I hate doing taxes. As soon as I get out my little bag of crumpled receipts and the pink, plastic calculator that doubles as a pencil box I immediately start to complain and don't stop until the forms are in the mail. Every year the sighs get louder, more dramatic, as it gets closer and closer to the 15th. I hate taxes like I hate washing windows or painting walls, bored to tears before I've finished entering the information from our first 1099.
And yet in my entire adult wage-earning life, I have only paid a professional accountant once and even though he did a decent job at a reasonable price, I will never trust my numbers to a stranger again. In fact, I am making my husband, Michele, learn how to stumble and bumble through the Turbo Tax prompts the same way I do.
The ritual of income taxes is the only time I force myself to sit down and study the data of my life to reflect on what I value. When I pay someone else to plug in the numbers, I miss the most important part of the process. Our check registers and account statements tell Michele and I in black and white what was important to us over the past 12 months and what wasn't. Tax returns make us face up to those decisions - sometimes painfully - and rethink them.
What are some of the discoveries we've made about ourselves from the numbers of 2013?
1. Michele figured out we paid less than $400 for gas and electric in Cincinnati for the whole year. We knew we were paying less in the condo than in our old house - but because the amount is added onto our HOA fees, we didn't realize quite how much we were saving. (*Please note we are not here in the summers and never use the air conditioner. We wear sweaters in the winter. This is not realistic for normal people.)
2. At 58, how I appear to the rest of the world is apparently no longer of significant importance to me. I only saw one professional hair cut come through on the credit card statement and a charge for $342 at T.J. Maxx for clothes. I think I might have also bought a couple of sun dresses for cash in the market in Savona, but I never pay more than 10 Euros apiece. To all of my friends and family who are always polite about what I'm wearing, I sincerely promise to try to care more in 2014.
3. Even though I think we never eat out - Michele says we do and it turns out he's right. I was surprised by how much money it costs us just to buy groceries in Italy where I add up every single cent we spend. In Savona I do my shopping on a daily basis and the total surprised me. I worry about average families who bring home the equivalent of about $1,500 a month and wonder how they do it because I'm a bargain shopper.
4. Michele also says I spend way too much money on art - which must be where all the money I used to spend on my hair and clothes is going - and this year it might not be such a bad idea to slow it down a little bit.
Of course we're not done yet. With another four or five days to bicker and fuss this is probably just the tip of the discovery iceberg. The numbers for School Amici on our schedule Cs (self-employment income) will trigger a lot of thoughts about how we use our resources, what works and what doesn't. I'll want to give more to charity and Michele will be more conservative. Then he'll tell me how easy it would be for me to do a little more consulting. It's awful. But I swear it's worth it. We make better financial decisions year-round because of a few days of pain - and believe me, we'd never do it voluntarily.
How to make your own investment decisions and live a rich life
