We already can legally CCW in Arizona, as they honor the Utah Permit, which we both have had for a couple of years. We won’t need that in Arizona after the new Constitutional Carry law goes into effect at the end of July, 2010.

With any luck, we should be calling this home before fall. You can see American flags flying in all quadrants from the lot.

Earlier this month, we drove to Arizona to the town where we’re planning to relocate. While we were there we saw some of the neighbors on a hillside waving at us. Click on the image to zoom out.

Here I am taking the few steps to get the final escrow arrangements for the new digs. More later.

That’s all for the weekend.

Forging a lifestyle change, we engaged a real estate broker in Arizona last week to start negotiating with a contractor to build a home for us. Today, we met with the broker, and started the process.

We went to a model with a similar floor plan to the home we’re considering. We liked what we saw - a lot. After that, we went to the actual site where the new home is to be constructed. The clickable image is of yours truly discussing options, firearms and the new Arizona laws regarding illegal immigrants with our broker on the lot where the house will be constructed - that’s me in the aloha shirt and panama hat. It’s nice to work with a businessman on the same page with us.

We will meet with the contractor tomorrow to begin customizing the new digs.

As for the house in the Golden Tarnished State, we will be making trips back there (after establishing residence here). We will have to dispose of our vast accumulation of stuff and to get the house on the market.

Even though I am a native Californian, I qualify for honorary Arizona naturalization by virtue of being married to a native Arizonan, my Better Half. I am truly blessed.

In 2009, I had a ‘hybrid’ tax situation. I retired in October so I fell into a category where a ‘life event,’ i.e. retirement, introduced some uncertainty into my ‘normal’ tax situation.

This week, I filed my tax return on-line, as usual. It turned out that I owed the feds a small balance, but the insolvent State of Kalifornistan owes me a little. It has been my custom to try and wind up owing both the state and fed a small amount, just enough so I don’t get a penalty. No sense letting either of the two keep my money interest-free.

I have a plan to deal with the state owing me money. God only knows how long it will take for them to credit my bank account with my refund, or even IF they will do so. Therefore, I can and will suspend state withholding from my pension. A few keystrokes and it’s done.

Update: 04/14/2010 - Amazing! The California Franchise Tax Board deposited our state tax refund to the bank account today. I guess I won’t be suspending the withholding after all.

The Turbo-Tax tool for 2010 isn’t on line yet, so I searched for another way to estimate my 2010 tax liability. A website called CalcXML has a quick federal-only tax calculator that allows you to plug in your situation and numbers to get the estimate almost instantly. You don’t need to register or enter any personal information. I used it to see if my target withholding will be in the ballpark of where it needs to be at year’s end. My state tax bill usually comes in at 25 percent of the federal amount, so I use that as a guide. @#%&! high taxes here.

Just a note about filing in April. I do the numbers in February or March, so I already know the ‘damage.’ I file the week before the deadline so if there is a glitch, I have time to fix it. This time, Turbo Tax and (believe it or not) the IRS found another 250 dollar tax credit during the filing process!

Update: I found the code to put the calculator here . . .