We haven’t heard the white-noise of a TV in the background for nearly two and a half years. It may seem ludicrous to you, but we haven’t turned on a television since we lived in Manhattan in 2009. You probably wake up and turn on the news. You come home and settle into your primetime routine on your channel of choice. Well, in our house, this hasn’t been the case. We never had anything against television. In fact, I relentlessly watched ‘A Baby Story’ while pregnant with the Lion. I made sure that TLC was included in our cable package, which pushed our bill up a little higher, but everyone has cable, right?

And here comes the ‘but.’ One morning in New York, I awoke around 5am, only to hear Sponge-Bob’s giggles creeping into my dreams. A found my two-year old son had climbed out of his crib, turned on the television, tuned it to Nickelodeon, and settled into his high chair for a little early morning viewing. At friends’ homes, Gadget quickly finds his way to the closest remote and changes the channel to the first cartoon his eyes come across. In the morning, he would ignore his breakfast and watch SpongeBob in a trance while his Cheerios saturated themselves in vanilla Silk. Our last straw was when he would spend ten minutes on the playground at the park, and then ask to come home to watch TV. Huh? Something was drastically wrong in our home. So when we moved to Connecticut, we never signed up for cable. Now, we’re not some weird super-crunchy parents or anything. We rent DVDs and watch them on our computers. We let the boys select appropriate media content from the library, and we indulge in online television for our ‘primetime’ cravings, but now we are in control. In fact, I find websites like Hulu a must for moms. You can pause, rewind and watch again, all within your own control. And, have your heard the scripts on iCarly? Not age-appropriate.

The only thing I missed about TV was how folks watched it live and in unison. We missed Monday night football and had to seek someone else’s shelter for the Superbowl. I was always one day late with Hulu and could not Facebook during Grey’s Anatomy for fear of reading spoiler status updates. I also missed watching commercials. Working in marketing, it was challenging keeping abreast of the latest promotions in my industry. Imagine the day after the Superbowl…

But all this came to an end a few weeks ago. Hubby bought a huge fifty-something inch TV for the den and an LED internet-ready TV for our bedroom so I can Hulu in style. We purchased an HD antenna for ten bucks and I’m using a thirty day trial of Hulu plus, so we currently have no monthly television charges. This is one way we cut back on our monthly expenses. (Another big way to save some pennies is to challenge your property taxes and win). In fact, we employ a handful of ways to save, including renting DVDs from the local library, keeping our joint iPhone bill to less than $100 a month, and not turning on the air in the summer. Not having a cable bill for 900 days has been nice. I estimate we’ve saved about $3000. We’ll continue to save those cable dollars with the HD antenna. Of course, we only get the air channels (PBS, NBC, CBS, the CW, FOX, etc), but this is such an upgrade. All this talk about TV is making me want to watch my Hulu queue right now. I mean, right now.

After leaving several voicemails for a few months, sometime in March I finally received a letter in the mail with a website and login, directing me towards the Collin County Central Appraisal District Electronic Filing website. Upon entering the site, I could file an e-protest. I quickly filed out and submitted the online form. I knew that our home’s market value was listed too high, so I challenged the county on the basis of the market value being too high.

A week later, I received an email saying that my protest had been updated. I logged in, and saw that the county had rejected my offer, and proposed a counter offer, which was the same starting value I was protesting. There was one other option remaining, and that was to request a formal hearing date. I had no idea what that meant, but if I was going to do this, I was going to do this big and all the way, so I selected the option to protest at a hearing.

I received the hearing notice in the mail, and put a task item on my mental agenda to call our realtor and research how to be best prepared for these things. Well, before I knew it, it was the day before my hearing and I hadn’t done any of my homework. I called the realtor, and he quickly gave me some advice. I went home and spent the evening hours and well into the early morning preparing my case and gathering evidence. After learning what the process was all about, I crafted my story. I was protesting on the basis of unequal appraisal. My case was the following: based upon the average assessed property tax per square foot of other similar homes on my street, my property taxes should be lower. In layman’s terms, there are bigger homes on my street with lower property taxes, and therefore I wanted my taxes lowered.

