Tax Vibes, Rent Reductions & Spills-n-Chills 🥛

Good morning, HTM Family!

Apparently today is National Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day.

Kind of a silly celebration… But actually now that I think about it it’s a cool reminder not to stress over life’s little mistakes.

Spilled coffee on your shirt? Late to a meeting? Sent an embarrassing email? No big deal. Clean it up, laugh it off, and move on.

The past is unchangeable, but your attitude moving forward isn’t. 😉💪

TO DO

Try the Life Energy Calculator 🤔

Have you ever calculated your hourly wage — including the time and money it takes to get ready and travel to and from work?

Check out this awesome Life Energy Calculator from Your Money or Your Life (also a killer book if you haven’t read it!).

Knowing your hourly wage gives you a new perspective when buying new things. It tells you how much time you have to work to be able to afford that item.

Try it out — it might change the way you think about your budget! 😳

TAXES

Tax Season Survival Guide 🥷

It’s filing season! Whether you’re a DIY tax warrior or thinking about hiring a pro, a little prep goes a long way.

Here are a few key things to know for 2024 filings:

✅ Standard Deduction (2024) – Nearly 90% of people take the standard deduction — For tax season 2024 the standard deduction is $14,600 for single filers and $29,200 for married couples filing jointly. If your total deductions don’t exceed this, taking the standard deduction is usually the way to go.

📦 App Income (1099-K) – If you got paid more than $5,000 through a cash payment app for selling goods and services, you’ll likely receive a 1099-K form. Don’t panic — the IRS doesn’t care about payments between friends and family. Just make sure you’re reporting all taxable income correctly, like side hustle income or rental income, etc. (Here are FAQs for PayPal, Venmo, CashApp).

🛠 DIY Tax Tools – If your return is fairly simple, you can file your return yourself easily and inexpensively. Heck, you might not pay a dime! Here are some apps to check out:

• Cash App Taxes is our favorite FREE site for both federal and state returns.

• FreeTaxUSA is another great site for free Fed filing and $15 for state

• IRS Direct File: Only available in 25 states right now. Check income eligibility cause it’s not available for a lot of 1099, rental, or business income.

• TurboTax has a free option that they say 37% of filers qualify for. The deadline is Feb 18th, just check the eligibility requirements carefully.

🗓 Best Time to File? – Sooner is better! Just make sure you have received all your forms because you don’t want to have to file an amendment later. A great tip is to start a basic tax checklist system for forms you receive each year and then check them off as you receive them.

👨‍💼 Hire a Pro or Not? – If your taxes are more complex (business income, rental properties, big deductions), a tax pro could save you time and money. But if you’ve got a standard W-2 and few deductions, DIY is often the way to go.

✨ Stay Positive – Instead of dreading this annual adult task, think of tax season as a chance to get your finances in order, snag a refund (or settle what you owe), and free up your mindshare to focus on crushing other money goals in 2025. Knock it out early, and maybe reward yourself in a small way afterward.

Related stuff:

• 👮‍♀️ Tax FAQs: IRS Interactive Tax Assistant (new search feature and a bunch of helpful FAQs from the IRS site)

• 🎙️ HTM Ep #758: Tax Planning to Shrink What You Owe with Sean Mullaney

TOGETHER WITH BETTERMENT*

Turn out the lights on traditional savings accounts. With Betterment’s high-yield cash account, your money is earning nearly 11x the national average**. Get started.

SAVING

Declining Rents in Many Cities 🏡

Woot woot! Rents are declining in many major metros — a welcome change for millions of folks – especially after Covid-era rent price escalations.

Now might be a good time to move cities, negotiate a rent decrease, or snag a move-in special.

One of the fastest declining cities for rent is Austin, TX. Some folks on TikTok are posting videos of their lease renewal notices with big discounts being offered.

Here’s a 12-month trend chart for Austin specifically..👇👇👇

And here are the other top metros with the slowest YoY rent change, via ApartmentList data…

• Austin TX -7.3%
• Denver CO -4.5%
• Raleigh NC -3.5
• Salt Lake City UT -3.2%
• Dallas TX -3%
• Phoenix AZ -3%
• San Antonio TX -2.6%
• Memphis TN -2.5%
• Charlotte NC -2.4%
• Jacksonville FL -2.3%

It’s all about supply and demand… Many southern cities went gangbusters in the past decade building new housing communities and apartment buildings. And now there’s an oversupply of rentals, leading to a renter’s market.

A few opportunities to think about:

Negotiate your renewal: It’s a great time to negotiate your rent if you live in an overbuilt city. You have leverage on your side – and won’t even need to try very hard! Just like any service in life, go around and get some “competitive quotes” from other similar rental units and use that data to help negotiate.

Move-in Specials: Many new complexes or buildings with high vacancies are offering incentives to attract new leases. For example, you might find specials like 2 months rent-free, Amazon gift cards, application/admin or pet fees waived, etc. I have a friend in Atlanta who moves apartments every 1-2 years to take advantage of new move-in specials — sometimes they literally move just 1 block away to a new building!

Geoarbitrage: Moving from NYC to Raleigh can slash your rent in half. And a $100k salary in San Francisco feels like $43k in Tulsa OK. Moving to a cheaper cost of living city (and hopefully keeping your big city income working remotely) makes your money stretch further and helps you save massive bucks. It’s not right for all families but could be something to consider under the right circumstances.

We would love to hear any personal stories or wins of people getting rent decreases! Leave us a VM or hit reply to this email!

Related stuff:

• 👨‍💻 Geoarbitrage: All about Geographic Arbitrage via SmartAsset.

• 🎙️ Podcast Ep #469: Proven Ways to Reduce Your Rent, w Justin Pogue

ICYMI

In other news…

Insurance 🏡
A detailed read on Why Homeowners Insurance is Getting So Expensive. “Construction cost inflation and increasing home size can probably only explain a small portion of the increase. Insurers’ profits don’t seem to be a driver, and neither do state-level population shifts…”

Buy The Dip 📈
Via A Wealth of Common Sense — Does the “Buy the Dip” Strategy work? The problem is that although corrections are a normal part of a functioning stock market, there are environments where corrections don’t occur for a very long time.

Keep it Simple ☝️
A good investing reminder from Humble Dollar: Simplicity is a Virtue. “Could I have done better with a more complicated investment approach? Maybe. But who cares? As long as I have money in the bank, I’m good.“

Free Kids Workshops 🛠️
Reminder Home Depot has free kids workshops each month — double check your local HD store for schedule, etc. Also, some Apple Stores offer free kids’ classes for songmaking, video making, & photo editing!

Positivity FTW 🐝
A new study finds that being optimistic about the future can boost your savings! “people who scored higher on measures of “dispositional optimism” — the tendency to expect positive outcomes — saved more money over time compared with their less optimistic peers.”

COMMUNITY

The Poop Rule 💩 for Decluttering

Sharing a funny decluttering tip from that.minimalist.mom on Instagram…

“Have you heard of the 💩 rule?… When decluttering, ask yourself – if this item was covered in poop, would I replace it? If the answer is no, you likely don’t see value in that item anymore and it’s safe to declutter.”

Wishing you a great week ahead! Remember, accidents happen. Just keep focusing on solutions — not the spills! 🥛

Best friends out 🍻