CodyStaub dot com

It’s no secret that having a hobby can be an important instrument in relieving stress…and what better instrument to use than a musical one. One of my goals for this coming year has been to learn to play the guitar. Growing up I learned to play the piano, clarinet, and saxophone….all mediocre. They were (are) all great stress-relievers…and can be used to impress a person or two as well…but I eventually lost interest in them all for one simple reason, they’re not that popular. What I mean is, when was the last time you heard a Billboard Top 100 song on the radio that was written for the clarinet? The piano is a little better, but it’s kind of hard lugging around a 600 pound piano. That’s why I chose the guitar, it’s portable and can play a HUGE variety of music. So the question is, how will I accomplish this? Here’s a breakdown:

1. Get a good-quality guitar. I was lucky and got one from my mother for Christmas . It’s an Ibanez Sage acoustic guitar. It’s not a top of the line professional model, but a VERY good beginner/intermediate guitar. This is what my guitar looks like:
Ibanez Sage Series Spruce Top Acoustic Guitar

2. Have the tools. The next thing I did was to go out and buy some good picks, a quality tuner, and a guitar bag. I know from experience with other instruments that if you don’t have the tools you need, you lose interest really fast. Playing becomes frustrating and eventually you just put your instrument into storage. Make sure you get these items in the beginning.
3. Get some lessons. While you can certainly learn to play the guitar without lessons, it sure does make it a whole lot easier. I started looking around for lessons and they come out to be about $25 per lesson…roughly $100 per month. So, being the cheap-skate I am, I tried finding free stuff on the internet. There’s a ton of it out there, but nothing of really good quality for free, not that I could find anyway. I researched this out for about a week and decided to give JamPlay a try. You pay $20 a month to get unlimited access to their video lessons, chord charts, supplemental content, and forums. I’ve had it about 3 months now and am REALLY happy with it. This was actually an essential piece to me actually making progress on my guitar because it fits my weird schedule. I suggest taking the lessons from Jim Deeming if you’re a beginner.
4. Set aside some practice time. I started out with a small goal…just three hours per week. Eventually, as I started to get the hang of things, guitar got more fun to practice. Now I can practice for a couple of hours in a single sitting if I have the time. It just sucks you in! However, in the first month or two, practicing was painful. I felt like I was never going to get it, my fingers and wrist hurt, and the sound coming out was less-than-awesome. The simple key here is to practice regularly! It will get better, I promise.

That’s it…so far I can play a few basic songs (very basic), but I’m well on the way to my year-end goal. I encourage everyone to pick up a productive hobby to fulfill your spare time, and if you’re interested in learning the guitar, visit the links above….they’re some great resources!

Last week I made a goal to myself of making more posts, and then I flopped. I shouldn’t make excuses, but I know this is because of my work/school schedule this last week, which has afforded me ZERO time for the internet. I worked almost 60 hours and had school for about 12…which left not much time for anything else. Sorry about that.

Because of my increasingly hectic life and my goal to maintain great grades this semester in school, I decided to drop one of my courses for this semester. This still leaves me at a full-time status in school, but I feel like having this one less class will help me manage stress, get better grades, and focus on all my goals. I also signed up for a condensed summer course. I plan on taking some paid time off from work during the summer classes so I can get them out of the way.

My eating also slipped up this week. I found myself eating out several times through out the week because I was too busy to stop at home and prepare a healthy meal. Along with that, I didn’t work out at all this week (maybe once or twice). Yup…I feel like crap already. It’s amazing how fast you can go from feeling like you’re in great health to feeling cruddy.

In other news, I bought a few new websites and am working on restoring some old ones, since I let all my internet hobbies drop a while back. Who knows if anything will come of them, but it’s a skill that can only benefit.

This next week is a lot less hectic for me. I work my three 12-hour shifts, but they’re spaced out better this week. My class that has been dropped will allow me to have a little more normal schedule as well. So plans/goals for this next week:

1. Write some good, quality articles for this blog

2. Practice the guitar

3. Sell my car (Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. I’m selling my Nissan 240SX)

4. Work on my other websites, especially the forum on a particular site.

Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional nor an accountant. You should review your situation with a tax professional or certified accountant before employing any advice here.

The hot topic at work lately has been “When I get my taxes back…”. For a lot of people, tax season is a payday… a pretty big one. They make plans and hold out all year for taxes to come back so they can make that one big purchase. I don’t understand this kind of thinking, and here’s why.

It’s a horrible savings plan. I talked to one girl who said she withholds extra taxes every year just so she can get a refund. She said it’s like her savings account because she’s terrible at actually saving money. If using your tax withholdings as a savings account is your justification, you need to sit down and think about this. When you withhold taxes, the government puts that money into its own “savings” accounts. Those accounts make the government interest (or maybe not, depending on how they invest it). So, you’re paying the government to make money off of your money! And will you see any increase in your refund if they make a return off it? NO! In fact, depending on the market that year, inflation and such may actually cause your money to LOSE value by the time you get a refund. It’s one of the only non-insured savings accounts out there.

Refunds breed a mentality. If you are the type of person that lives from paycheck to paycheck and have a hard time saving your money, then what are you going to do when you all of a sudden have an extra $xxxx in your bank? Well spend it of course. If people were a little smarter they would invest or capitalize their refunds. Instead, most people will blow their refund within a month’s time. After the refund’s gone, what happens with the extravagant spending style? It’s still there. This is dangerous ground, especially if you have credit cards or other lines of credit. No one really wants to stop spending, and people get into debt.

Your refund is taxable. If you get a large refund this year, guess what? It’s counted as income next year! That means your taxes get taxed next year, which will increase your tax liability next year. How’s that for getting screwed?

Okay, so we’ve established that getting a refund sucks. What do I do?  Well there are a lot of options available when it comes to withholding and paying taxes, and a lot of it depends on what kind of money-maker you are. Here’s a rough breakdown:

1. Own a company. The ideal system would be to own your own LLC or S corporation and pay your taxes quarterly (or monthly, depending on your income). In the screwed-up tax system we employ here in America, corporations have the least amount of tax liability. This isn’t because they are actually liable by tax-code to pay less, but because a company can claim a LOT more deductions than an employed individual. (side note: the individual will ALWAYS get screwed in the US tax system, no matter how the politicians dress it up) This means that a company making $250,000 a year may only pay 15-20% in taxes whereas the individual making the same in salary may pay 35% or more.

2. Withhold your own taxes. This is personally what I do with my current job. Because the government really only cares about how accurate your taxes are when you file them, and because withholdings are only an estimate anyway, you can basically withhold (or not) any amount you want. Because of this, I list 99 exemptions on my withholdings form, which means I pay zero tax withholdings (but still Social Security and Medicare). Because I know roughly how much money I will make in a year, I figure out my tax bracket and have my employer deposit that amount every pay period into a separate savings account. All year long, my taxes are earning me interest and when it comes time to file, if I end up owing taxes, I have the money there to pay them…plus a little extra. If I don’t owe taxes, my refund is all there…without having to wait up to a month to get it!

If you’re concerned about spending your tax savings if it’s there, open an account at a totally separate bank and “forget” about it. Most employers will allow you to direct deposit to separate accounts on the same paycheck, so check out the possibility.

In the end, your goal should be to PAY taxes, not receive them. Getting a refund means you paid too much to the government or that you don’t make enough to support yourself (according to the gov’t)….or both. How is that a good thing?