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Hundred push-ups and two hundred sit-ups training programs

I’m sure some of you have heard about the hundred push-ups and two hundred sit-ups training programs. I heard about them a while back and it got my attention, but I never tried doing them. I’ve gotten majorly out of shape since high school where volleyball kept me in good shape and my weight down. A couple years ago I found I had gained 40 pounds since graduating. Moderating my eating habits has allowed me to start losing some of that. The weight doesn’t bother me as much as the lack of core strength. Trying to hold my chunk of a nephew for more than a couple minutes is no easy task and even carrying my bike up the stairs shouldn’t take so much effort.

I did the intial test for both training programs today and printed out the schedules. I’ll alternate between the two every night and take Friday off to bike to work. I’d ultimately like to incorporate the main calisthenics excerices into a weekly routine which needs to be combined with less time on the computer. I talked myself out of buying a Dell Mini 9 from their outlet last week for cheap, but I might reconsider getting a netbook so I don’t just sit up at my desk and surf. I could use it downstairs to check email and RSS, write a blog and then be done.

I won’t do a daily update on my progress, but I’ll let you know how things are going over the next 6 weeks.

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Hello from Windows 7

Shrunk one of my partitions and installed the 64-bit Windows 7 beta on my main machine. Popped in the burned install DVD, hit Shift+F10 to bring up the console and then used the DISKPART utility to SHRINK an existing partition down. The install process requires almost zero user input and in about 15 minutes you’re sitting at the desktop. So far everything seems quicker than my Windows XP install which is going on 2 years without a complete reinstall. Boot time is quicker and Windows 7 actually restarts the machine, XP developed the problem of sitting at the “Saving data…” screen until I hit the case reset.

I’ll use Windows 7 as much as I can for my everyday activities for the next couple weeks and compile my impressions and see if this is really “what Vista should have been”. I’m betting that it is and probably a little bit more.

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Just a few thoughts on itemizing and deductions

I know, another boring post about money and taxes, but stick around you might learn something.

The answer to the “should I itemize?” question is actually pretty simple: if you don’t have enough deductions to surpass the standard deduction then you don’t itemize. You take the larger of the two and be done with it because that’s what benefits you the most. Note for the married folks, if you file separately and one of you itemizes then the other has to too.

The standard deduction is great for people with very little to deduct and itemizing is great for people with lots to deduct. Once you get in the situation where your total itemized deductions are close to your standard deduction then things like the mortgage interest deduction aren’t really that valuable. The mortgage interest deduction is touted as one of the benefits of home ownership, but people like me wouldn’t benefit at all from it.

In our situation, if we owned a home we’d have to hand the bank around $6,000 in interest every year and pay $3,000 in property tax to simply break even with the standard deduction. It’s only after the $10,700 threshold that each additional $1 deduction would benefit from itemizing. Even then I’d only be getting about 20% of that back, so what is the benefit of giving away $9,000 a year and then spending $1 to get back $0.20 after that. In the future, the standard deduction will increase with inflation and we’d gradually pay less interest over the life of a mortgage making it less likely that we’d be over the standard deduction. So whenever I hear someone talk about the tax benefits of owning a home, I take it with a big grain of salt.

Most Americans Don’t Itemize on Their Tax Returns gives a pretty good break down of who itemizes. Those individuals with higher incomes have a greater incentive to itemize because the deductions are more valuable as you move up the tax bracket ladder and this is certainly reflected in the itemizing rates.

I did hear about a proposal to add an additional $1,000 to the standard deduction for people with mortgage interest that don’t itemize. Can’t find anything through Google right now so post a link if you know what I’m talking about.