Garbage, taxes, and checks - oh my!
~ We live more rural, in a town just over 11,000 residents. Each household is responsible for "hiring" their own trash hauler. We've always had our trash picked up every-other week since we moved here because it costs less. Even then we barely generate half a wheel cart (about 95 gallons big) of trash. Most times our separate recycling cart, same size, goes out once a month or every six weeks. We pay around $55 a quarter for our service. Our recycling earns us points for a program called "
Recycle Bank", which we can redeem for goods, services, coupons and magazine subscriptions. When we have used it toward a restaurant reward we laugh about eating our garbage.
~ We've never had the bank hold money for our real estate taxes because we have always paid on our own. When we build our first house we put 30% down (we aren't rich, just really hard workers who save money because we are
cheap thrifty) and so were deemed responsible enough to pay taxes and insurance on our own. It's always been that way for us. And like many of you, I write checks out for any business that charges me a fee for the privilege of paying online. Our credit union charges a monthly fee for enabling online payments, so we use the utility/retail business/etc's in-house auto-pay, charging everything to our Discover card...which we pay in full every month online directly to them. We basically write checks for National Grid (those people want to know everything before you can set up auto-pay...too danged invasive for their own needs) and any bills the town sends (water/sewer, real estate taxes, annual personal property tax). Since town hall is right on my way to the library, which I'm at several times a month, it's not a big deal to pull into their parking lot on my way to the library.
~ Himself is in charge of filing income tax around here. Always waits till the last couple of weeks. I wish he'd get on it for this year though. Since we paid for my health insurance all year but our only income was one month of his social security in December, and a couple hundred dollars of interest from savings/checking accounts, I'm expecting a nice refund. Our shiny, new ACA* promised assistance based on income. We'll see.
*Affordable Care Act