Bringing Light to the Darkness…
Rather than start at the beginning, I’m going to start with right now (because, after all, that is all there is). Eventually, I will reveal the impetus of the idea to tackle this first BIG issue. For now, suffice it to say it is past time to bring this issue into the light. It is not as if I haven’t told people about it. I don’t freely share it with every new person I meet, yet many of my friends know about it. It is an ugly issue. Women on dating sites will openly say they don’t want to date men with this problem. While, I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggles with it, sometimes it feels that way. I’ll give you a hint – it has to do with money.
I have a bunch of debt: it’s close to $100,000 as of this writing, while my liquid assets are roughly $50,000, of which $35,000 is tax advantaged; i.e: best not to touch. The vast majority of debt is taxes, federal and state, current and past years. The credit card debt is minimal. Long story short, in 2010, I got divorced. In 2011, I filed for bankruptcy. In 2012, our marital home was foreclosed upon. The Trifecta! (Funny how a place was purportedly worth $1.1m just two years prior was suddenly worth only $600k at best.) Let’s just say all this combined to make it a fun way to jump into my forties. Woo hoo! For roughly five years after my divorce, I did not file state or federal taxes as I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
The Streets of Cuenca, Ecuador, April 2019
You see, going all the way back to before high school, I was driven to make money. It was my “raison d’être”. I was going to make ALL the money. Greed is good, according to Mr. Gekko, right? I started working at age 15. Started a business in college to fund my education. Was earning $100k at age 26 (that used to be a lot of money). Yet, looking back, my whole life has been a battle with debt. It’s as if “saving” was a dirty word. I was raised by parents in and out of debt and with the refrain that debt is good (not that it can’t ever be, when used properly). For a long time, it appeared I was winning. I ran a digital photo lab for 12 years, during which time I financed and paid off over a million dollars worth of equipment. I made (and spent) a LOT of money. I saved some. I ran the credit cards up and I paid them down.
Looking back, there were a couple things at play in my stasis around work and earning money post-divorce. There was the utter disgust and contempt for a system (the US Government) I had believed in. There was anger at my ex-wife (which was largely anger at myself projected on to her). There was the fear of repeating the whole cycle again. And there was the ultimate realization that money did not bring happiness. Wow. What a concept! On top of that, I was deeply depressed.
Late 2015, early 2016, after completing the Landmark Forum, I got my ass in gear. I hired a tax attorney. S/he was going to help me organize my shit and go in and negotiate a settlement with the evil IRS! I’d show them! Only, as it turns out, it doesn’t really work this way. Suffice it to say, no settlement was forthcoming from “The Agency” as the tax attorneys call it. I had over $100,000 in an IRA and they weren’t going to budge as long as that money was there. So I set up a payment plan of $700/month.
I had a decent 2018, only not decent enough. At the end of the year, I hadn’t paid in a nickel. On the advice of my tax attorney, I deferred withdrawing money from my IRA until January 2, 2019 so I wouldn’t have an even larger tax bill for 2018. I was told this would cancel my payment plan. It did. And I did nothing about it until late in the year (gotta keep it in the dark!). On my first attempt with the website, it was down. Two weeks later I was back and got it reinstated. Too late. The notice that a tax lien was filed against me came a week or two later. Same problem in 2020. In spite of setting up a payroll account mid year and paying some taxes, I didn’t have the $21k I owed. I was knocked out of the payment plan yet again. Seems kind of crazy, no? Who ever said the government made sense.
Overlaid on all of this has been a severe case of pelvic floor dysfunction that began in June 2016. More on how all that is related later…
So, here I am. Laying it all out. Shining light on the darkness. I just received the book “How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously” by Jerrold Mundis and I am going to (virtually) check out the Debtors Anonymous meetings. I’m doing all this in attempt to shift my relationship to the debt – to “re-know” it in a more productive way and to know that I can overcome it. For too long, I’ve been simply wishing it away, while at some level agreeing to it.
This exercise has already moved things a bit. In reflecting on it, I am grateful for the fact I was able to survive for several years – it was literally a choice between eating and paying taxes. Eating won. It is only recently that I can clearly see how I’ve been in agreement with the debt; how I’ve called it forth. No more.
The suggestion by an advisor to bring light to this issue was the impetus for this entire blog and for that I’m grateful. I will say that putting this post out in public is very scary. It is also liberating. If I’ve learned nothing in my journey of the last ten years, it is that my fears must be faced and in so doing they are typically realized for the mirage they are. And so here we are. Thanks for reading this far. I welcome your comments in the space below.
