N7YA
04-20-2014, 09:04 AM
Finally making headway!
I had a list of four big goals/obstacles to knock out before we can move forward with leaving this ever-worsening place in the rear view forever.
1) My son. I wanted to make sure he finished high school and we got as much time together as possible. He is now 19 and working a steady job. He also graduates on June 10th. I will be there, happy and proud. I have closure with it. So will his mom. When he gets a few paychecks together, he will likely get a small place with a few of his buddies and his mom will have a place to herself. She will be free to move out of here too, because she also knows this place is yucky and dangerous.
2) My music career. Its obvious that this town is dying, our residency is no exception...we are stuck. Im happy to have a residency, no doubt! But im playing music i dont care for, at a casino that doesnt care, to people who i absolutely dont want to know. Our audience is really trashy, more than most. I just dont see the opportunity to move forward here. Devie recently found out the ugly politics that runs this town now with her job. She is clean, perfect attendance, 14 years experience...unhireable. Why? Because she works for one particular property that the other properties have a grudge against for being land-grabbing dicks a few years ago. Nobody from Caesars corp is getting hired anywhere, they dont want us. She is stuck right where she hates being, but she is at peace with it now since we are well decided on leaving. Its time to move on. I am also at peace with leaving the gig behind, truly. :)
3) The IRS. Heres a weird twist. For the last 3 years, my tax man and i have been battling the IRS over a 3 year audit they conducted on me. They said i owed them some ungodly amount that didnt even fall in line with what i actually made. They sent me the lien notices, threats, etc...i was instructed to do nothing, pay nothing. My tax guy said he was waiting for them to push the case up the ladder to the next level, THEN we can go after it. All this made me nervous, but he assured me its what is supposed to happen. It finally came through and we met at the IRS main building downtown to meet with the senior assessor. This guy was a pale, soft handed number cruncher who could calculate figures in his head on the spot...we were in for a long morning. He actually tried bulldogging us, he even shut down my guy. But i backed him off because i know MY job better than he does. I explained everything in detail until he was satisfied with the answers.
After all was said and done, he said "Lets make a deal here and keep this out of tax court. I will draw up a settlement and send it to you. If you agree to it, sign it and lets move on...and lets knock the penalty interest from 20% to 10%, is that ok?"...uh, yeah! Walking out of the meeting, i was told i did very well. I could expect to be hit with about $15k total. Not great, but much better. When the actual envelope from the assessor arrived, the figure was around $20k. We wrapped our head around it, accepted this and signed off on it, expecting to make payments for a few years.
Heres where it gets cool. A few days later, i called Devie and she told me that we have six envelopes from the IRS, one was hand signed by the assessor. Nervous, she opened them. It was a final judgement from his office, 3 actual bills for me and 2 for Dev. Her two bills for 2010 and 2011 were $0. Mine were also $0 for those years. Meaning, they deducted ALL the taxes owed. They dinged me for 2009....for $633. The paper we signed was merely an agreement that we would take no action until the deliberation is made, and the numbers were an approximation. We meet with our tax guy on monday so he can see this for himself. If this is actually what we think it is, we dodged a HUGE bullet and can put this behind us (and get three years of paperwork out of his office). We will also pay it all off on monday. It helped that i went from a Schedule C to incorporated...audits suck! We are taking him to lunch whether he likes it or not!
An odd sidenote, the day we got the judgement notice, we also got a bunch of lawyer solicitations for tax reduction services. :lol: I dont think they could get it lower than this...i guess the wormy IRS guy thought i was cool.
4) The house. We bought this place at the bottom of the housing crunch bubble for $120k, a nice place with a great view and price. A few months after we moved in (3 years ago), i checked and noticed that the value increased by $3000. Ok, good. We were recently contacted by the realtor who sold us the house, she said an identical home on our street just sold for $190k, top end. The values in this part of town are moving nicely. The average right now for this square footage is running about $170k. By the time we are ready to list it, we could potentially ask $200k and work down from there. That will also allow us to pay it down a little more for a higher return. We have some minor repairs to do, some carpet to replace and junk to clear out, but we will see a decent return, no foreclosure or short sale. That is what we will buy the plot and A frame house in Maine with. We are going to sell my car, buy a used truck, load her little car on a trailer and hit the road. It will be small living, organic farming and working regular jobs from there until we can start our small business. I plan on finding some local musicians up there and just playing for the sake of creating enjoyable music.
Those items were a big deal to me for a long time, but they are falling off now. Devie has a list of her own, and i have new items now. But i am flying up there in early september to scout the place...thats pretty real. We just want a place to call home. A place where our hearts will be happy and we can be out of the way and self sufficient without anyone bothering us, as we certainly dont want to bother anyone else. We are nice, hardworking folks, but we are just tired and it would be a good idea to get out of the line of fire as it doesnt look like the future of this country is too friendly. Thats ok, its all about becoming a very small target and not repeating old mistakes, which i have made plenty of. It appears we are finally seeing some light. :)
I had a list of four big goals/obstacles to knock out before we can move forward with leaving this ever-worsening place in the rear view forever.
