working by fire light

It’s Friday night, and I just had my second cup of coffee (homemade). Coffee is a new thing for me, but I think it’s something I could get used too. Pretty cheap too. And probably better for me than my typical Rockstar jumpstart. I treated myself to a firelog, for some reason I find the flames incredibly soothing and makes sitting at the computer much easier on a Friday night.

It’s been an up and down week. Sunday and Monday I felt like I was gonna beat the living snot out of anyone looking at me the wrong way. Tuesday something clicked, I went for a run, and the week started looking up. I’ve found the biggest determinate of my mood is how much I get done. It’s not healthy, but it is what it is. The more I get done, the better I feel.

Financially it’s been a much better month than January. I haven’t run my final budget numbers yet, but I cooked a heck of a lot more and kept the eating out to a minimum. Business-wise, it’s still touch and go. We’ll end up with a pretty solid month, profitable, but that doesn’t include any debt payments save the 0% on the 3 citicards. And that deal is running out in a few months.

I got every tax issue calculated this week. It’s not pretty. It’s not terrible, but it’s not going to be easy. But heck, what is easy at this point? I ‘effed up, and now I’m paying for it. The IRS is owed just under 20K for 2006 and 2007. This is my first priority in terms of payments. In past dealings, I actually found the IRS very easy to deal with. But that was for a much smaller dollar amount. We will see this time. My calculated number also does not include penalties, so the number will balloon. If I can work out a 24-36 payment plan, I could fit that in the budget right now. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would work.

Red or Blue pill?

I can only go on in this limbo mode for so long. At some point one of two things is gonna break:

1. A creditor is really going to come after me (IRS, bank loan, etc) or

2. My project “A” plan blows up, or something else to get my business up in the mid teens-20K range. Not this 7-8K every month.

So, which is going to come first? Lord knows I’m working my rear off for #2. But there is only so much I can do. I force a client too much, and they get pissed off. I guess the #3 option could be that I slowly start to chip away at things, even if it’s $500 a month at a time. Depending on if #1 happens or not, that is a possibility as well I suppose. That possibly is also kind of lame.

Field Trip Friday

I got out of the house today and over to Bellevue. I had wanted more info on Sharebuilder and so I met with a PR rep for a little while in the afternoon. I have a review of the meeting that I’ll post next week, but here was the really interesting part:

For the first time I met with someone as “DebtKid”….not just myself. I’ve interacted with lots of readers and bloggers and Lending Club who know me as DebtKid, but that’s always been over e-mail, or the phone. This was actually in person.

My blog and my situation came up in the meeting, and it was strangely easy for me to talk about. I did not feel ashamed, or embarrassed like I thought I might. But this was someone who never knew me before, so maybe it was different. I don’t know.

Someday I’ll…

I do know that I’m much more comfortable talking about money (with my family, friends, etc) than I ever have been. I think this is a good thing. I especially think that my generation (20’s) needs more than ever to be talking about our finances. I feel like I could talk for hours on the mistakes I’ve made, and how to avoid them. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be able help others facing some of the obstacles I’ve faced and am facing. I hope that’s the case.

Tagged as: alpha, coffee, field trip friday, irs, sharebuilder