I was able to locate a handful of essential websites, which helped me put together my case. The first required website listed the addresses on my street (once you get there, search for ‘property valuation of your street, your city, your state). I figured using my street was the most direct comparison, because I wouldn’t have to explain the proximity of the homes if the street address was identical to mine. Using the website was extremely helpful and more convenient than trying to zoom in using googlemaps, or walking down the street stalking homes with a flashlight at 1AM (yes, it was 1AM by the time I got this far in my case preparation). After collecting the addresses on my street, I went to the Collin County Property Record Search Database and entered each address. Here, I was able to read all the property details in order to build my case: the address, market value, appraised value, tax rate, square footage, year built, the deed history and much more. The goal here was to find the three largest square footage homes, but with the lowest property taxes. I averaged the taxes per square footage for three homes, and this gave me the county assessed average tax ratio I would use. I then multiplied my home’s square footage by this value in order to determine my recommendation for my tax assessed property value to present at the hearing.

So what does all this property tax mumble jumble really mean? Basically, Texas has one of the highest average property tax rate, and I wanted to save us some money. I estimated that our assessed property tax should be $37,000 cheaper, which is the equivalent of reducing the tax component of our mortgage payment by $814 a year, or more than $24,000 over the course of our mortgage. To calculate how much you pay in taxes, divide your home purchase amount by your tax rate as a percentage. Somehow I’ve digressed from the story…

So, my hearing was schedule for 8:30AM, but the county office opened at 8AM, and they heard the cases in the order of arrival. I got there at 7:45, and I was number twelve in line outside the door. Once inside, I dropped off my pages and pages of evidence and wait inside a hearing room. The review board came in, and I realized they are just regular tax paying people just like me, so that boosted my confidence. I was second to go, and the first woman had a very weak case, and that boosted my confidence even more. She was protesting the market value of her home on the basis of a junk yard next to her home, where she could hear coyotes howling at night. Seriously. So this news gets me very excited for my case, because I’m all prepared with my average-tax assessed-value-per-square-foot calculations and what not.

When I sit down at the computer, they bring up my case, and then proceed to offer their evidence, supporting why their market value number is valid. They have several homes in my neighborhood, recently purchased for far more money than we paid. Humph! I think, that’s not part of my argument, and was irrelevant. But then I began to wonder why their only evidence centered around market value evidence, when clearly the tax value was too high. Then they told me it was my turn, and I was two sentences into my argument when the panel chairwoman stops me and points out one little problem. All my evidence challenged the property tax value based on unequal appraisal and not market value. Then I flashed back to when I hastily completed that online form, way back in March, and the only protest reason I selected was market value argument. It was a technicality, that could mean hundreds of dollars I would overpay in taxes in 2012. The board confirmed they could not hear the argument I had stayed up until the wee hours of the morning putting together because of this technicality. You see, they had not prepared a supporting argument for tax value and I guess you can’t just show up and have all these arguments if you didn’t tell them before hand. I can understand that, but mine was a pretty darn strong case!

Already defeated, they asked me for my closing arguments, and I offered my HUD-1 settlement papers which showed the purchased price of my home was much lower than the market value, and they agreed with on that. So, the good news is that they lowered my tax assessed value to the purchase price of my home. The bad news was that if I had just selected the correct option online months ago, I could have lowered my 2012 taxes even more.

I am very glad to announce that hubby has accepted his offer. That is a great feeling for me, because now I can narrow my job search to a particular geographic region. Last Thursday I had a mock interview at Stern’s office of career development. Normally, I would have looked forward to the experience, but this time around I was dreading the exchange. For the first time in my life I don’t have a plan. I have always had a plan, and executed it to a tee, but not getting a full-time offer from Kraft was not part of my plan, and now I am starting from scratch.

