Gus What?

Now that tax season is finally winding down I have the time to reflect on what I want to do with the extra three or four free minutes I get each day. (Yes, I know it is June. I'll explain later.) This blog post will help you understand how your friendly accountant thinks. It is insightful because I see a lot of people over the year and how they manage their money, time, and lives. I recently had a brainstorm that can help you in your life if you open your mind to the possibilities.

First some background. Tax season does NOT end on April 15th; it ends around Memorial Day. Tax season begins around mid-December with setting up tax software and mailing calendars and pre-appointments to clients. Between Christmas and New Year's Day the office is fully staffed with all non-tax preparing employees and additional part-time help. Pre-appointments take a lot of time to set up in the computer. Happy Holidays guys!

January is flush with year-end payroll reports, 1099s, and W-2s. All regular full- and part-time employees begin their tax season schedule the first workday of January. A few small tax returns straggle in by mid-January with a rapid influx the last few days of the month and escalating to season heights in early February.

With a large number of smaller tax returns done, March puts the rush on corporate returns due March 15th. By now the entire office is living on caffeine to keep going. But there is no time to lollygag. The April 15th deadline is fast approaching.

All this time, from mid-December to mid-April, I promise people I'll get to my other work as soon as tax season is over. And, like clock work, the phone rings 926 times with 23, 439 emails on April 16th. Every phone call and email starts with, "Getting ready to enjoy your vacation time?" I smile, but my teeth are grinding. I roll up my sleeves and dig in hot and heavy. By about June 1st I am reasonably caught up. Then I sit back, crack open a cold one and sleep the day away until next December. Oh wait! That last bit was my fantasy. Sorry about that.

I know what you are thinking. You think I am a lucky stiff that works half the year and takes it easy the other half playing golf and other assorted distractions. Well, I am sorry to burst your bubble, but, things only slow down from the hectic to the barely manageable for the last half of the year. What the slow down does allow is for some time for personal interests.

Accountants make their money (virtually all of it) in the first half of the year. It is common to work for six months at a loss to make a nice income in the spring. Accountants are also tight with a dollar. We have to be. The paycheck we get in late April needs to last until January. Compared to most accountants, I am even tighter. My wife says it takes the Jaws of Life to open my wallet. She also says Washington and Lincoln squint when my wallet is opened from the rare glimpse of sunlight.

Accountants are practical people. At least I like to tell myself such. That extra three or four minutes a day allows me to have a nice garden. I am up to four this year and am proud to tell you I should break the 1000 pound mark for harvested potatoes this year. I also added three varieties of grapes and raspberries this year. This fall we should can 50 or more quarts of pears and another 30 of plums. I make home-made wine (dandelion, red clover, current, and grape are my favorite), can and freeze hundreds of pounds of beans carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and anything else I was crazy enough to plant. We also dehydrate hundred of onions, pears and apples.

I tell you these things so you understand where I am and how my thought processes work. You see, I like to extend the period of time I make money. I need something to add to the garden that takes only a modest amount of work, makes good money, and takes time outside tax season only. And that leads to today's topic: Gus What?

I have a small asparagus patch that has kept me satisfied for years. But this year I bought a few more crowns and propagated what I already have. Next year my production should skyrocket over 400%; the year after should exceed 2,000% of this year's take. Within five years I hope to harvest asparagus (which I affectionately call gusses) by the ton. Asparagus sells for $3-4 a pound in local grocery stores. One acre well tended can produce between 3 and 8 tones of asparagus. It takes an hour or so to pick an acre of asparagus. Asparagus picking season is one month where I live (from mid May to mid June). Asparagus keeps well if the cut ends are placed in cold water and kept in the fridge. Asparagus can remain fresh months this way. I can see a nice new side business developing.

This morning for breakfast I enjoyed gusses cut into one inch pieces, sautéed in olive oil, mixed with scrambled eggs until completely done, and covered in Tabasco. My god, I was in heaven.

