Since I got the lucky dime in my black-eyed peas, I figured I'd just go ahead and enter the HGTV Dream House Giveaway. Every day. My husband, too. How could we lose?
We're HGTV junkies...because of me. The Frantsens have always been house builders and house lovers and home improvement people. Besides, there's nothing else good on television. This is the first time I decided to enter this or any contest.
Anyway, the house is in New Mexico. The views are forever. I love forever. It's southwestern style. Not really our style inside, but...we can cope. It's got fireplaces inside and out. And it's only a day's drive from heaven on earth — Fort Davis, Texas.
The house is full of furniture and artsy-fartsy cool stuff. Figured we can sell most of that and bring what we want from our own house. And at the same time, sell what we don't want from there, too. We get a vehicle. Figured we can sell that. We get $500k in cash. Figured that would hold us awhile.
Then I read the rules. They give you a Form 1099 along with all these goodies worth about $2 million. That means, depending on what tax bracket a sudden $2 million puts you into, we'd have to pay at least $500,000 in immediate taxes. Bye-bye cash. And then some.
Figure we'd have to auction off all the home furnishings and maybe even the house — or ours in Colorado — to break even and pay the taxes. Then when we sold a house, we'd have to pay capital gains. And the housing market is not good.
I quit entering. I think it will cost too much to win. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere, but right now, I'm just worried about all those entries I sent in. I could end up in the poor house.
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