Accountant by Day

Back from a much-anticipated, yet brief, sojourn to the beach. After washing the remains of the salty water from my hair and clothes, I am left with a few grains of sand in my wallet that will likely follow me around for years and a few thoughts on taxes and government. In light of the recent announcements from presidential candidates, the upcoming election seems more imminent than before. We all seem to agree that something must be done about The Deficit, but the conflict of course arises when we try to argue our views on how The Deficit should best be handled.

Did you know that in Norway, the government does your taxes for you? Each year they send you your filled out tax return, in case you have any corrections to make, but other than that, it’s all taken care of. Of course, in order to calculate this, they have access to all of your financial records, bank account activity, etc. As a side note, they still have lots of accountants. That comment is directed at people who say that accountants who think that Fair Tax won’t work are only concerned about losing their jobs since there won’t be tax work for us anymore.

I hate to think about the fact that I amassed all of my student loan balance in one year, but have something like a 3-year plan to pay it off. To be fair, thanks to the student loans, I could put some income into mutual funds at the very bottom of the recession, and I think this will pay off in the future. However, this has been a big part of why I haven’t been paying my loans off faster now - I’m scared I’ll miss out on big market gains if I don’t keep up with my dollar-cost-averaging method as the economy continues to struggle.

As of yesterday, I was finally caught up on extension filings, and final audit reports, and it feels awesome! For 2 days, I won’t have 8 full billable hours in my schedule. I left work at 6:30 yesterday, and got to play with the dog and work in the yard for a bit! Having free time and nice weather is best after having way too much work. Once things slow down for a longer period of time, and free time becomes a more normal event.

Being forced to track your time at work is a good way to see how unproductive humans really are … How much time do you think you spend actually working while at work? I bet you would revise that estimate down if you had to track all your hours to individual projects, AND if you wanted to be efficient on how many hours you put into each project. I’ve noticed that billable hours and non-billable hours are a bit like my budget - I think of some bills as “one time” or irregular payments, so they don’t make it onto my budget - but when you start tracking spending, it turns out that every month has one of those irregular, one-time costs.

My team and I spent the last week at a client who likes to go out to lunch with us every day. By Wednesday, these lunches were taking 2 hours to get through, and we were working super late to try to finish our work. Enough, we decided. We would just walk to the grocery store next to the client and get ourselves sandwiches from the deli for lunch. So on Thursday, we walked over there, and picked up some pre-made sandwiches at the deli.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and BAM! my Alexa ranking dropped below 1,000,000! What a lovely Christmas present to wake up to! Merry Christmas to All!

It seems clear why the United States Postal Service is going out of business. I usually buy through Amazon.com, and they ship via UPS. UPS leaves the packages at my front door, so far I have never had one stolen. USPS, on the other hand, needed to deliver a $10 piece of foam to me. I was not home to receive it (because for whatever reason, they assume everyone has a stay at home wife to sign of their packages.

Earlier this evening, I took my dogs for a walk in our local park. Two children ran up to me, maybe 5 and 7. They were aiming to walk right up to the dogs and pet them, without asking permission, so I put up a hand and asked them to wait. This gesture and firm tone works on my dogs every time, but it had no effect on the kids, who ran right up to us and started petting before I could get the chance to explain that some dogs aren’t as friendly as they expect.

From discussions with my coworkers, it seems like most of us need a certain amount of time to unwind or “decompress” between getting home from work and going to sleep. During these times when we work long hours, it seems silly to waste time reading (blogging) instead of going to bed right away. But it turns out that I will just lie wide awake for hours if I don’t take the time to calm down after work