Outgoing Income

First paycheck of the year and it's good to see that after eight years, the Corporate Overlords have finally adhered to the law and deducted the City's Occupation Tax without being harangued into doing so. It's also nice that the city has changed their laws so that the tax is taken out at $2 per paycheck instead of slamming us for $52 out of the year's first paycheck.

And my bi-weekly take home pay has dropped even more because my health care deduction has increased by 10%. Oddly enough, this is a good thing because this is, in fact, the lowest increase in my health care costs since I started here at the Helpdesk, with the highest increase being 21% and the average over the past eight years being 15% annually. That means that while most everything (excluding energy prices) costs 20% more than it did at the turn of the century, my health insurance costs have increased 225%.