That dreaded time of the year known as ”tax season” is right around the corner.
On March 31st we have to pay our annual property taxes — something I always find slightly ironic given that we actually own our house outright — followed closely by personal income taxes on April 15th.
As such, I have been spending a fair bit of time looking at bookkeeping and numbers and budgets and projections. As always, I end up thinking that it's not a pretty picture because in spite of the fact that we make very little we still have to pay taxes.
That aside, I actually came across a file — a spreadsheet, actually — that I made back in 2020, in which I was trying to project our crypto investments out into the future.
It was a very sad picture!
I won't go into specific numbers, but the one take away I ended up with — after deleting the file as having become completely irrelevant — is that most plans and budgets don't take into account major unforeseen financial incidents.
These could be such things as unexpected medical bills, or even major property repairs or automotive repairs not covered by insurance. Whereas I'm not sure that Murphy's proverbial law is a real thing, sometimes it does feel like something is aware and waiting around the next corner to derail your efforts just at the point where you feel like you're starting to gain some momentum.
Of course we all have our own situations. I happen to be self-employed and that means I can't depend on next month's paycheck to fund something unexpected that comes along. I just have to work with what I have in hand.
So when I looked at my goal that included having 40,000 Hive staked by the end of 2025, I could also see that that goal clearly did not reflect the possibility that a really bad thing could happen and I would have to suddenly power down on Hive to help fund it.
As it happens, I've actually had to do so twice, so I have been on my way towards my stake building goal and then had to cut it short twice.
Whereas it makes me rather sad on one hand, on the other hand I'm also relieved. After all, we would have been truly screwed if I hadn't had the possibility of powering down and cashing out to meet these unforeseen expenses. So hats off to Hive for that!
The real thing I see — in looking at the projected numbers and then looking at my reality — is that there's a lot of stuff we just can't predict, but more importantly the particular lifestyle I have chosen to live turns out to have been such that I have never been able to build a substantial "oh shit fund" to meet these unforeseen expenses.
I won't go into extreme detail (as I said) but one thing that had to be funded was the $7,500 property tax bill that would have resulted in a tax foreclosure had it not been paid, and the other was substantially funding when our former art gallery flooded as a result of a "250 year flood event" that somehow the insurance company refused to cover because there was some kind of "acts of God" clause that was excluded.
It's very difficult to plan for these things, and if you become too risk averse you miss out on opportunities because you virtually become afraid to even step out your own front door lest you should encounter some misfortune.
That actually works twofold: you're afraid of the accident, and you don't wanna step out the front door because you're saving up money for the eventuality that would break your neck when you step out the front door.
It's not much of a life!
Bottom line: some things just cannot be projected!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week.
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Created at 2025.02.19 12:52 PST
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"Man makes plans, God laughs."
If only the future went as planned more often! But even if I vestments need to be used sooner than expected, it means a safety net which otherwise might not have existed.