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This is Part III of the six-part series where we discuss business and employment. Please remember that my only goal is to help you think through your view of paying a full tithe.
Here are some scenarios with the questions that each raises.
You’re an employee.
- Do you pay tithing on your net or gross?
- What if you incur significant, non-reimbursed expenses that you would not have if you weren’t working at that job? In other words you have to spend money to make money. (e.g., paying for your own uniforms, tools, extra mileage on a personal car, etc.)
- What if you have a significant financial setback? For example, you make $40,000 per year and end up paying more than $10,000 for medical expenses.
- If you pay on your gross salary, do you pay tithing again on a tax refund?
You do consulting or contract work.
- Do you pay tithing on your net or gross income?
- What if there is a significant difference between your gross and net? For example, you gross $100,000 but after paying all your expenses, you only net $10,000. Do you pay on the $100,000 (and exactly break even) or do you pay tithing on the $10,000?
You own a small business.
- Do you pay on the gross or net of the business, or on your personal gross or net?
- What if there’s some commingling of business and personal assets? For example you work out of your home, you use the same computer or digital camera for work and personal use, etc.
- Are reinvestments in the business subtracted from your gross before calculating tithing?
- If you reinvest all the profit from the business in order to grow it, do you wait to pay tithing until you sell it?
You sell some small items that you paid for with post-tithing money.
- Do you pay tithing?
- Only if you turn a profit?
- You sell the items at a yard sale.
- You’re unlikely to sell items for more than you originally paid, so will you owe any tithing?
- Are you actually working to earn the money from the yard sale, so it no longer has anything to do with the original value of the items, but rather the income you receive from working to sell your stuff?
- Does enjoying the items for several years before reselling them cancel out what you paid for them and now you should pay tithing on whatever amount you receive?
- What if you buy a set of toys with post-tithing money, selling part of the set and keeping the rest.
- Do you pay tithing on the gross or net profit?
- Do you quantify the value of the portion you kept and let that factor into your tithing calculation?
You trade services with someone. Do you owe any tithing?
Continue on to read the other parts in the series:
Note: I feel it necessary to indicate here that this post is a (poor) attempt at a humorous approach to a sometimes serious subject. Feel free to leave comments, but do so knowing that it was never my intent to offend, just to have a little fun with stereotypes and my relationship with my wife.
In many situations, being direct in addressing a problematic issue is the best approach. It can bypass a lengthy and sometimes unnecessary introduction in the interest of brevity, clarity, and candor. By “many situations” I mean, “except when it comes to communicating with a spouse about a behavioral change you or s/he would like to see on the part of the other person.”
To those of you who would like to dramatically change the course of your spouse’s life, habits, dress, driving style, and/or personal hygiene I say, “Thanks ladies for putting up with us.”
The rest of us are too busy shaving our backs or cleaning the dirt out from underneath our fingernails with an Exacto knife to worry about much else. If something happens frequently enough, it might stay in our heads longer than 15 seconds, but the only possible consequence of that unlikely event is that the thought will get converted into words that will get us into trouble.
Often women complain that men don’t share their feelings enough, but the real problem is that they’re not well-received when we do!
My wife is a great sport. She puts up with a lot of teasing, tickling, and nicknaming. She even laughed at (most of) my jokes for a year or two after we were married — what more could a guy ask for? (Since she never reads my blog, this whole one-way conversation will stay just between us.)
When my wife says “Tell me what you really think” or “I’m not sure what to do” she’s actually looking to have me respond with one of these phrases:
- “You’re very pretty, dear.”
- “Forget the budget, you really need another pair of shoes/jeans/whatever.”
- “You’re absolutely correct.”
- “Why didn’t I think of that? Let me drop what I’m doing right now and jump up to do that!”
The nice part about the list of responses is that the first one is true. The other nice part is that if I can only remember one response, the first one will get me pretty far, especially if she mumbled something to me from the other room and I have no idea what she said.
As a bonus, I’m not committing to anything which is what makes #3 so dangerous. Now that I think about it, if she does actually read this post, she might mumble something from the other room such as, “If you agree with me, tell me I’m pretty.” She’d probably get me on that one.
So what’s the best approach for asking your wife to change a behavior that frustrates you? Keep it to yourself and hope that it goes away on its own. If you share your feelings, chances are that you’ll be reminded of everything you’ve needed to (but didn’t) change.
Now where did I set down my Exacto knife . . .
Death in the family is difficult enough on an emotional level without having to deal with the unexpected, burdensome expenses that are often associated with it (think health care and funeral costs). If you’re the breadwinner in the family, you’ll also sleep better at night knowing that your loved ones will be able to pay the mortgage, the monthly bills, and (eventually) college tuition for the kids, should anything ever happen to you.
So what are you waiting for? Insurance isn’t getting any cheaper, and you’re not getting any cheaper to insure!
Consider the following factors which largely determine your monthly premiums:
- Your age
- Any health problems you’ve been diagnosed with
- Any health problems your immediate family has been diagnosed with
- Early death of family members due to health-related causes (vs. accidental death)
Why should you get life insurance sooner rather than later?
- The insurance company’s expenses and inflation are going up, not down. Consequently premiums are always increasing.
- You’re getting older every year.
- Health inevitably declines with age, so every year that passes means you’re at least a little more likely to be diagnosed with a health condition that would result in higher premiums on a new policy.
- Your family will continue to be newly diagnosed with health conditions that would result in higher premiums on a new policy.
- If you get the policy before any family members (or you, yourself) are diagnosed, you can honestly answer “no” to those questions and thereby minimize your premiums. If it hasn’t happened yet, they can’t include it in their calculations.
The bottom line is this: shop around, then sign up for 20 or 30-year level-term life insurance. You’ll lock in the rate for the duration of the policy, and the sooner you do it, the more money you’ll save.
