faboo mama

Deadline February 19th.

Yep, that’s how much money we need to have to come current on our house.

Sigh.

So, it’s pretty clear, this is our last month in this wonderful place. Obviously, we’ve looked and are looking into our options.  Even thought the mortgage company offers on paper various options, talking with them the past few months has shown that they are really less than eager to actually allow these options to happen.  So, the next 3 weeks will be full of us packing up our belongings, repotting plants that don’t need to be in the ground, and finding a place to stay. That last one is a doozy and kind of paralyzed us.

We got spoiled of being so close to the city without having to actually deal with city traffic and other headaches, so we’d like to stay over here. Besides, the girl is in the middle of Kindergarten and we’re not sure that we’d be able to find another school with an open space in a Spanish dual-language program.  Other options just get more suburban; South Pasadena, Alhambra, Pasadena, etc.  To make it even more daunting, it’s near impossible to find a place to live in 3 months, let alone 3 weeks.  Which leads us to our Plan G: Kansas City.

We may have a free place to stay, but our business is here in CA. Granted, if we find someone willing to take photos for us, we could move anywhere in the world and still keep the business.  And it’s cold there.  I don’t know that 3 weeks is enough time to mentally prepare myself to move halfway across the country into the cold. And then there’s the logistics of moving our stuff to consider.  I don’t know that we can afford to pay a mover, but I do know that we can’t drive a semi-truck through snow-covered mountains.

Hopefully, we will find a working solution soon.  Wish us luck!

$20,004.

That’s our tax bill.  Doesn’t that sound a bit ridiculous?  I can’t even pay my cable bill and I’m expected to cough up 20 large?  I really don’t understand the tax thing.  We used to have an accountant do our taxes, but we can’t afford $680 to pay him.  We have so many other accountants tell us that our taxes are simple.  Ha.  No, simple is me filling out that 840EZ or whatever it was called and waiting for my refund check.  I haven’t gotten a refund since I got married.

Our tax bill before ‘05 used to be $2000 - $2500.  That’s a lot, but at least it was manageable.  Then we started making money.  Being so busy, we weren’t actually entertaining clients as often.  That means less deductions.  Our tax bill for for ‘05 came up to $15, 838.  What I calculated for ‘06 was $18, 762.  We also bought a bunch of new stuff a few years ago, so we can’t even take deductions on equipment.

What sucks the most is that we can’t claim the boy because I can’t find his stupid Social Security card, so I don’t know the number.  So there’s $3400 + day care expenses down the drain.  Even the house stuff is baffling.  I keep being told that all the repairs we’ve done for the house were deductible, I can’t see where.  Maybe I’m not doing the right form, but all I know is that just on materials alone, we spent a little over $10K on the house.  That doesn’t even count the other $11K we spent on labor.  I did the partial deduction since we work at home, but that only take into account 5% of that total.

So…I’m depressed.  I know that I can revisit my tax returns and I’m sure I can do some sort of payment plan, but why should I depress myself more?

I had to pull the kids from preschool. We couldn’t keep up with payments, since our stupid clients still haven’t paid us. I’m sitting here looking at close to $20K in invoices that should have been paid already. Life’s not fair. Our clients suck.

Got an email last week, rush job, “We’re sending out a check this week, can you get this done for us?”. Did we get it? Of course not. They owe us about $4K. From work done in March. Got an email today. “We’re going to try to get a check to you this week for $830.” What the shit is that?

So, I’m depressed. Mainly because I bought tickets back in August to go visit family for Thanksgiving. Now we can’t go. Such a shame since none of them have even met Alton. Oh, one aunt did. Still, it’s just sad. Even if we go, we have no place to stay. Well, we can stay where we usually stay, I guess it’s just that 4 people in one room with a full-size bed isn’t going to be comfortable. On top of that, we’ll still need a car to get from relative to relative. And we’ll need to eat. Okay, that’s not a big deal, we won’t go hungry. Still, for once I’d like to be able to visit home and not be broke. All the times we’ve gone back, we’ve been destitute. Once, the day we landed, the IRS put a lien on our bank accounts and drained them! Yeah, that’s out stupid luck.

So, feel sorry for me. I’m so, so sad.