1) My son. I wanted to make sure he finished high school and we got as much time together as possible. He is now 19 and working a steady job. He also graduates on June 10th. I will be there, happy and proud. I have closure with it. So will his mom. When he gets a few paychecks together, he will likely get a small place with a few of his buddies and his mom will have a place to herself. She will be free to move out of here too, because she also knows this place is yucky and dangerous.
2) My music career. Its obvious that this town is dying, our residency is no exception...we are stuck. Im happy to have a residency, no doubt! But im playing music i dont care for, at a casino that doesnt care, to people who i absolutely dont want to know. Our audience is really trashy, more than most. I just dont see the opportunity to move forward here. Devie recently found out the ugly politics that runs this town now with her job. She is clean, perfect attendance, 14 years experience...unhireable. Why? Because she works for one particular property that the other properties have a grudge against for being land-grabbing dicks a few years ago. Nobody from Caesars corp is getting hired anywhere, they dont want us. She is stuck right where she hates being, but she is at peace with it now since we are well decided on leaving. Its time to move on. I am also at peace with leaving the gig behind, truly. :)
3) The IRS. Heres a weird twist. For the last 3 years, my tax man and i have been battling the IRS over a 3 year audit they conducted on me. They said i owed them some ungodly amount that didnt even fall in line with what i actually made. They sent me the lien notices, threats, etc...i was instructed to do nothing, pay nothing. My tax guy said he was waiting for them to push the case up the ladder to the next level, THEN we can go after it. All this made me nervous, but he assured me its what is supposed to happen. It finally came through and we met at the IRS main building downtown to meet with the senior assessor. This guy was a pale, soft handed number cruncher who could calculate figures in his head on the spot...we were in for a long morning. He actually tried bulldogging us, he even shut down my guy. But i backed him off because i know MY job better than he does. I explained everything in detail until he was satisfied with the answers.
After all was said and done, he said "Lets make a deal here and keep this out of tax court. I will draw up a settlement and send it to you. If you agree to it, sign it and lets move on...and lets knock the penalty interest from 20% to 10%, is that ok?"...uh, yeah! Walking out of the meeting, i was told i did very well. I could expect to be hit with about $15k total. Not great, but much better. When the actual envelope from the assessor arrived, the figure was around $20k. We wrapped our head around it, accepted this and signed off on it, expecting to make payments for a few years.
Heres where it gets cool. A few days later, i called Devie and she told me that we have six envelopes from the IRS, one was hand signed by the assessor. Nervous, she opened them. It was a final judgement from his office, 3 actual bills for me and 2 for Dev. Her two bills for 2010 and 2011 were $0. Mine were also $0 for those years. Meaning, they deducted ALL the taxes owed. They dinged me for 2009....for $633. The paper we signed was merely an agreement that we would take no action until the deliberation is made, and the numbers were an approximation. We meet with our tax guy on monday so he can see this for himself. If this is actually what we think it is, we dodged a HUGE bullet and can put this behind us (and get three years of paperwork out of his office). We will also pay it all off on monday. It helped that i went from a Schedule C to incorporated...audits suck! We are taking him to lunch whether he likes it or not!
An odd sidenote, the day we got the judgement notice, we also got a bunch of lawyer solicitations for tax reduction services. :lol: I dont think they could get it lower than this...i guess the wormy IRS guy thought i was cool.
4) The house. We bought this place at the bottom of the housing crunch bubble for $120k, a nice place with a great view and price. A few months after we moved in (3 years ago), i checked and noticed that the value increased by $3000. Ok, good. We were recently contacted by the realtor who sold us the house, she said an identical home on our street just sold for $190k, top end. The values in this part of town are moving nicely. The average right now for this square footage is running about $170k. By the time we are ready to list it, we could potentially ask $200k and work down from there. That will also allow us to pay it down a little more for a higher return. We have some minor repairs to do, some carpet to replace and junk to clear out, but we will see a decent return, no foreclosure or short sale. That is what we will buy the plot and A frame house in Maine with. We are going to sell my car, buy a used truck, load her little car on a trailer and hit the road. It will be small living, organic farming and working regular jobs from there until we can start our small business. I plan on finding some local musicians up there and just playing for the sake of creating enjoyable music.
Those items were a big deal to me for a long time, but they are falling off now. Devie has a list of her own, and i have new items now. But i am flying up there in early september to scout the place...thats pretty real. We just want a place to call home. A place where our hearts will be happy and we can be out of the way and self sufficient without anyone bothering us, as we certainly dont want to bother anyone else. We are nice, hardworking folks, but we are just tired and it would be a good idea to get out of the line of fire as it doesnt look like the future of this country is too friendly. Thats ok, its all about becoming a very small target and not repeating old mistakes, which i have made plenty of. It appears we are finally seeing some light. :)