Ordering Your Free Annual: Fill & Download for Free

Since you can get one free annual report from EACH of the three Credit Bureaus, I order mine 4 months apart. This way I get to see problems no more than 4 months after the first report. So you can order your first report at any time, do the next 1 in 4 months, & the last one in another 4 months. Wait 4 months & the order a new copy of the first report again.LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT!

[US income tax perspective]Actually, the donor (not the donee) generally pays the gift tax.The IRS provides for a $14,000 tax free annual gift tax exclusion per person.Put simply, this means that you may give your sister up to $14,000 without anybody paying income tax on the transaction. If you wanted to give her husband another $14,000, you could do this too, tax free, as the exclusion is on a per person basis. If you’re married, you could have your husband do the same (give $14,000 each to your sister and brother in law). That would get them up to $56,000 without any tax consequences.Another option is to consider paying their medical expenses directly, if you need more ‘room’ than $56K. Qualified medical expenses do not count toward the $14,000 gift tax exclusion. It is important to note the payments must be made directly to the healthcare provider on your sister’s behalf in order to qualify. Of course, make sure you carefully document any qualifying medical expenses paid, as well as scrutinizing ‘what’ you are paying (some medical expenses from the total bill may not qualify, so you can run some risks if you’re not careful).Qualifying medical expenses appear here > https://www.bcbst.com/learn/consumer-directed/IRS213dlist.pdfFinally, please note that everything resets on January 1. These are annual exclusions so you and your husband may collectively give a tax-free gifts aggregating $56K to your sister and her husband in 2017, another $56K in 2018 and so forth.Please see the following IRS publication for further information > Frequently Asked Questions on Gift Taxes

YES.They DO try to be careful. You see, if they don’t, they can SINK THE RESTAURANT or BAKERY.There are some ingredients that are cheap enough on their own that they won’t kill themselves trying to measure each and every item. But then there’s the more expensive ones that are measured right down to the quarter ounce.(from barfblog)Food costs in a restaurant is probably the SINGLE BIGGEST EXPENSE for a restaurant after labor costs. Now it may be a negligible thing when you’re talking in individual portions, but let’s go through a little math that was walked by me from a hamburger restaurant in my city one day.I won’t mention who they are, but for years, the owner was absolutely sure that he was able to figure out a 4 oz (quarter pound) patty by hand and didn’t bother measuring it as he was absolutely sure. The restaurant sold something like 200 burgers a day in a busy weekday, and it was doing pretty well.Well, one day, there was a slow down in business due to an oil price shock, and the numbers dropped to 150 a day. The simple fact was that he needed to re-analyze how he did business to see how he could keep costs under control. It was suggested to him that he should measure his meat patties just to be sure that he was giving a quarter pound patty with each burger, since it was single biggest ingredient.(from Food Republic)So, he did measure the pre-prepared portions and found out that he had been giving FIVE OUNCES per patty, or 1 ounce more. It didn’t bother him at that moment as he simply shrugged and said, “Oh well, so I was giving more for years.”I worked out the math for him based on his more successful days and the last 5 years of operation (out of 20 or so)…..200 burgers x 1 oz = 200 oz given for free each day. That’s enough meat for FIFTY more burgers at 4 oz. each.200 oz x 5 days a week = 1000 oz per week. Now that’s enough meat for 250 more burgers.1000 oz in 1 week x 50 weeks of operation annually = 50,000 oz of meat. or 12,500 burgers.50,000 oz divided by 16 = 3,125 pounds of meat GIVEN FOR FREE ANNUALLY.3,125 pounds annually x the last 5 years = 15,625 POUNDS OF MEAT given for free over FIVE YEARS.15,625 pounds x $3 per pound of ground beef = $46,875 given away for FREE or $9,375 each year. That would have been enough to replace all of his fryers every 5 years, put in a better cooling and heating system or even 1 more part time staff. Or $9,375 in PROFIT that could have gone to a nice bonus to his salary and take better vacations more often. OR better, it would have paid for a FULL YEAR of his rent (it was a small place that was entirely takeout).Here’s another example.In 2019, avocado prices shot through the roof for awhile thanks to the whole avocado toast craze and a huge boost of guacamole demand. Imagine if you’re a Mexican restaurant, or say, a Chipotle, and you go through a few hundred a week. In July 2019, a 25 pound box went from $37 to $84.25 on average in the US or a 228% increase!(from Eater)When one of your main ingredients goes up that much, you have THREE choices:Increase the price to make up the increase.Eat the cost and take the profit hit.Stop serving avocados altogether.And a LOT of restaurants chose #3 and stopped serving avocados for awhile. Otherwise, the other option is just to lose money period.Restaurants are a HIGH RISK business, and often the profit margins are pretty slim, especially for DINNER places. It is the responsibilities of the chef to not only control the kitchen, but to control the KITCHEN COSTS (usually in conjunction with the manager and/or the owner).(from Apixbase)That’s how they also figure out the exact price to charge customers for a dinner, and even determine what kind of promotion they might want to do if there’s a price break such as the usual drop in price in some ingredients when in season.So, that’s why chefs are careful to NOT waste ingredients when they can. Sure, there’s bound to be some wastage, or even the occasional necessary giveaway (say a replacement dinner for a wrong order or an overcooked dish), and it’s necessary to know the costs so they can factor such unexpected future costs as well.Any person getting into the restaurant game that DOESN’T keep track of the food costs and ingredients should just get out of the game and become a builder or a some other job. And any chef (non-owner) that doesn’t treat the ingredients with care and not waste anything is deliberately endangering his/her own job by needlessly wrecking the whole cost structure.