The State of the Union

Nothing can put more heat into a relationship, and not in a good way, as money and politics. Whether the politics are referring to the local or national government or the politics of any typical family, it is easy to ended up jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

So its tax season. People may tell you that one of the perks of getting married is the tax break. Well, I'm sure that happens once you have a house or 2 or three kids in the picture. However, for two hard working, able bodied, child free, renting, young Californians... You might be screwed.

It seems we are. I mentioned  in a previous post that we had done everything possible to not be a burden on others and to not go into debt over our wedding.

One of my plans of action was, unsurprisingly, to work my butt off. In addition to my normal day job, I freelance as a production designer and as a writer.  In order to defer the cost of our wedding, I freelanced a lot. Way more than usual. I ended up earning an extra $11,000 last year, which in turn was a magic number for a wedding and a nice honeymoon. The trouble with this type of work is taxes are taken on the back end and I could not anticipate jumping tax brackets so severely that the government would ask for 10k of that back at the end of the year.  With that extra 11K my taxes quintupled. How do you plan for that? How do you set aside that large of an increase? Well, it wasn't simply tax brackets, it was also joint property, more stringent rules for claiming student loan interest. This weekend we ran into the a+b+c = us being screwed.

This of course is not the end, we need to go to a tax guy (or gal) to work things out better. Maybe turbo tax was on crack. I had let my husband fill out the documents initially and he drastically underestimates our expenses, including what I can and should deduct for basically owning my own business. I wanted to set his mind at ease by seeing what numbers would come up if we filed married but separate. This is when panic set in. Because suddenly my standard deductions disappeared. I was staring at the horrid red numbers thinking, "where did I go wrong?" The answer was, we got married.

Lets face it, our American government is not exactly the most accommodating to people of my generation. Student loan debt is drowning many of those who might be our future leaders. People are failing to put down roots or get married because we just can't afford to. And the government wonders why the nation is in crisis. The education system has basically created a generation without hope, a dwindling middle class trying to keep its head above the water. Add to that, if you dare to brave a forward path, you will be given little to no assistance. It really makes you wonder why you work so hard. Suddenly, you have a lot more sympathy for those relying on welfare, because it seems the American economy would prefer its citizens to embrace that lifestyle.

I wonder, 100 years in the future, if the history books will talk about the American generation that stopped being. The ones who chose or were forced to revert to a child like existence. To move home in their 20's and 30's. The ones who could not afford to "have a life" so instead reverted to safer places like video games and Facebook. These are the people who might have magnified hope and lead progress. But instead, they have been crippled. Their path ripped out from under them.

You can probably guess I am frustrated. I think I went into a debt coma when I saw those numbers. I know once I recover I can be more proactive, but for the moment I am wallowing.

I know one of the reasons we waited as long as we did to get married was because of debt. I'm a good girl, my only debt is my student loan, but damn is it a whopper. Now, my scrimping and saving and working 12 hour days to make things a little easier for us had apparently been a trap waiting to be deployed.

All I could think about was my poor husband, and how are we going to get through this if we can't find ways to lower it? Well, I could empty out my piggy bank, so much for traveling to Poland to see his brother or having a down payment for a house in the near future. Thank you America for dooming us to stagnancy.

I told my brother, hoping for advice on a tax guy. Instead we got lectured about how we're doing "it" wrong. "It" being life. He told us we needed to buy a house, as though we didn't already know this. But where would the money come from? I mean the government wants my nest egg back. He suggested we find a cheap home in a bad neighborhood. I wondered if my safety would be a smart compromise for my financial well being. I mean, who wants to live in a neighborhood where they aren't happy to go outside for a walk. He suggested if not the "not so good" neighborhoods locally, perhaps we should move 2 hours away from our work to where prices are more reasonable. Again, I couldn't imagine much joy in a 4 hour a day commute to our offices. Jobs, I might add, that we love.

I expected my hubby to be grumpy. I sure was. I apologized to my parents in advance for being short and to friends and family for not driving to watch the Superbowl with them as gas is expensive. But Scott simply held me and told me its okay, we'll figure it out. Now, we'll scale back and take care of ourselves, rather than working to pay off loans that refuse to go down. He promised he'd find some way to keep my nest egg and coaxed me to put down my work for the night and instead play some video games and relax. Work will still be there tomorrow. He calmed me down, and hopefully, my creative thinking will kick in, and we can move past this bump. But I really cannot deny that  I have a wonderful husband.

On the upside, this learning experience has taught us, not to kill ourselves over repaying our debt, because all that hard work will come to bite us. All advances will be nullified. So simply. lets enjoy what time we have. Let take those 4 extra hours of work and make them 4 extra hours of play instead.  Maybe it doesn't matter how hard you work or how many extra hours you give to paying back your perceived debt. Maybe the most important thing our generation has left to cling to is our joy. Lets not let anything take that away from us.