Any day now, I’ll be out of the worst part of IRS collections.   Any day now, I’ll be done and the IRS will acknowledge that my total outstanding liability is under $25,000.   And any day, I’ll be no longer subject to weekly calls with a revenue officer hunting down my status.  I’ve come a long way.  I started out owing over $91,000 just to them.  So there’s some pride there.  My number say I owe $23,900.  Their numbers will undoubtedly be different by a smidgen, but I continue to pay weekly to them to get that debt out of my hair.

The uncertainty though is hard to contend with.  Look, the bottom line is that they are gonna put me on some type of payment plan.  Most likely it’ll be $500 a month, far, far less than what I’ve been paying.   That will be a relief, cash flow wise.   I’ll be able to breathe a little and relax.

But it’s not known.  It could be another month of the same old ‘report to the revenue officer.’  It could be that my 2005 returns are wanting, and they want more info that I’ll have a hard time supplying.   It could be that they are gonna say I owe more.  Anything is possible.

Tom Petty says that the waiting is the hardest part.

Dealing with the weight is a wait and a distraction I don’t know–quite how to process.  On the one hand, it’ll either be good news or no news.

But the waiting is the hardest part.

I am mentally having a hard time with it.  I know that one of the biggest joys of my life is coming in about 6 months when I write that final “F-off” check to the IRS.  I want that to happen this year, in 2009, in the heart of the recession.   But the distraction of the maybe is something that the linear part of me can’t deal with.  I’m having a difficult time focusing on my lists & tasks.

I know–a little bit–what it’s like to have a loved one with a grim prognosis.   The uncertainty kills.  It’s part of the reason why mortgage brokers got so much money.  They bore the burdens of financial uncertainty along with their clients.  I’ll let you all know what happens, it’ll be sometime in July that the finish line will honestly and actually be in sight.  That I’ll be able to dash for it, and get the merciless evil that is the IRS out of our life.

Then I’ll work on the rest of my debt.

Miles to go, but I see the path at least.

More later.  Cutting some videos for thesis blogs.

This post originally came from the Freelance Sales Blog GenuineChris.com My company is http://flatratewebjobs.com/ go check that out when you get a moment. .

How Do You Harness Uncertainty?

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1. Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems
2. Debt: Making Good Men Bitches Since Time Immemorial

I spent my 20’s earning–and spending–a lot of money.

I earned money from being a Real estate agent, and I spent money on nothing.  I had the ostrich head in sand problem for a long time.  Have played at this, but never DONE it.

I’m not unusual.  I have some cash in the bank, but when you take the IRS, the people I borrowed from to bail myself out of the IRS, and everything else, my net worth is -89,000.   That’s negative.  I’m 89,000 in the hole, and happy that I’m not in jail.  In the last 9 years, I’ve only had 2 years that were under six figures.   The bulk of the damage, the state and IRS tax bill that was once $170,000 is now down to $25,000.  It’ll get knocked out. And it’ll make a good story.

I honestly believed it to be less till recently.   I had made a $25,000 clerical error.  A GIGO problem.  A spreadsheet that I worked on had bad data.  But it was interesting, I think.

I hid this stuff from people.  Mostly myself.  I knew how to earn money, and I paid some lip service to frugality, but it was a ruse.  I didn’t care, I figured I’d be a millionaire soon.  Phil Hodgen, International Tax Lawyer (and good friend) says, that the “second you don’t need a Mercedes anymore is when you’ll get one.”   The dissipation of every bit of money I had on stupid schemes that would get me out of the last failed plan was kind of how I lived.  I was grasping for whatever.  When we got rid of the real estate and moved into a dive, things changed, our focus changed some.  Hopefully it’s not too late.

I didn’t spend a lot of money on advertising, I pissed it away on restaurants, shiny tech gadgets, clothing for my wife.  Oh, yeah, and rental properties that were a Bad Idea for anyone to own, that I didn’t care about.  The whole time, I hated my job.  There’s plenty to like to being a Realtor, I just didn’t have the passion for it.

Anyway, I lied to myself for a long time.  See, I had income.  Things are fine, I’m still a smart kid.  I made money, so I can’t be failing.   I’ll fix it later.  Who cares, everyone has these problems.  Thing is, they are preventable.

In the long run we’re all dead.  That’s what Keynes said.  But the thing is, how we lived matters.  I can’t endure the stress of it.  Deal is: I had all the means to have a good pile of wealth now.  Somehow, my ego never let me feel this.  I always find some excuse, some reason that everything was still OK.

It’s not OK.  The debt is suffocating.  I’ve taken it from $150ish (realmoney) to $89.  Now it’s time to home stretch this thing and get this smoked forever.  It’s all survivable, and it’s all a distraction.  You can’t operate with debt, not like you can in reality.  Think about this:  At 10% (my average interest) I’m paying $9,000 a year, or $750/month to debt.

