Living in America 2015

[rootypig]

New thread. In honour of:

1. allegedly Irish bangers discovered I saw in Trader Joe's today, which made me think of you lot and especially you Want2b, you pork fanatic - I will report back; and

2. taxes bloody argh! do I have to do this? NOW??? My green card was granted in August last year and I didn't earn a bloody penny. What am I supposed to put on a tax return

How else is everyone's American odyssey going?

yours chaotically, as ever,

rooty

I agree that I've found cheese here that's excellent - and more affordable stuff that's absolutely fine. Costco does a $5 brie that's ripens and is nice sliced into sandwiches. And TJ has Welsh cheddar, among MANY other things.

Aplaca at ACV suggestion (and TJs gin is probably cheaper ). I doubt that would take the edge off!

Closer what work auth are you waiting for? is it a certificate? I have a green card so not sure - I got that before SSN. Whereabouts are you? and welcome!

uff sorry for typos

Here in nj some of the best cheeses are found at wine library. I found some of the super nice British cheeses that are even hard to find in the UK. They also had fab French, Spanish, German and Italian cheeses. Not cheap but oh so damn good.

Hello all! I am totally LaLalified and eat predominantly vegan now - but bought the Irish sausages for DH and DS who proclaimed them amazing and delicious, is best get back to TJ and stock up! Gutted that my stupid braces and stupid shiny-LA-pretentious-halo will prevent me from indulging in Costco bacon though, been waiting THREE years and now it arrives I can't bloody eat it! Thanks for all your hard work though Want2b!

Closer can't help but I used to be on H4, got my employment authorization card then my SSN and still waiting on the green card so I'd have thought not long...

Tax wise, now that I CAN work (whoop!!) how do I go about registering as freelance/self employed? No sight of work yet but I have some cross country meetings coming up and want to claim the flights against my taxes, as well as all the theatre going in doing. Any ideas?

You don't need to register as self employed per se. You estimate what your taxes are and pay estimated taxes each quarter. At year end you file your regular 1040 return and report your earnings and allowable deductions through there. Far far easier than the UK.

If you want to set yourself up as an llc it's a little more complicated but it's the same principle but different schedule. if you have assets you want to protect think about getting liability coverage through your home insurance. We went through Chubb and got $2 million liability insurance for $50 a year. Covers anyone who files a claim against us.

Oh ok, so basically just say I'm self employed on the return next year? Can you do that on the joint one

Yes you can.

Just bear in mind that you need to pay both parts of social security. It's about 15% in total. If you are an employee you only pay 6.8%. If you make a fair bit you might be better with an llp and taking a capital distribution.

A great way to reduce your taxes when you are self employed is to do a SEP IRA. You can put up to $44k (might be more now but I'm being lazy and have not checked) a year in from pretax income. If your DH is an employee with a match its best to only contribute up to the match and then contribute any remaining amount through your SEP IRA. Cuts the tax bill on your income.

At this rate I'll be lucky to earn anything close to $10K this year (and that's generous)

For this year I would do the 1040 and once you know where you are at with your income you can look at alternatives. My fav way to avoid income taxes is the SEP IRA. So simple.

With $10k I would not bother with estimating your taxes. At the end of the year you will know your income and you can estimate off that.

Hi - I've got a social security card and have just completed the I-795 to apply for an EAD to demonstrate permission to work. Fingers crossed it comes through soon as there's no point applying for jobs without it (or so I've been told)

I'm shivering under a snow drift in Massachussetts - when will it end...?!

Oohh! Here you all are! I wondered where the old thread had gone, then realized that it's no longer 2014 and hasn't been for quite a while

We've just got back to OK after 2 weeks in the UK, straight in to weather chaos. Our arriving back in American soil the first thing that we learned was that our connecting flight to OKC was cancelled because the airport was closed. We managed to get a flight to Tulsa instead then complete our journey home in a rental car on icy roads, at night, after having been awake for 25 hours. Fun! When we finally made it home we realised that while there was snow in OKC, it was nowhere near as bad as Tulsa or Chicago (where we'd flown from). Today DS's preschool is closed because of forecast snow that hasn't started yet.

I don't get how Oklahoman's can laugh in the face of tornados yet flap like headless chickens at the slightest bit of snow!

As always, I'm envious of the those with access to Trader Joe's, Costco and decent sausages...

I may brave TJ's this weekend. It is the other side of town from us, with a tiny car park and narrow aisles, so I rarely go, but the talk of sausages is luring me in.

someone mentioned bacon - is it like British bacon?

Want2b, you're a gem. Thank you for being so generous with your advice here.

Mrsf, how was your trip home? how did you feel coming back? and is everything with DH sorted?

Hi rooty. Trip home was good thanks, but tiring! We felt obliged to visit as many friends and family as possible, so trundled back and forth between London, East Midlands and West Midlands on trains and in a rental car. The children were stoical, but their sleeping and eating went up the spout. We've been back since Saturday and 2 year old DD is still waking at 4 am every morning.

