Lately, I've been spending a little time budgeting for the coming year. It seems like the "adult and responsible" thing to do, although I have historically been more of a fly by the seat of my pants person, financially speaking.
However, with the cost of everything basically skyrocketing month by month, and our income doing nothing of the sort, we have to be more and more careful about how we spend our money.
The thing that always sticks in my craw when it comes to doing a budget is the fact that I have to do constant set-asides for taxes. Whereas I'm not some raving libertarian who is going around shouting "taxation is theft," taxes are nonetheless annoying. And taxes are especially annoying when you're fundamentally broke and you still have to pay them.
Of course, not all taxes are created equal. In this case what I'm having to budget for is our annual property tax payment. Most people, of course, don't really see that because it tends to be part of their mortgage payment, but since we own our house outright the property tax bill arrives in the mail for us here to pay, rather than going to the mortgage company.
Being self-employed, of course, there is no tax withheld from our income; we're responsible for reporting it ourselves and depositing it with the IRS on a quarterly basis.
So that's another set-aside for taxes. And yes, even though we are basically below the federal limit for having to pay income taxes, we still have to pay into Social Security and Medicare and all that other good stuff. And that basically amounts to about 15-16% off the top of all of our gross receipts.
I always thought it a bit strange that people who are at poverty level have to pay taxes, when they often turn right around and end up claiming the same money back in the form of benefits. It ends up being a wash...
Of course, after all this shuffling of numbers, I arrived at the usual conclusion: We can't afford to be alive!
Which creates a bit of a dilemma, because I recently read an article about how the cost of funerals have risen by almost 150% over the past ten years... so we really can't afford to be dead, either...
I guess I find a small measure of solace in knowing that much of the population finds itself in a similar predicament. That just seems to be the world we have built.
There was a time when I thought crypto might be the way out, but even that seems to have been hijacked by Wall Street greed.
As for our budget?
Well, as long as we buy nothing other than essentials, and we have no unexpected major outlays, we might make through another year. And that's as much as I am going to say!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2024-01-23 02:18 PST
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