Business, Finance, and Law Blog
For years, your IRA and 401(k) grew without the IRS asking for a share. At 73, that changes. You generally have to start taking required minimum distributions, or RMDs, every year. The starting age has moved over time. It was 70 and a half for decades, then rose to 72, and now sits at 73. … Read more Turning 73? Your First RMD Comes With a Timing Choice
Here’s something most homeowners never think about until it happens. The day the old siding comes off is the only day in the life of your house that anyone gets to see the actual wall. Not a section of it. Not what a moisture meter suggests. The whole thing, framing to sheathing, top to bottom. … Read more The Wall You Only See Once
Most retail in America closes by nine. Drive through any commercial district at 11 PM and you will see the same thing. Dark windows, empty lots, one convenience store holding down the block. That schedule assumes everyone works nine to five. A lot of people do not. Who Is Still Working at 11 PM Cooks … Read more Who Actually Shops After Midnight
The contractor sweeps up, hauls the debris out, and the room looks done. Two weeks later there’s a grey film on the picture frames in a room on the other side of the house. That’s remodel dust, and the thing about remodel dust is that it doesn’t stay where the work was. Why it gets … Read more Construction Dust Sticks Around Longer Than You Think
Home equity looks like simple math. Value minus what you owe. The trouble is the second number. Most people use the balance printed on last month’s statement. That is rarely the right figure, and the difference can decide whether a house is safe. Balance and Payoff Are Not the Same A statement balance shows principal. … Read more The Mortgage Number That Decides Whether You Keep Your House
The instinct is understandable. There is water on the basement floor, it came up through a drain, and the plan is rubber gloves, a mop, a shop vac, and a jug of bleach before anybody else has to look at it. Two things go wrong with that plan, and neither one is squeamishness. The exposure … Read more Gloves and Bleach Are Not a Sewage Cleanup Plan
Most sunset photographs taken from boats are disappointing, and it is almost never the camera. It is that a boat introduces three problems a tripod on a beach does not have, and nobody warns you about any of them until you are looking at the results. The Best Light Arrives Before the Sun Leaves The … Read more Photographing a Peconic Bay Sunset From a Boat
Skylights have a reputation problem in the South, and the old ones earned it fair and square. A single-pane acrylic bubble from 1985 turns a hallway into a greenhouse by lunchtime, and the flashing kits those units shipped with were an afterthought at best. Plenty of homeowners tore theirs out years ago and swore off … Read more Thinking About a Skylight in a Hot Climate? Read This First
Most people order the same pizza for years. There is nothing wrong with that, and a Margherita is still the fairest test of any Neapolitan kitchen. But the specialty section is usually where a kitchen shows what it can actually do, and at a lot of shops it is the part customers scroll straight past. … Read more Specialty Pizza: What to Order Once You Are Past the Margherita
Old houses have soul. They’ve also got old pipes, and that part’s worth a thought. If your place has been standing a few decades, a sewer backup isn’t some freak event. It’s a real possibility. Knowing what usually sets one off gives you a shot at catching it before the basement’s underwater. Tree Roots In … Read more What Causes Sewer Backups in Older Homes