DH is fine. He needs another round of blood tests in a month to check his AFP levels again, but we're not too worried now we know it's not cancer. Apparently raised AFP can be a sign of an unhappy liver, and the blood test which first raised the alarm coincided with a period when he was consuming large amounts of max strength flu powder during the day and wine at night to cope with a stinking cold and deadline-induced stress at work. He now acknowledges this may not have been a brilliant idea... Hopefully by the next blood test his liver will have recovered and the marker level will have dropped.

Kick - the bacon in Costco is not far off our proper bacon. The bacon chops are awesome and like bacon but as a boneless chop. They are so damn good. All samples were gone in 3days!

I should put a disclaimer with my tax posts! It's all correct info and I have said where I am not 100% sure. I always hate seeing people spend money on trying to figure out their taxes when it really isn't necessary. I continue to be shock at how awesome the irs are. If in doubt do call them. They are nothing like inland revenue.

I've never tried calling the IRS. We pay an accountant. It costs $400 to file, including his fee, and he usually gets us around $5,000 in refunds, so I feel like he's worth it! We tried H&R Block one time. It still cost us $200 to file, and we got nothing like the refund.

Not a member of Costco - I was for a year but didn't often go as it's the opposite side of town. After working all day I cba to do an extra 40 mins in car plus shopping time just to browse, and dd hates shopping, so I decided to quit.

btw - we have recently discovered that our bank account in the UK with the Halifax has been made dormant. Although we didn't move money, we did go on and check it every few months, and it was less than 6 years old so definitely NOT the 15 years that accounts are meant to be untouched for. We're assuming that we will get our money back, but their customer services have been indescribably terrible and it is taking a long time.

So - any bank accounts in the UK, keep an eye on them, and sometimes use them (although you shouldn't have to!) as it seems some banks are a bit trigger happy to call dormant and scoop up your cash.

I think it's 3 years for natwest. I moved £1 from one account to the other and they are good for another 3 years.

Kick- taxes are not hard to do for most people. If you are getting a $5k refund you should ask where that refund comes from. If your taxes are wrong the irs come after you, not the accountant. Def do not think highly of H&R block. I was thinking of getting a job there over weekends and met with the manager. If paying $400 compared to H&R block you are def better with the accountant!

So no school tomorrow. I have had enough snow and want to declare winter over.

had some good additional tax advice from a friend here in the same industry, yay to entertainment biz exemptions! thanks so much for your advice Want2b

DH just dropped a bit of a bomb. The upwards move he was working towards at work had the kibosh put on it. He wants to look for other jobs outside the company - says he can't get the wage or the work back home. Not neccessarily bad as we've committed to def 2 more years but I want be home within 4 so.....well, this is interesting. Just hoping he doesn't go making any long reaching decisions without some consultation because I want my DC to go to secondary school in the UK

kissass, closer, alpaca, flip - thank you for your advice on a visa for my mum, even though it doesn't sound as simple as I (naively) first thought :(.m Want2b, that is interesting about your DH's parents. I guess I will have to ask my DH to pursue more information through his company if and when things become more concrete.

On the cheese front - its good to hear some positive reports, although I am fearful that our destination may not be in quite the same category as NY - its a smallish city in Illinois about 2.5 hours from Chicago :) No Trader Joes, I have already checked! there is a Costco though.

Now that my DH has said that we are willing to consider international service it is likely to be several months before anything more happens, let alone gets confirmed. I'm finding the uncertainly quite challenging, especially regarding the DC's school and my mum. If we do go then is is next to impossible they will all be able to return to our (lovely) village school on our return as it is over-subscribed with waiting lists on most of the classes...

Cheese - you will be fine on the cheese front. Illinois is somewhat close to Wisconsin and you can buy cheese online. My cousin lives about 300 miles south of the border to Alaska in the middle of nowhere. She gets some fab cheeses shipped up to her via Amazon.

we get pretty good cheese just at the supermarket. For a treat we go to whole foods, but there is also a REALLY uber posh deli and wine place with cheese and cured meats and foreign wines. Hugely expensive, but you can have enough tastings to fill you up.

Has anyone tried See's Candies? There was a thread on mn about great chocolate, and See's got mentioned a few times, but I;ve never had them.

Leaving grandparents behind has been the toughest part for us - my mum was so upset when we said we were going, she aims to see us every 3 months and is absolutely livid with my brother for planning a September wedding which means instead of our usual 4-6week summer break we're just going for 10 days around his wedding. She gets very tearful at the airport etc BUT I will reassure you that at 6&3 my DC know their grandparents really well and absolutely adore them. Our time difference is 8 hours so calling in the week is tough when they have school, but we try to squeeze in one or two short skype calls then a longer one at the weekends, they're both always excited to talk to them, and talk about them. My mum makes tremendous efforts with them - she send ecards regularly and proper postcards every week. And in very lucky that when we go home or they come here they'll have the DC for a few days so we can get couple time away or I can go to London to properly catch up with my friends

It's not easy but it's doable

Im not going to lie.... Our parents being 3000 miles away has probably not been the worst thing. My mother is an absolute nightmare.

Having said that mid-week is tough for calls to back home. I just spoke to my Dad now and he is so excited to see the kids tomorrow. We have four skype calls scheduled each and every weekend. The time spent on the phone adds up and the DC and I hate doing back to back calls. DH doesn't mind and will happily spend 2 hours on skype with his parents. The kids get bored and I get frustrated!