Monday, December 29, 2014

Looking Forward to a New Year

Holidailies prompts us to write today on the subject
What are you looking forward to the most in 2015? (alternately, what are you dreading the most in 2015?)
I will be glad to reach 2015, I suppose, in as much as it is a milestone. Gosh, once 2000 seemed impossibly far away and now we are fifteen years in. Wow.

For a couple of years, FFP and I have been saying 'we should go to France next year.' We went in 2006 for our anniversary. Life handed us lots of challenges for the next few years. Most of that is past us. So to make sure we did this we booked air fares and guaranteed hotels in Paris and in the South near Cannes. We are committed to going this summer. I'm looking forward to it although I dread the packing. I hope I read all the guides and refresh my French knowledge before then. (I won't do these things. Sigh.) We haven't planned any other trips. I hope we can go to the Northwest US in August as we have for quite a few years. It is always my favorite, least stressful trip.

Mostly this time of year fills me with dread. Beyond the usual financial things I have to handle, taxes loom. A folder sits in my inbox awaiting attention to the January 15 quarterly payment. FFP has been organizing the receipts for tax-deductible donations. Our little business, mostly dormant but still operating as a sub-chapter S to process payments from a mortgage and FFP's writing assignments, has to have a return done in short order. In fact, since we pay FFP, we have to produce an annual Federal Unemployment return, the usual quarterly payroll stuff. We have to produce forms to the government with copies to people whose mortgages we own. I have to file a sales tax return although we don't sell taxable goods any longer. There is the usual quarterly report to Texas Unemployment. All of that doesn't include the inexorable process of getting all the moving parts together for the 1040. Partnerships are fine until you are waiting for the K1's which apparently they don't have to prepare until ten minutes before the deadline for 1040. I don't mind paying taxes. I hate filing all the returns. Even with the CPA's help the whole process is fraught for me.

So yeah. I'm glad I'm still alive (or hopefully will be) to see in 2015. And I hate taxes. And...Viva La France!

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