I am recruiting for the Marketing function, but I have opened up my industry search to include a wide sector of job opportunities. I am looking at consumer packaged goods, financial services and advertising industries. I don’t want to be pulled too thin in my research process, but I honestly don’t know what I really want right now. It’s frustrating and uncomfortable. I am confident that wherever I end up is where I am supposed to be, but the process is so foreign to me.

This experience is more different than ever before because the fundamental of America’s economy are NOT strong. In addition to that, I have two mouths who expect shelter, warmth, love and ever-increasingly-priced food. My heart goes out to all the AIG and Lehman employees who have lost their jobs, their financial security, and control over so many factors in their life. I am blessed by God to be where I am financially, and I do not take it for granted.

Hopefully, as I inspect myself, my motivations, goals, passions and desires and values, I will find clarity as I seek what is the right job for me. Hubby and I have two very important titles which carry so much weight with them. Being Amari and Joshua’s mommy and daddy mean that we fulfill their many unstated expectations daily. I hope that hubby and I are blessed to be able exceed their fundamental needs, and one day spoil them culturally because of our financial state. I hope to take our sons to foreign places, and meet diplomats, and eat different cuisine and expand their global perspectives… Stay tuned…

• I can no longer shower by myself when I’m home alone with the kids. One, or both children are in the bathroom with me. I now look forward to being the only person in the bathroom, which I took for granted the first 26 years of my life.
• My favorite iPhone application is Things. It’s a productivity app, and I love that it has an icon badge so I always know how many tasks I have left to do for the day.
• I am totally into Kate Spade, and my newest obsession is her green laptop bag. When Amari was born I bought her diaper bag (shown above), but hubby made me return it because it was $500 and I was on unpaid maternity leave.
• I use Proclaim Hair Oil on Amari’s hair. It works great on curly hair. I started using it on my hair, and then hubby started using it, and now I started using it on Joshua. I thought maybe there was a better product out there, so I tried Carol’s Daughter Hair Milk, but hubby said it smelt like mosquito repellent. I have found some of her products to be excellent, including the Tui Hair Oil and the Mimosa Hair Honey, though.
• I have started researching Manhattan preschools for Amari. I ordered the book City Baby and The Manhattan Direcotry of Private Nursey Schools from Amazon. Can you believe I have to start applying for Admission now??!!!
• Intimacy is the best lingerie store!!! They altered my favorite bra into a nursing bra for free.
• I started exercising this time ’round. I didn’t exercise at all after having Amari, but apparently the fat just wants to linger a little too long this time. I do 30 minutes on the elliptical, but I am inspired by Jessica Alba’s post-baby weight loss plan: ”
  While we all know celebrities have the time and money it takes to get in shape fast, Jessica’s diet is quite easy to follow. The actress has a protein-packed breakfast that can include oatmeal, turkey bacon or egg whites; a lunch of fish and salad; and a dinner of chicken breast with brown rice. In between meals, she snacks on fruit, almonds or cheese. The meal plan is reasonable, considering Ramona says that “Jessica has always preferred healthy food.”

  In terms of workouts, Jessica returned to the gym three weeks after giving birth, starting off simply with 25 minutes of crunches or other core exercises. Eventually, she added 20 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of chest presses and lunges to her routine, and now hits the gym for an hour six days a week, combining all three types of workouts.

  Jessica, who gained 35 pounds during her pregnancy, has so far lost 25, thanks in part to nursing — “I lost the tummy just breastfeeding” — and is hiking and boxing in her free time to help melt off the final 10. “She always gives me 100 percent,” Ramona says. “And her body shows it.”

• My favorite nursing wrap is The Mommy Cover. It’s a tad expensive, but it’s stylish, washable, and hooks to close.
• My fav bathroom cleaner is Shaklee’s Scour Off Heavy Duty Paste. It was featured on Oprah one day, so I ordered some. Hubby thinks it smells like bubble gum, which is much better than the caustic smelling chemicals in the stuff we used to use.
  



• When we’re out and about, folks ask us where we got the kids’ stroller. It’s a Kolcraft tandem buggy, and the seats can face any direction, oh, it was only $199, compared to the $700 Phil and Ted’s everyone else buys.