It's tax season again!

Money and Taxes

“It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”

                                                   Margaret Thatcher

“I've got all the money I'll ever need, if I die by four o'clock.”

                                                   Henny Youngman

I'm in the process of doing my taxes, y'all. It's the most stressful thing I do all year. I have a Master's degree, but when it comes to figuring my taxes, my cerebral cortex shuts down completely. My brain is of no use to me whatsoever. I can't add a line of figures using a calculator and get the same number twice. I can't figure what fifty-five point five cents per mile comes out to without deconstructing it. It's pathetic.

I am going to stop telling God my plans, I'll tell you that! God takes them into consideration when planning diabolical schemes to wake me up. When I was twenty-five, I told God that I didn't want to be going through a divorce at forty-five—guess what! Divorce. When I sat down with my accountant (and God) twenty years ago, I told them I didn't want to be worrying about money when I was sixty-five. And here I am, worrying about money! I know. You're saying, let me get my violin and play some sad music to go with all this whining. I don't blame you. I just had to get it out of my system. When it comes to figuring taxes, my cousin Sandy got all the brains. I think there must have been a rationing program when my family came through the line. Maybe the heavenly hosts were going through sequestration.

Anyway, my good angel knows that I am extremely fortunate in the big picture—and so do I. I know that much of the world lives on almost nothing and I do not make light of their hardship. I know, too, that the more we have, the more we think we need, and that there is true peace of mind in having fewer worldly goods to worry about. There is a point at which we live to support all the things that surround us—and in America that's a lot. Poverty is not based upon how much money you actually have, but on how much more you feel you need. Some of us have actual need, and some of us simply aren't satisfied with what we have.

Tax time is a good time to ponder one's relationship to money. How important is it to you? If you have the feeling of not-enough-ness, is it real or imagined? What could you do with regard to money to give yourself peace of mind? These are questions I'm asking myself right now. (Don't tell God!)

                                        In the spirit,

                                            Jane