Thursday, April 10, 2014

Oh April

I love April...obviously, we chose to get married in April.  Some of our very favorite people's birthdays are in April.  Flowers are blooming, the weather is getting better and the trees are getting leaves again.  It's a wonderful time of year.  

But I now officially hate April 15th.  Hate it.  

We have learned what it's like to work hard, earn money and be married.  Something about it just doesn't smell right.  Why on earth do Kevin and I bust tail every day, make money and have to give SO MUCH back to the government?  Oh, to support other people, not our own family.  For people that are too lazy to get off their rear end and work. 

Now, most of us have jobs, are still in college or there are other circumstances that don't allow them to work.  Fine.  I get that.  That's different and not what I'm talking about. 

I'm a HUGE believer that everyone in this world has an opportunity and a chance.  Whether your parents gave it to you or not, you have a head on your shoulders and if you want to do well for yourself, you can.  You can work so you can pay for college, or you can just work your lil tail off out of high school.  Whatever it may be, you have to have the drive and willingness inside of you to do it.  Everyone is given that ability, it's up to you to use it.  

I'm from a family who's father owns a small business, brother owns a small business, father in law used to own a small business before he retired and my husband owns a small business.  They all had the will and the desire to work hard.  If you ask any small business owner, they will tell you what it's like to pay quarterly, estimated and annual taxes and how out of control it is that we have to give so much back to the man!

I'm just SOOO frustrated that we have to write a humongous check to the government of OUR hard earned money so other people who are too lazy to DO SOMETHING can survive.  

I never rant like this on my blog, I'm sorry.  Just on my mind girls!  Preach on!

18 comments:

  1. I SO agree with you--at one point in the middle of the year I looked at what I had already paid in and was in SHOCK! It really is crazy!

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  4. Agreed! I can't believe how much goes out of my small paycheck due to taxes. I don't understand we need taxes for the government to run. I don't really agree with paying because you have 4 children with 4 fathers and can't get a job and no money. Those were your life choices.

    I collected unemployment for 4 months when I lost my teaching job back in 2010 and I could have collected it longer but I chose a job that didn't pay me as much do I would have a job. It took me another 15 months to get a full time job with benefits. But I survived and really cut out what extras.

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  5. GIRL. This is our first year of having to pay, & we are so furious!!

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  6. I'm with you. Hopefully you didn't vote for Obama. I know I didn't. He's all about freebies and handouts.
    There, I said it. Socialist to the core. #ridonkulous

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  8. I hear ya, girl!!! When I taught at a Title I school and NONE of the parents worked, yet they all had Jordan's and iPhones, it would make me soooooo mad!!!

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  9. Taxes suck. I just got a raise and I know I'll see none of it cause I think it will put me into another tax bracket. However, after working in the neighborhoods where I have...the opportunities really aren't the same or equal for those kids compared to how we grew up. Not even close. Kids live in poverty, come to school hungry, go home to empty homes (my older kids often had to watch many of their younger siblings,) what food they had wasn't nourishing, witness things that are unimaginable to us (seriously - I had a kid who saw his sister being abused and then we wondered why he tried to touch a little girl - he was 5.) Schools these neighborhoods have sub par schools and the teachers in the schools are usually awful, the idealistic teachers out of school get burnt out after a couple of years and leave, the old teachers never leave because of their pensions. That's just the start. It's a cycle. A cycle that has been going in neighborhoods for decades and decades. I have no clue how we would go about fixing the issue. It's really sad to see a kindergarten come to school having never opened a book. Maybe it's his parents fault, but when mom went to school not knowing how to open a book as well...they no nothing different. It's hard to explain except when you are in a classroom where kids know nothing but poverty and they see no one from their family or neighborhood succeeding they don't see it's possible. I saw very few kids rise above their circumstances. Of course people take advantage of the system, I've seem it and it pisses me off, but there are so many that do need it from those who can afford to give. Wow. That was a long comment :)

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  10. And my comment was just my opinion! Everyone has such strong feelings about this one way or another. Not trying to start any issue ;) ha

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  11. Don't even get me started. This comment box isn't long enough. I totally agree with you, though!

