Next to Christmas, this is my favorite time of the year. No, not spring…. Tax season.
I know, I know…this places me firmly in a rather specialized niche of individuals, like the folks that order wigs from the back of magazines or civil war re-enactors. Kooky, but basically harmless. You have to understand, for the rest of the year the term “disposable income” relates mostly to small change I sweep up and for whatever reason am too lazy to pick out of the dustpan. But ever so briefly, right after our refund arrives and just before our credit card is paid off and we replace whatever major appliance inopportunely decides to bite the dust, I am flush. This magical period lasts maybe five minutes, but I look forward to it all year.
What? You don’t like tax season? Just do what we did — have a whole gaggle of kids. This insures that you will never have two nickels to rub together. The government knows it. Their “Child Tax Credit” is an aknowlegement that all your money will be spent on Hello Kitty Band-Aids and sneakers. (hereafter known as “itemized deductions”) If god forbid, some of your children are of the boy variety, you might have to get a second job just to pay for the vast quantities of Honey Nut Cheerios they consume in a week…HA! Like you could afford brand name cereal. The IRS wants money? Great. Tell them to call me when they find some.
After you have procured these adorable little dependents, don’t claim any of them as exemptions. Yes, yes, I know that I insinuated that I could use additional funds at pretty much any time of the year so a little extra in each paycheck would seem like a good idea. This is faulty logic in that it assumes that there is an amount of money I could make that would be somehow more than my children could collectively spend. I’ve been lectured also on giving the government what amounts to an interest-free loan. But I look at it like this; any interest I lose by NOT investing that money is really a service charge I am paying to keep that money out of my grubby little mitts. I would not save that money. I WOULD, however, be drinking many more venti skim mochas and have much cuter shoes.
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