My whole life, I have been nothing more than a working stiff. I go to the work in the morning, come home after work and a very specific amount of money makes it to my bank account a couple of times per month. There have been very rare events when money would come in that was unexpected due to profit sharing, bonuses or largess (almost always from my father). That never caused much pain at tax time, because, while the amounts were significant to us, they were chump change in terms of their tax ramifications. Now though, because I am an engineer, accidentally in a field that is much in demand, I have opportunities to do consulting work. Last year, I did more than normal to help some people out of binds and to earn a some extra money.

I said all that to say that tax day this year was more painful than it needed to be because of poor planning on my part. Of course I am irritated because of the tax levels, but that is kind of a universal complaint. When I was writing the checks, Lorena and I talked about the fact that, if one has to pay more taxes, it is because they made more money. In my case, I got caught up on some stuff, but I am not sure the pain of all that extra work was worth it. If I did not love my work so much, it certainly would not have been worth it. This year, it does not appear I will be able to do much of anything on the side, but in many ways that is a very good thing. If I ever do that again, I certainly intend to manage the whole thing differently.