Amateur photographers looking for a quick way to create panoramas from a series of photos should give AutoStitch a shot. It does quite well with minimal user intervention, but those who desire extensive control over the minute details should look elsewhere.
Here’s the quick version of how to create a panorama using AutoStitch:
- Take a series of pictures with at least 20-30% overlap. Ideally you’ll do this with the camera mounted on a tripod to minimize the chances that you won’t keep the horizon in a consistent place in all the photos.
- Copy the pictures to your computer.
- Download Autostitch here then unzip it. No installation is necessary, just double click the .exe file to launch it.
- Optional: Go to “Edit –> Options” to change some of the options.
- Go to “File –> Open” to open the pictures in your series.
- AutoStitch automatically stitches the pictures and gives you a panorama from your series of pictures.
Jim Doty has a great post that outlines the basic functions of the application plus some tips and tricks. I figured out a few of the tips on my own by trial and error before finding his post, and the others were very helpful too (such as the file quirk order, which I was still working on).
Here are two of my own tips if you have a single directory in which several photo series are located:
- When opening photos for creating the series (Step 5 above), switch the AutoStitch ” Open ” dialog box view to thumbnails. It will be easier to pick out which photos you are looking for.
- Be sure to rename “pano.jpg” to something different after creating each panorama. That’s the default output name, and AutoStitch always drops it in the same directory as the photo series. If you don’t rename “pano.jpg” before creating the second panorama, it will overwrite the first one.
My approach to creating panoramas is basically this: create it at the highest possible size and resolution, then crop and resize (in Photoshop) as necessary depending on how I plan to use the finished product. This is accomplished by setting (in Step 4 above):
- “Output Size” to “Scale = 100%”
- “Matching Options” to “Scale = 100%”
- “Other Options” to “JPEG Quality = 100″
Beyond those changes, I haven’t tinkered too much with the settings because I’ve been pretty happy with the output.
If you’d like to try customizing your experience a little more, the ReadMe.txt that accompanies AutoStitch.exe offers the following info:
- Output Size — You may specify the output size based on the desired output width, height or relative size compared to the input images. Be sure to check the radio button beside width, height or relative size appropriately.
- Blending Method — Select linear or multi-band blending. Multi-band blending is slower but gives better results.
- Gain Compensation — Selecting gain compensation causes AutoStitch to modify the brightness of the images so that they are consistent with each other. This causes dark images to become brighter and bright images to become darker. To amplify the effect, increase the value of gain sigma. Note that this can cause saturation. If this occurs try decreasing the gain sigma or gain mean.
- Crop Settings — You can specify the rendering range in terms of angles theta (longitude) and phi (latitude). AutoCrop selects these ranges automatically. Make sure AutoCrop is not selected if you wish to set the ranges manually.
- Matching Options — You can specify the size of the images for SIFT feature extraction and some parameters for the RANSAC algorithm here. If images fail to match, try decreasing alpha and beta, and increasing the SIFT image size. If incorrect matches are found, try increasing alpha and beta.
- Orientation Settings — AutoStraighten uses a heuristic method to straighten out wavy panoramas. The manual orientation settings allow you to specify extra rotations for the panorama e.g. to centre it.
- Image Rotation — If the input images are rotated, select the rotation of the input images here.
- Other Options — Choose a JPEG quality setting in the range 75-100.
- Setting the System Memory allows the program to allocate resources more efficiently. If you get an “Out of Memory” message, try decreasing the System Memory.
What are the shortcomings? There are a couple, one of which is that it doesn’t correct (at least automatically) the distortion from your camera lens. It also doesn’t correct lighting (and color) differences between the photos in the series. That will manifest itself as darker and lighter bands (each band corresponding to one picture) in your photos depending on the settings that your digital camera automatically used for each photo. Another thing I noticed is that the horizon in the panorama usually drops lower the further left you look.
The following pictures demonstrate some of the shortcomings I’m talking about. These are very scaled-down examples of panoramas that I’ve created with AutoStitch (I apologize in advance if they’re too wide for your screen – use the horizontal scroll bar):
     
There is more complex software available, but it’s better suited for professionals (plus most of it is fairly expensive). Those of us who take pictures strictly for the fun of it will enjoy the free AutoStitch because of its ease of use and the reasonable quality of its output.
For those of you who are opposed to leather clothing, you can stop right here. You’ll never purchase a leather coat, so you have no reason to give it further thought.
The rest of us have probably considered purchasing (or have purchased) a leather coat at some point in our lives. I’m personally partial to one from J. Crew, but the $350 price tag has helped me to avoid bringing one home.
Today my wife mentioned that she’d like to get a leather coat, and I opined that it wasn’t a very practical thing to buy. Since we give ourselves each an annual clothing budget/allowance, she can get one if she really wants to.
Compared to those made from other materials, leather coats are usually more expensive, delicate, difficult to clean, and stylized. If I don’t have a lot of extra cash, why would I want to pay a premium for a product that is in many ways inferior to its alternatives?
As one data point, Mom and Dad both have leather coats from years ago. They hang in my parents’ front hall closet and are the most beautiful, expensive coats that they have ever owned. The tailoring and finish have unfortunately gone out of style, so it’s unlikely that they’ll be worn any time soon. Some might point to the fact that the leather coats are still in great shape, especially for how long ago they were purchased. It’s important to note however, that their condition is not a result attentive care, but rather of hanging in the closet for several decades!
Depending on where you live, there are only a couple of months out of the year when it’s necessary to wear a jacket. And even if it is cool outside, there are only a few times when you might want to wear a leather coat. They’re not very practical for working on the car, shoveling (or playing in the) snow, or a host of other activities you’re likely to engage in during the wintertime. You’d probably only wear it when you’re going out for the evening
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