Ask me again why I want to get the hell out of here...

Just finished up calculating my taxes for 2006 (like every good CPA I filed an extension) and totted up my net worth for financial aid. Once again, our much-ballyhooed venture into home ownership netted us a whopping tax savings of (insert drum roll)...zero. Nada. Duck egg. The standard deduction was still almost 35% more than my itemized. When you add in the Home Depot expenses, water bill for the lawn (thankfully low this year due to rain), appliances, etc., we were way better off playing that "sucker's game" of renting. Considering that there are four houses on the block up for sale now, with one resorting to a huge "Buy this house with ZERO DOWN!!" sign as of today, I don't think I'm gonna recoup it in capital gains any time soon. The guy who wrote "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" has it right--your home isn't an asset, it's a liability.

I guess I was just born without whatever genes make all of this make sense (like the one that sees the difference between kinds of grass) or maybe I just have ultra-high levels of IKEA-blocker floating in my bloodstream. My dream house is still company-paid accomodations in some place at least ten time zones from Dallas, the harder to pronounce, the better.