Oh! I gotta go. My wife is coming and she doesn't like me talking these fantasies. She knows I'm just crazy enough to do it.

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The Power of Focus

Recently I wrote about the power of momentum. Today I want to talk about momentum's close cousin, focus. Focus and momentum walk hand in hand. The quality of life equation includes many variables and focus in one of the important ones.

In my line of work focus is very important, it is required to get anything done and to have any quality of life. It is too easy to worry about work when at home and too easy to feel guilty when at work when I would rather be with family. Of course, this is a recipe for getting nothing done and feeling terrible all the time.

There are no magic bullets to hone focus. Focus is a muscle that needs regular exercise to function well. We have all experienced the "zone"; that place where we are hyper productive and focused on the task at hand. For me this is more than a feeling; it is an emotional place. Usually I require quiet time and a closed door to reach this place and focus my attention. Sometimes I play loud music as a mental closed door (Stephen King writes to loud music as his way of shutting out the world while he focuses on his work). You need to look inside yourself to find this "zone."

Guilt destroys focus faster than anything else. When I prepare tax returns or perform other accounting tasks I shut out the world and do not worry about home, family, health, neighbors, world events, and so on. I refuse to feel guilty or complain about my time away from family and friends. Long ago I decided I choose to work. I can live on a lot less if I really do not want to work as an accountant.

The same applies in my private life. I could care less about the office when at home with family. If work blows up, so it goes (as Kurt Vonnegut says). I enjoy and experience the moment at hand. It is all any of us have.

The real trick lay at the borderline. Sometimes I work from home. I never feel any obligation to do so, but when I really want to complete a large task I will log into the office and tackle a job. I write from home. This blog post is evolving less than two hours before a family social gathering. However, I am focused on writing this piece while I write it and will not give it a thought when with family. I have a few projects I could log into the office for this weekend, but opted to spend my free time with family. My grandfather is very ill and the clock is reaching its end. It is challenging to focus with issues so large and important. But I get better at it with age.

If you desire for better things, being a better father or mother, a better husband or wife, a better employee or boss, a better friend or neighbor, a better writer, a better accountant or any occupation of your choosing, better at anything, focus. Find that place where momentum takes place and quality of life grows.

Taxes are important. Deal with the issues and move on. Taxes are not life; taxes are a fact of life. Spend the required time each week or month gathering the information you need to manage your finances and taxes. Then move on to the important things. Focus on the task at hand so the remaining 99% of your life can be an exercise in enjoyment.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Now what was I doing?

Zen Meditation Rituals

Tax season starts early for tax preparers. Catching up on all the new tax laws keeps my crowd busy from October on, sometimes sooner. By December 1st, preparations for the new tax season are in full swing: the new tax program is set up and tested, year-end tax panning extends the work day, and pre-appointments are set and mailed.

January brings the heavy workload of payroll reports and the first tax returns. Stress escalates as the demands on time rises; due dates loom around every corner make for long days at the office. And don't think performing at 95% will cut it. A 95% is an A in college, but a failing grade in the real world. Tax season is twelve weeks of final exams six to seven days a week and you are expected to get a 100% every day, every time.

Over my 27 years in practice I noticed a lot of tax professionals die young. Some live to a ripe old age, but all too many die in their 50s or early 60s. It also seems to me that many tax professionals die in early April when the biggest due date of all presses forward without mercy.

I attribute this unusual demographic to the building stress of tax season and the months spent locked in a room in a chair in front of a computer. If an animal were treated the way many tax professionals treat themselves someone would end up in prison.

The more vocal accountants seem to live longer; tax pros that beat the odds tend to exhibit a crankiness. Another type of tax pro that survives longer than the average is the one that learns to manage their time; no allowing the tail to wag the dog. I use several techniques to keep my sanity year round. Most days I take a walk in the park next to my office. If I have a ten-hour plus day, I take a walk.

