Taxing Work

It's still March, and that means it's tax time.  I did my taxes today, and since I had a salary increase and a much better bonus in 2013 compared to 2012, my taxable income increased a large amount.  This greatly increased my income tax at both the federal and state level.  Let's just say that I paid many thousands more in income tax, but I am only receiving $300 more of a federal income tax refund.  And of course the social security withholding rate has increased from last year.  My total net salary was still higher, but as a percentage of my income, the taxes increased significantly.  See the chart below that illustrates this.

As one might suppose, my effective tax rate also increased.  I graphed a little history of that.

And, to see if Obamacare has really decreased my insurance premiums, I also graphed the history of that.  I didn't go all the way back to when I started working - only as far back as when we started being paid once a month since that was the easiest to calculate.  As you can see in the graph below, my insurance premiums have continued to increase.

If Obamacare were going to truly decrease my premiums, there should be negative percentages, not positive percentages in this graph.

In summary:  I like making more money, and the government likes it too!  As a side note, if I don't have health insurance this year (2014), the tax software estimates that I would have to pay another $1000 in taxes for that.  Good thing I do have health insurance!

2014 Bushel Basket List, Weeks 11 & 12

Checked off the list:  #4 -Visit a foreign country.  It kind of feels like cheating to use the same trip to fulfill the scuba diving and foreign travel requirement, but I'll take it.  Maybe when/if I travel more this year I will have to update a few of these bucket list items.  I went to Cozumel, Mexico, March 7-12.

2014 Bushel Basket List, Weeks 9 & 10

Checked off the list:  #11 - Go scuba diving at least once.  I went scuba diving in Cozumel, Mexico on March 10th and 11th.

Robotics Update

I was in such a rush to be on vacation, I didn't have time to tell you about the robotics build season.  By the time we bagged the robot it was working fairly well, but it was a bit of a rocky start and nerve-wracking finish.  The mechanical design and build team took a little bit longer than usual to get everything going, so we wired most of the robot in about two days.  And then we had one or two days to refine the program.  The last evening we had maybe one hour to practice, and then into the bag it went.  Overall I think it will give us pretty good results, but the proof will be in the competitions.

Our prototype shooter was shooting beautifully, and for the first couple days of shooting on the real robot it was looking good.  But then it lost its mojo.  We struggled for at least two days trying to get it back. And finally on the day we had to bag it, we discovered the key to getting the mojo back was some good old WD-40 to prevent binding in the launch mechanism.

Prototype shooter

Prototype "bling with a purpose".  Our final solution is much different, but this was one concept we tried.

A peek at some of the wiring.

Robot nearly complete - some pneumatic hoses were missing, so we used last year's robot to fire the ball.

Nearly complete - ready to be bagged.

Bagged with about ten minutes to spare before the deadline.

 Cocking the shooting mechanism:

Shooting the ball!

We go to our first competition in a little bit over a week......good times!

2014 Bushel Basket List, Weeks 7 & 8

Checked off the list:  #3 - Go snowboarding - I actually have done that a couple times this year.  The first time was January 1st when Bex and I went sledding on a small hill near my house.  I also took my snowboard and tried out the hill that way.  The picture on the left is that instance.  It looks more exciting than it was.  And of course the picture on the right is from Vail, Colorado when I went snowboarding three days.