MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
A11
Home & Garden
Cultivating memories
Mt. Vernon garden keeps
memory of loved ones alive
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
MT. VERNON — A Mt. Vernon
woman keeps a garden that signifi es
those who have passed on.
Debbie Gray said the oldest plant
in her memorial garden is an aloe that
she got 14 years ago from Bill Pope, a
longtime neighbor who died in 2015.
Pope, Gray said, was engaged to
her older cousin when she moved
to Grant County over 25 years ago.
Gray said she said Pope felt like fam-
ily from the start.
Gray said she has other plants that
remind her of other friends who have
passed on.
“I just enjoy them because they are
alive,” she said. “They are a live being,
actually inside of my home — as I am
— so I can share my time with them.”
Gray said anything that is alive
has energy in it. She said the plants
keep their energy alive.
Aloe and cactus plants are suc-
culents — plants that are thickened
with fl eshy and engorged parts that
retain water in arid climates or soil
conditions.
Gray said that succulents do not
take a lot of water and are easy to take
care of.
“They don’t need any more than a
couple of weeks of water,” she said.
“They have an ability to absorb mois-
ture and hold it.”
Gray is proud of the aloe vera
plant she got from her friend Bill
Pope. The plant has bloomed, and
now she wants to share it.
“I want to share this with anybody
who might be interested,” she said,
“because it is really very neat.”
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
Debbie Gray, a Mt. Vernon resident, admires an aloe plant she grew from a start given to her by a neighbor.
Get your lawnmower ready to roll
By AVERY NEWMARK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Getty Images
Financial experts say it pays to brush up on tax codes before put-
ting your home on the market.
Cut taxes when
selling a home
By LIZ WESTON, CFP
NerdWallet
The investing informa-
tion provided on this page is
for educational purposes only.
NerdWallet does not off er advi-
sory or brokerage services, nor
does it recommend or advise
investors to buy or sell partic-
ular stocks, securities or other
investments.
If your home’s value has
soared, congratulations. If you
decide to sell, beware.
Financial advisor James
Guarino says some clients don’t
realize that home sale prof-
its are potentially taxable until
their returns are prepared —
and by that time, they may have
spent the windfall or invested
the money in another house.
“They’re not happy campers
when they fi nd out that Uncle
Sam not only is going to tax this
as a capital gain, but they’re also
going to have some exposure at
the state level,” says Guarino, a
certifi ed public accountant and
certifi ed fi nancial planner in
Woburn, Massachusetts.
Longtime homeowners who
took advantage of previous tax
rules, which allowed people to
roll the gains from one home
into the next, could be in for
a particularly nasty surprise.
Those old rules could trigger
taxes even if you’re under the
current $250,000-per-person
exemption limits.
Understanding how home
sale profi ts are calculated —
and how you can legally reduce
your tax bill — could save you
money and stress if you’re plan-
ning to cash in on the current
home price boom.
How tax rules have
changed
Until 1997, home sellers
didn’t have to pay taxes on their
profi ts if they bought another
home of equal or greater value
within two years. In addition,
people 55 and older could use
a one-time exclusion to avoid
paying taxes on up to $125,000
of home sale profi ts.
The Taxpayer Relief Act of
1997 changed the rules so that
instead of rolling profi ts into
another home, homeowners
could exclude up to $250,000
of home sale profi ts from their
income. To qualify for the full
exclusion, home sellers must
have owned and lived in the
home at least two of the fi ve
years prior to the sale. Mar-
ried couples could shelter up to
$500,000.
Those exclusion limits hav-
en’t changed in 25 years, while
home values have nearly tri-
pled. The median home sale
price when the law passed was
$145,800, according to the Fed-
eral Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The median was $428,700 in
the fi rst three months of this
year. Median means half of
homes sold for less and half for
more.
Having a taxable gain on a
home sale used to be relatively
rare outside of high-end prop-
erties and high-cost cities, but
that’s no longer true, fi nancial
advisors say.
Why your tax basis
matters
Your fi rst step in determin-
ing your gain is to identify
the amount you realized from
the sale. That’s the sales price
minus any selling costs, such as
real estate commissions. Then,
fi gure your tax basis. That’s
generally the price you paid for
the home, plus certain closing
costs and improvements. The
higher the basis, the lower your
potentially taxable profi t.
Let’s say you realized
$600,000 from your home
sale. You originally bought it
for $200,000 and remodeled
the kitchen for $50,000. You’d
subtract that $250,000 from the
$600,000 to get $350,000 in
capital gains.
ATLANTA — While you’re giv-
ing your home some love during spring
cleaning, be sure to give your lawn-
mower the preparations it needs to thrive
all summer. According to Consumer
Report, now is the perfect time to get
your lawnmower primed and prepped.
Here are some helpful hints from their
website for getting your lawnmower
ready for the warm months ahead:
Just like a car engine, check or
change the oil: After a season of sitting
in the garage, gas mowers will need to
have their engine oil changed. Always
check your owner’s manual to see if you
should change the oil completely or just
top it off .
Don’t use the mower before then. A
mower engine can overheat and fail from
insuffi cient oil just like a car. “Running it
for a minute or two is unlikely to cause
damage,” John Galeotafi ore, head of
CR’s home improvement testing team,
said. “It could lead to problems, though,
if you use it to cut for more than a few
minutes.”
Sharpen the blades: Don’t make
mowing the lawn harder than it needs to
be — always check your blades to make
sure they aren’t dull.
If your blades have gone dull, you
can remove them yourself and take
them to a hardware store for sharpening.
“To remove your mower’s blades, wear
heavy leather gloves, remove the spark
plug wire, and jam in a short 2x4 to keep
Contributed Photo
While you’re giving your home some love during spring cleaning, be sure to give your
lawnmower the preparations it needs to thrive all summer.
the blade from turning as you loosen the
bolts,” CR recommends.
For battery mowers, be sure to
remove the battery before removing the
blades.
Gas up: Before you start up your
mower, make sure that it has fresh fuel.
“A mower carrying leftover fuel —
gasoline from last season that was never
winterized with stabilizer, for instance,
shouldn’t be started up right away. Cir-
culating stale fuel could create problems
that require you to drain the lines,” CR
said.
According to the website, users
should drain the old gas from the tank
before refi lling it with new fuel and sta-
bilizer. And if you ran the mower dry
last fall, you can add stabilized gas to the
tank now.
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