Wisconsin can have nasty weather during tax season and a leisurely walk in the park is out of the question. I have a couch in a side room for a power nap, but power naps are difficult when a lot of things occupy the mind. This is where my secret weapon comes in.

Stress is the issue and sleep is not always the answer; reduction of stress is. I use Zen meditation rituals to reduce stress and get away from work for a while. Tax season or not, I use meditation. It relaxes and refreshes. Let me show you how I recharge with Zen meditation in ten to fifteen minutes.

Without any help from the boss (if you are not self employed like me) you can get a deep meditative break right in your office chair. Here is how: Sit up straight. Your back must be straight. Hunched over will not work. Your feet should be flat on the floor. Put one open hand in another and lay hands on lap. Touch thumbs to form an O with your hands. Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Count each breath in and out as one, counting to ten breaths.

Racing thoughts want to intrude. Do not push them away. Acknowledge the thought, then set it aside. The breathing and counting are not a contest or a speed race. When you count ten breaths, start counting from one again. Read detailed Zen meditation instructions here.

No matter your job, or even if retired or unemployed, stress is a cancer to a pleasurable life. Take a moment out to relax and experience pleasure.

For the tax professionals that frequent this blog, I know some of your concerns. How can I take a break? I'll lose clients if clients catch me taking a walk in the middle of the day when I should be working?

To these arguments I relate a story from the mid 1990s. While attending a convention in Dallas circa 1996, Nick Murray, author of Serious Money, made it clear for me. He said that no one client is worth your business. The client is NOT always right, especially if the client is asking you to sacrifice your integrity, disengage your family, or put your health at risk. The biggest client you have, Murray related, is not worth suffering over. Life is too short for such foolishness.

Tax pros should take note. Clients want us to work twenty hours a day without a break and do it for a smaller fee. No sane person would subscribe to such stupidity. Over the years a few clients have left because I demanded a short break. Good riddance. My sanity, family, and well-being are more important than another hour of work.

Everyone needs a quiet moment, especially in stressful situations. Practice simple Zen meditation techniques. The other option is to die young.

Why I Fire Clients

Over the years I have become more particular about who I take on as a client. Because of my choosy nature I rarely need to tell a client I can no longer serve as their accountant. That said I fired a client last week. In my defense, the client was long-term and from my pre-picky days.

What causes me to fire a client? Foul language, verbal abuse, and non-payment for services rendered top the list. The recent firing came about because she wanted a staff member to perform services without charge. She then made a scene at the office and also used her home and cell phone to call rapid fire. Very childish behavior in my opinion. At this point there was nothing she could say to remain a client.

She returned to pick up her papers the same afternoon and requested she be taken off the mailing list which I informed her was already done. Then she used foul language and refused to leave until I demanded she do so 4-5 times.

I bring this issue up because it highlights several issues. Any tax/accounting professional worth their salt will not work with people that disrupt the office, risking other clients due to the disruptions. The most important point is attitude. Blowing up at the tax office will never help you. The issue she had was minor and quickly remedied. If she would have asked politely, there is a good chance I would have done the work pro bono. Once she tossed an attitude, a discount of any sort was out.

Remember, no one wants to work without pay. And who wants to eat crow without pay? Some clients are not worth it, so they are fired. A smile goes a long way.

How to Declutter Your Life For Fun, Sanity, and Profit

For the last six months clutter has been my enemy number one. The accumulation of crap junk things in my life sapped my sanity and productivity. The effort is slow, but progressing. Each step taken improves my peace of mind and reduces stress.

No one will accuse me of a clutter-free life. The goal is to reduce a little bit of clutter each day. Yesterday I took a huge step. At the office there is a side storage room that leads to the basement. The closet/hall is lined with shelves of old tax journals, tax code, and other junk accumulated over 27 years of business. The storage space is less cluttered today.

There were some real beauties in there: two complete volumes of the tax code with regulation and explanation from 1988 and 1992, a Wisconsin unemployment handbook from 1994, binders, Who's Who for 1996, practice builder sales literature from who knows when, and an old Section 105 administration guide.