Think about that.  That’s before I do anything, I gotta pony that money up.

It’s fixable, though.  I’m earning at a good clip.

I’m pretty sure at this point that there aren’t going to be any other ’surprises’.  I honestly had believed that the debt was down below $20k.   And it’ not, and so this thing is going in a google doc.  that google doc is gonna get iframed into the sidebar.  And I’ll be updating it once a month.  All the component parts of the debt will get added in.    I’ll do this tomorrow.

I want to be transparent for selfish reasons.  I’m not bragging.  I’m currently doing pretty well.  I collected up all my debts and spreadsheeted ‘em.  I’m going to get rid of them one by one as fast as I can.  The first goal is a $4800 loan that costs $200 a month and is at a ghastly 14% interest.    I can do it.

Here are some personal finance bloggers:

The Simple Dollar – more consumerist than I’d like to be, but better than I am.

Five Cent Nickel – opinionated.  Tough.  And good.

This post originally came from the Freelance Sales Blog GenuineChris.com My company is http://flatratewebjobs.com/ go check that out when you get a moment. .

What Are You Lying To Yourself About?

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So the sidebar “transparency” project is nearly done. I’m glad. I will be starting another sidebar transparency thing by Monday.

Let’s recap the time I’ve had:

I’ve had 3 consecutive 5 figure months, which is encouraging, I think, for me just starting and me being in this economy. I also have room to grow, which is also exciting. I’ve created a world beating e-book, and I lost 7 pounds in December, during the holidays. So I am not discouraged by my progress. I am going amp up my efforts in January–with what’s left of it, to hit some January 2009 goals:

$15,000 in profit. My five figure was a revenue figure, and I outsource an increasing amount, so, I gotta pay attention to #1. You do, however, have to gross before you net. So this month, I want to work and get $15k in the hopper. I want to replace my mortgage income.

Anyway, goals for this month:

10 Blog Posts Linking back from PR 4+ Blogs, not counting BHB/Lenderama.

F-therapy finished by 1/15/09. (By the way, I’m biased, and it’s really, really good, novel and nonobvious).

Get “Right Right Now,” working in some way that’s more formal than me grinding out jobs. Grinding is fun, and I want to SELL more work, and do a little less. I can find people that need work and work that needs done better than I can do the work myself. If not for the bias against people that find work and people to do it, there’d be an easier path for me. Not that this is bad. The ‘markup,’ is going to be transparent. I’m going to generally stick to a 60-65% of the rev to the freelancer model. This will keep price pressure minimized. I want to be fully transparent. The only times I’ve gotten in trouble are when I was representing myself as doing more of the work than I was and creating a barrier between clients. The ‘handoff’ can be better done elsewise.

10# dropped this month. (I’m still heavy, and I’m pissed that I hit a plateau. Most of my 7# was the first 10 days of December, and I fell off the Vegetarian wagon, and had a burger, enough, I say.

$15k/profit.

—

I’ll be using Joe’s Goals to track and display it. The things that I’ll do daily:

• Wake @ 5:30
• Morning Pages
• Video weblog.
• Guest Post Written & Sent
• RRN.COM
• Workout
• Do 2 a days 3x a week. (keep my mental energy up.)
• Acquire 2 projects a week.

That’s pretty much it. Nothing else really matters. I do need to spend more time thinking about nutrition, and figure out some measurable metric for this stuff.

I’ll have another post when I’m done with Joe’s Goals, but right now I’ve got some mental energy, and I want to use it on FT.

This post originally came from the Freelance Sales Blog GenuineChris.com My company is http://flatratewebjobs.com/ go check that out when you get a moment. .

Five Figure Months…Joe’s Goals and Google Docs

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Now–I can prbably get the food down a little bit, if I had to, and if I was real disciplined about it, but that’s been close lately.   Let’s gross that up for taxes–assuming I’ll have a tax rate at this level of 35%, and we’re at  $2897, * 12 = $34,765 gone before anything else happens.   That’s pretty low, and that’s promising.

Most freelance budgets don’t account for taxes.  I’m using 35% to make up for state and federal taxes up to $100k, and 45% on income earned after that.  Arbitrary to a point but it gives me some cushion.  I’ll get a lot of offsets, but I have to pay both sides of the effing payroll tax.

Now, I still have a car payment of $204, and student loan payments of about $175.  I also owe about $650/month to repay my “let’s stay out of jail” loans from 2005-2007.  The car payment is really nothing. My student loans went berserk when I was faced with going to jail or letting ‘em go.   Easy choice, kids, easy friggin choice.

This post originally came from the Freelance Sales Blog GenuineChris.com My company is http://flatratewebjobs.com/ go check that out when you get a moment. .

Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget

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