Tax Time Again :(
Say it isn't so. It's tax time again. I am my husband's keeper. I mean bookkeeper. I am a very good bookkeeper. I keep meticulous records. I am super organized. The problem is, I'm only his bookeeper once a year. Because I have a full time job, plus a part time photography business, plus a life, I don't keep up with his records until I have to. At tax time. Well here we are. I have to sit down with a year's worth of receipts, statements, records, etc etc. Every year I resolve to work it at least once a month. But it never happens.
It starts in January. I wait for the January bank statement and then I gather the prior 11 statements and I sit down and enter each check written by my husband. I take a day or two off work and get to work. Poor Timmy, I start to ask him questions like what was this for? what was that for? who is this? and he has to wrack his brain to try to remember who he wrote a check to several months ago. I'm sure he wishes I did this on a more regular basis so he wouldn't have to try to remember all that. Well as soon as I can quit my day job I will! Going through the bank statements is the easy part. It doesn' t even take me that long. Probably in a month or two, I'll take a week off work to go through the rest of the stuff before the April 15 deadline. That is the dreadful part. That is when I go through the MOUNTAIN of mail, receipts, invoices etc that has accumuluated over the past year. That is the one week a year I suffer with great depression. I will be so glad when he retires.
Let's talk about the mountain of mail. We literally get a mountain of mail. Every day there is a stack on the kitchen counter. I have semi-trained Timmy to go through it and discard the junk and stack the keepable. I say semi-trained because this probably the one and only "disagreements" that Timmy and I have. He will open a piece of mail - say its a credit card statement. He will pull out the statement and the return envelope , look at it and stack the empty envelope, the statement and the return envelope. So now instead of one piece of mail, it's three pieces! My super ultimate pet peeve. PUT IT ALL BACK IN THE ENVELOPE! When I say that to him, in that tone, he will reply, in the same tone, that he ALWAYS PUTS IT BACK IN THE ENVELOPE! I can even show him proof and he'll deny. He thinks because he stacked it to the side, he has done what I've asked, or nagged, him to do. My losing battle. So my kitchen counter always has this super messy stack of mail. I hate it. About every couple of weeks I'll have an anxiety attack and sort through it and haul it upstairs to the office. I always wonder how other households deal with this. You may not be aware of this, but if I come visit you, I always look around for a similiar stack of mail. I get so jealous when I see clutter free kitchen counters. I always want to ask - where is your mai? Where are your bills? I guess my household is the only household in the world that gets a mountains of mail. Sigh.
And what am I doing? Starting my own photograpy business which means that I will now be bookkeeping for two businesses. Am I insane?
Oh well. That's my life what can I say.