The shelves under all that weight were stressed to the max and an accident waiting to happen. The shelves no longer groan. All paper is in the shredding room and the binders were either recycled or burned. Office paper is cross-cut shred and ends up a fibrous mass good for bedding my animals at home. The office feels better for the effort. The shredding room should return to normal in a few days.

My desk and office floor were recently covered from end to end with stacks of papers and works in progress. My office is still cluttered and requires more drastic action, but in the last several months I have been complimented with comments like, "Keith, I can see your floor," and ""You have a desk!"

Yes, most of my floor is clear. Most. You can actually see bits and pieces of my desktop most days. Vigilance is required daily. The clutter bomb is always waiting to reassert itself.

If you desire your life back (as I did), peace of mind, less stress, and a better quality of life, declutter. Here are a few tips I used to declutter:

• Think Small Clutter takes a lifetime to build, it will take less time to dispose of, but it will take time. Dealing with a lifetime of clutter is overwhelming. Start with one room or closet and get the low hanging fruit first. Worn out clothes should be sent to recycling or the thrift shop, depending on condition. Old magazines and junk mail are easy choices for most of us.
• One Thing a Day Schedules are tight. If you don't have hours, or even an hour or fifteen minutes, commit to one thing a day. Get rid of one thing, one piece of clutter, and don't replace it.
• Focus on the Important My desk and floor required immediate attention. Perfection never entered the equation. My focus was to get papers off the floor and clean my desk so the desktop could be seen. Sometimes decluttering life means ending procrastination. A lot of little jobs can reduce productivity when working the big jobs. I like to take one-half day a week and dig into all the little projects that accumulated and clean them up.
• Electronic Clutter In my line of work electronic clutter is an issue. I turn my email off for most of the day. I deal with email, correspondence, and phone calls at selected times. This allows for greater productivity. Since I get more work done this way, it frees up time for things I prefer to do. Take steps to reduce email. Make good use of the junk mail folder. Turn off the interruptions of cell phones and other devices that sap your lifeblood.
• Tough Decisions A large number of items are difficult to throw out. My back issues (20 years worth) of Science News and science fiction magazines fall into this category for me. I never know when I might need to review a copy of the June 23rd 1987 issue of Science News or when I might want to reread a short story from the January 1993 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. There are even tougher issues to decide when throwing stuff out. I give myself permission to keep things for later consideration. But seriously, those issues of Asimov's would get great use at the local jail. Someday. Someday.
• Enjoy the Moment There is no feeling like the feeling of freedom. As you clear out a little each day the cumulative effect becomes real. The open space feels super. Cleaning the house is easier and unrealized stress is reduced. Enjoy each room or closet as you free it from the albatross of decades of stuff.

Decluttering your life can save you money. You will come to appreciate an uncluttered environment and will reconsider purchases that only reclutter your life. Many of the things you no longer want/need can be sold on eBay or rummage sales for some extra cash. This extra money can reduce or eliminate debt, the biggest clutter and stress in a large number of lives.

Now you can breathe.

Lower Stress, Simplify Life, Get Something Done: Turn Off Email

Life is filled with stress. Constant demands and nonstop interruptions cause stress to build until life twists into a swirl of nonproductive and unfinished work. One of the most disruptive tools in the office and daily life is email.

Stress is a cancer that eats you from the inside out. The best way to lower stress is to finish projects or at least make serious progress every day. The way to get good work done each and every day is to eliminate interruptions during work time. Three to four hours of quiet time a day allows you to accomplish more than 98% of people in a day.

The only way to get this uninterrupted quiet time is to turn off all electronics, especially email. Nothing disrupts concentration and a good work habit than email. Cell phones, iPods, and similar devices come in a close second.

If you want a happier, less stressful, more productive, fulfilling life, turn off the cell phone and email. Any electronic that barges in and demands your immediate attention rapes you of your life. It could even cost you your job.