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  13. Wow. Some of these comments are some of the most ill-informed I've read on a blog. If you don't understand how taxes work, you should probably go back to high school and not flaunt your ignorance?

    Found your blog through a link-up a few weeks ago and read periodically (cute puppy!), but I think I'm done here.

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  14. If you check wikipedia, government spending (in 2011) is 25% for Medicare & Medicaid, 23% Social Security, 18% Defense, 17% non-defense discretionary, and 11% Other Mandatory. Most of the people receiving Medicare and social security are people who payed into the system and then retired or became disabled while working. These programs help people who have become old or suffered misfortunate that means they can no longer work. I imagine it's very hard to work when you suffer a traumatic brain injury or if you perform manual labor and suffer an injury that make it so you can no longer lift heavy things.

    My maternal grandparents both benefit from social social security and medicare. My grandpa was a minister, a carpenter, and a school teacher. My grandma worked hard to raise my mom and my aunts and uncles then she went to work as a teacher after they were grown. They worked hard all their life and now he collects social security and receives medical care paid for by medicaid. They're not lazy. They're just too old to work enough to earn a living.

    My Dad is 67. He's worked hard all his life an overcame a lot. He's a surgeon and he worked nights in the emergency room when I was a small child. He benefits from Medicare doubly now, a government entitlement program, because his patients use it to pay him and he uses it for part of his own health care now. He can collect social security now as well. He's not lazy. He's worked hard all his life an has payed into the system and now should be able to collect what he worked for.

    I've benefited from public assistance as well. I took out federally subsidized student loans to attend graduate school at a state university (subsidized by our tax dollars). I drive on interstate high ways (paid for in part by the federal government) to get to work. Right now my husband is supporting me while I look for a job, he is a public school teacher and his salary is paid for by taxes and probably a fair bit of federal funding. While I won't claim to be hard working, I'm certainly not lazy but I benefit enormously from the tax dollars we all pay.

    I also like what MCW had to say. It's hard to be poor. But it's especially hard for kids. When they grow up in a home where their parents' can't teach them or even feed them properly they're not going to be able to over come their circumstances. But all the help for these kids like the subsidized housing, the SNAP, the free and reduced price lunches come from that 17% of non-defense discretionary spending. Plus, I'd like to point out that if you have a family of four (2 adults, 2 kids) where both parents are working full time for minimum wage their income is about $15,600 a year. I've worked a minimum wage job for a couple of months and while I wasn't doing much thinking it was hard work! I was a cashier at the grocery store and it was so hard to stand up for 8 hours and bring in carts from the parking lot in the winter (I have asthma and that was especially hard). But, that amount of income is at the federal poverty level so that family wouldn't have quite enough money to buy enough healthy food for their kids, afford a place to live, pay for child care and enrichment activities for their children.

    Sorry for the rant. I just wanted to get some facts about the situation out there. Most government spending is for the military or for social security programs that we pay into now so we can collect from them later. Very little goes to help the people you deem to be lazy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_budget
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
    http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines

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  15. I am with you!! I have become so much more conservative, actually, since teaching. I never would have called myself a liberal before, rather pretty moderate. Since teaching in a low income school I have definitely swung right, especially in terms of fiscal issues. I see how abused the system is every day! It's hard as a teacher too, because I know that so many of my students, even those with great potential will just continue the cycle that their parents have modeled.

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  16. Wow, this has to be one of the most pretentious post I think I have ever read. I certainly hope you never have to walk a mile in the shoes of someone who has struggled to feed their family. I think the biggest joke here is the idea that you can abuse the system into a life of wealth, fun and comfort. I am sorely disappointed that there are people, such as yourself, that still think in these terms. Sad!!!!!!

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  17. There are a few ways to avoid paying so much in taxes. You can make a donation to your favourite charitable organization making sure you get a receipt. Setting up a retirement savings plan is another way to cut down on paying taxes. It might help to take some time to find out what you can do legally.

    Shelby Heffner @ Cash Manager Limited

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  18. While I agree to a point, I found a way to eliminate that hate from my body. I started filing on the first day the IRS accepts taxes, January 20th, and simply put it to rest. That way I am not walking around with that dark cloud over my head for three months, I do it and forget about it and simply move on.

    Wanda Hanson @ Tax-Tiger

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