Recent content by madm

Sorry if this has been mentioned before. There is a GoFundMe page raising funds to help with John's funeral and legal expenses. So far it has raised over $36,000 with 547 donations made.

Could the referee stop the program if a serious accident occurs, and give the skaters a couple of minutes to resume skating from the point where the program stopped? Skaters are allowed 3 minutes when an equipment malfunction occurs. Remember when Mark Ladwig was competing at Four Continents in...

Just throwing my perspective as a skater parent into this conversation. My daughter competed in senior pairs many years ago, and she had a scary accident during a lift at a competition. During their free skate, her partner dropped her head first from their last lift because his shoulder became...

What I was thinking of here is a moral for the rest of us ordinary folks who might inherit something of value (say $100,000-$200,000 worth of jewelry, coins or artwork). If you sell the items, make small cash deposits (under $10,000) into your bank account over time, and then try to avoid...

The moral of the story for anyone who sells something for large amounts of cash (cars, jewelry, coins, etc) is that you should report it on your tax return and not try to avoid taxes by making series of small (under $10,000) deposits into your bank account. If you sell items to a reputable...

We go to the Black Hills of South Dakota often for vacation since we live only 6-7 hours away. Our top things to see and do there when we take newcomers are: - Mount Rushmore (two hours is plenty of time there) - Crazy Horse Monument (1-2 hours there) - Custer State Park Wildlife Loop Road...

Thanks for the link to the excellent Washington Post article. I learned a lot about how intentionally avoiding the bank reporting laws is illegal, even if one's income is legitimate and it is fully reported on tax returns. Given that the Baldwin's business has many cars listed on their website...

Here is a good description of why "structuring" cash deposits is a federal crime, using the example of a pawnbroker who does a lot of business with cash: http://www.multibriefs.com/briefs/npba/cash.pdf There are training courses that help business owners be compliant with anti-money laundering...

The issue here is under-reporting of one's income, not how you make bank deposits. The $10,000+ reporting requirement by banks to the government is intended to help the Feds track illegal money transactions of things such as drug sales as well as people who have cash earnings (e.g. cars sold...

USFS has a program for sports nutrition and they regularly deliver presentations on this topic to skaters and parents at Nationals. I attended one of them put on by Dr. Dan Bernardot from Georgia State University. If you are interested, here are the presentation slides...

I visited my daughter in Calgary in October and drove on backroads west to Banff. IMO there are views like this everywhere in southern Alberta. I don't see what's so special about this location. You can see the gorgeous mountains all up and down the eastern flank of the Canadian Rockies. And...

Of course the entire fox was real. I just donated a lot of my deceased mom's furs to a charity thrift store because they are worth practically nothing now (she was age 104). They are dried out and brittle and yellowed from age. I took one to a furrier to see if it was salvageable, and he said...

New Zealand wants to be predator-free by 2050, and that includes feral cats: http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/wonder-list-bill-weir-new-zealand-predator-free-2050/index.html Outdoor cats are really devastating to wild bird populations...

I opened joint checking and savings accounts for each child at age 16. My children started working at age 16 (entry level jobs with few hours), so they needed a place to deposit their earnings. These accounts served as teaching tools to learn how to manage money, write a proper check, not...

I have had a few annoying sounds to cope with around our house too. My hubby likes to blare the stereo at night when I'm trying to watch a TV program in another room, so I asked for Bose noise-cancelling headphones for Xmas, and voila, they have totally solved that problem. Now I can put them...