I turn off my email for several hours each day. I need the block of time to get work done. If I don't respond instantly to an email, I am not ignoring you, I am getting work done. You should try it. The stress reduction alone is worth it.

In an always on, always demanding world, something that simplifies life is worth its weight in gold. By lowering your stress your medical costs could go down and you could live longer. Regardless, your life will be more worth living.

This rat is out of the race, yet still in the game. How about you.

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How to Overpay Your Taxes

Some people insist they overpay their taxes. They don’t say it in so many words, but their actions guarantee they overpay Uncle Sam.

I am in the middle of my 27th tax season and I see the same patterns today I saw back in 1982. Many people treat tax return preparation as a fast-food purchase when it really is serious surgery.

Below are the three things people do in my office that multiply the risk they overpay the government. I excluded the often repeated advice of keeping good records, etc. The points below focus on specific action taken when sitting in front of me; things that put your hard-earned cash at risk.

• 1.) Time is an important factor for an accountant during tax season. Feeding me tax documents one at a time and explaining to me what each W-2 is only wastes time. Soon, my eyes roll back in my head because my 15 hour workday will be even longer.
• The reason this puts your money at risk is because I will have no time left to share the latest changes to the tax code that can save you money. There are only so many hours in a day. Slowing down my work flow adds to my stress and leaves little to no time to put cash back into your pocket. Remember, tax preparation is only a small part of my job; tax planning is where the rubber meets the pavement. My value comes from knowledge and experience. If you force me to listen to a description of each document, I can’t share ideas.
• 2.) Turn off your cell phone before entering a tax preparer’s office. I want to focus on serving you. If your cell phone rings every few minutes (this happens more than you imagine), opportunities for mistakes and errors rise. The interruption might cause you to fail to inform me of an important bit of information. Few phone calls are worth overpaying your taxes or risking an audit. Put your cell phone on silent, not vibrate. It is your money. You do want to keep it, right?
• 3.) The most disruptive events in my office include young children. I can cut your tax bill in so many ways, but if I am constantly defending personal papers in my office, you are not being served well. Your income for an entire year is at risk. The number one reason I am required to amend a tax return is due to rushed parents chasing their children while in my office.
• I have a few suggestions. Have one parent sit with the children while the parent most familiar with the finances works with me to prepare an accurate return. Then we will have time to discuss opportunities to reduce your tax burden. Parents, and I confess, me too, want to end a meeting as fast as possible when young children are screaming and attacking other papers in my office. I hate it. I want to serve you. Ending a meeting to save my work space from disaster is a poor way to reconcile a full year of income and deductions.

You spent time gathering all your documents; you sweat out the final results; now let me really serve you. Stop the distractions and interruptions. It is your money. I want to provide a value-added service. Please, help me to excel when serving you. It is what I am trained to do.

Planning a Crisis

In my line a work I must have a schedule to get anything done. The demands on my time are huge and get bigger during tax season. Everyday is a due date for something.

Every Sunday night I plan out the following week at work. I leave space for the inevitable surprises and overruns. I write a list down the side of the page of things that need to be done, but not this moment. I slip as many of these in as time permits.

Sleeping at night is difficult when I don't make progress on my to-do list. At minimum, I want to make significant progress on a large project or complete it, plus scratch out several smaller things that needed completion.

My schedule has flexibility built into it. However, it is near impossible to plan for a crisis. Planning for one kind of crisis does no good when a different type of crisis strikes. I searched for a common thread in each crisis; the one thing I could plan for in any crisis. I determined 'time' was the one thing each crisis shares. Any crisis, large or small, will consume some, or a lot, of my time. This is where my flexible schedule comes in. Unless the crisis takes out a whole week, I have space built in to handle extra jobs or unforeseen events.

If you see me smile and laugh during tax season, I have not been drinking. I promise. My time management system is working well is all.