A dad's advice to himself and his kids.

For those of you that know me, you know that I’ve owed the IRS for some time.  It’s been a grind for me the entire time.   Monday, I got IRS Letter 2850 sent to me.  Excerpted below (click to embiggen)

My principal balance is under $25,000 which is the IRS’s apparent Magic Number for not making you endlessly fill out form 433a. I don’t know, I’m not a Tax Attorney, not like my friend Phil Hodgen. (Note: preceding link was gratuitous and contains deliberate anchor text.)    This is down from over $93,000 in actual tax plus the juice that I ignored for a year:

Now, no doubt that there were some disproportionate consequences for my actions, but bottom line, 99% of this was my fault.  Or, 100% of it was my fault, really, but the consequences that come from being in debt to the IRS are pretty friggin’ severe.  I’m down to ~$35k, all in, no criminal investigations, no perpetual re negotiations, no more levies should hit me.   I’ll pay this off by next tax season, and I’ll be and stay ahead of my taxes.

I’m sharing this because this whole taste has soured me against finance.  I don’t want to be in debt–even if it costs me.  It adds a level of complexity and ‘bitchery’ to my life.  Debt saps my energy and it makes it harder for me to keep my promises.  I’m not doing it anymore.  I’m no man’s bitch.  I have to get out as soon as I can conceivably do it…and never look back.

Here’s why:  I had a great month in July.  But it just caught me up.  I didn’t get ahead, and I’m still waiting for my PPC bill to hit me so I can know how much I have (Google & Yahoo have never been accurate with their statements, have always been off).   I’m still surfing the payables. I will be till this thing is put to rest.  And when it is, I’ll turn the after burners on, get a little scratch up before I make another move.

Having this makes me work less hard.  I understand the conservative argument: it’s futile sometimes to keep grinding out work.  It’s futile to have to work & have all your money go to taxes.  It sucks to look at your family and not be able to do the things you want because you effed up your 20′s.  It sucks to pull in six figures and live like college students.  (Though, as usual Mark Cuban is rockingly right).  Paying a tax I don’t fully believe in kind of sucks.

Debt Slavery isn’t a lie.  I’m not stuck on consumer debt, but I screwed up.  I always thought that the checkerboard would arrange itself so I’d have one massive triple jump and be able pay everything off.  I thought I’d earn enough to swiftly and permanently punch my way out of this thing.  The way I expected things to roll was that I’d be able to pay it all off at once.  Reality doesn’t work like that.  I’m not gonna hold a winning track ticket and suddenly pay everything off.  Gotta chunk it down a little at a time, grind it till the interest stops being most of my income, and do the Debt Snowball thing.

So, a commitment:  I’ll update this about once a month.  Eventually I’ll do the google docs goal tracking thing, but I’ve got other fish to fry, auto responders to write, blogs to sell and a course to design.  Serving others at the highest level I know how is the way to punch through this wall.