This year my property tax refund will cover almost 80% of my 2026 property tax bill. This is bigger than last year’s refund because my co-occupant had no income to report. Qualifying for this state refund is one of the primary reasons that I have been able to afford early retirement. But next year will probably be the last time I get a refund this big. To qualify, your total household income must be under $139,320. If I claim social security at age 65 (in 2027), my income will still be well under the limit. It just means that my property tax refund will be less in the years ahead. But that’s okay. I’d rather have the monthly income than have to wait until October for an annual refund. My property tax is built into my mortgage, which is now down to $7,300.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assuming social security is still around in 2027, my annual income will be around $45k. Of course, Medicare will take a portion of my social security. My girlfriend applied for social security 4 weeks ago. They sent her online application to the Chicago office, and we have not heard anything yet. She qualifies for ex-spouse benefits, which may delay her application. We estimated that her benefit would be about $900 per month. That will add to our household income, which will further reduce the amount of the property tax refund. That is my assumption anyway, since we live in a state that taxes social security. My tax situation could get more complicated in the coming years. One aspect is having to pay quarterly income tax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of today, there is still no resolution to the war with Iran. Trump’s blockade seems to be putting pressure on Iran to reach an agreement. It remains to be seen, since no one seems to be in charge over there. I decided to sell my shares of Devon Energy and take an $800 profit. I didn’t like the fact that they are trying to get approval to issue more shares to help pay for their merger with Coterra Energy. I acquired FTXN, a Nasdaq oil and gas ETF, which holds a 3.70% stake in Devon Energy. I wanted to have wider exposure to gas and oil companies. Once the Iran conflict is settled, there will be a rotation out of gas and oil when the price of crude begins dropping. I didn’t want to be sitting on a profit with DVN when an agreement with Iran could happen any day now. So far, I’m up about 7.5% on FTXN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year my property tax refund will cover almost 80% of my 2026 property tax bill. This is bigger than last year’s refund because my co-occupant had no income to report. Qualifying for this state refund is one of the primary reasons that I have been able to afford early<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}