Labor Day – a holiday that recognizes our year-round efforts toiling to support ourselves and our families. Since I’m fully retired, I don’t feel that I’m nonobservant of the holiday spirit by writing this blog today. I do use the day to recognize the end of summer and the beginning of the new school year! For me, for many years it also signaled the beginning of a new term of court.
I must admit that as a much much younger man I classically felt 10 feet tall and bullet proof. With all things financial I shot from the hip and would be able to surmount all sorts of financial missteps. Time of course taught me the lesson that when it came to money it was necessary to have a plan. Enter the BUDGET. If you do not have a written budget, then trying to win the economic battle of life is virtually impossible. I raised my children with the mantra “the heat, the light, the rent, and the water “. I’m not sure where the saying comes from, but it’s been with me from when I first married and started a family. I still to this day have my folded legal pad sheet with my gotta be list to check off monthly. At 81 my expenses do not exceed my income and that is not so easy to do. Unforeseen medical events have left me with some debt but fortunately at present it is manageable. Young or old make that budget!!
When Steve Forbes proposed a flat tax, I could not believe that neither his party or the opposition thought much of it. It has not to my knowledge been discussed ever again by the powers that be. A flat tax is in fact most equitable if incomes are not differentiated such as earned income, capital gain, long term gain, and on and on. Income is income it seems to me and for all the treatment of incomes that presently exist in our taxing system there are champions for all of them because it inures to their benefit. Here’s my solution:
15% Federal Income Tax
5% Social Security Individual
5% Employer SS Contribution
5% State Income Tax
Each individual pays 25% of their income (however earned) and no credits against said income! Truly a way to get to a one-page tax return. Corporations should pay 15% on operational profits.
JAI BABA
TTFN
JU
