I just opened today’s mail, and I got another letter from the IRS telling me they applied my stimulus check to my IRS debt. That sucks. I guess you only get to stimulate the economy if you don’t owe the IRS.

Now I’ve got to come up with an extra $774 to finish paying my dentist and my attorney. I’ll have to focus on the dentist first and the attorney second. My permanent crown was installed last week and I still owe $325 on the work.

I still owe my attorney $449 before I can file for bankruptcy.

Can you go broke going broke? If you can even figure out what I mean by that…

Good news? Why yes, there is some. I’m earning a fair amount of money from home working with others on their websites for an hourly rate or flat fee. With the on-going hourly rate jobs, I bill weekly. With the flat fee jobs, I bill half up front and half when finished. I’m already making as much monthly as I was when pizza delivery tanked on me. I don’t have to drive around to do it either, so that good.

Tutoring is starting out slowly, but I have two steady students and expect more in the coming couple of weeks.

I printed two fliers to put around at friend’s and colleague’s offices, one for tutoring and the other for website work. I need to get my backside over to Kinko’s, make copies and distribute them during the rest of this week.

A broadcast email will also be going out to my friends’ email list letting them know I’m available so they can help hook me up. I have a fantastic network of friends that I don’t ask to help me often enough. I’m not an island unto myself and I have to remind myself of that sometimes.

Technorati Tags: debt, income sources, IRS, stimulus check

Whenever anyone embarks on anything new, especially something that is a rather big change, there always seems to be a test of their commitment to the new direction they have chosen.

I am continuing working on my internet business, searching for a new career (possibly in tutoring full-time) and I’m filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I’m also delivering pizzas and tutoring as many hours as I can get this summer, and there is plenty of tutoring this year where there was none last year. The internet business is not taking more time, but I’m working very hard to use the few hours each day I can devote to it in the most efficient, profit-driven manner possible. It’s taken a much stricter schedule with a daily set of marching orders that will be accomplished, period. There is no “or else”. It will be done on time and I will stay on task.

But into everyone’s life (and grand plans) some rain must fall and some tests of faith and will must be endured.

My tests came today. They are all big, and the smallest of the three will likely involve some physical pain. Here is what happened:

• A large piece of one of my molars broke off while I was eating lunch; crown $1,000
• I owe the State of Louisiana (Louisiana Department of Revenue) $2,737 in taxes for 2007
• I owe the IRS $3,598 in taxes for 2007

Some good news

I qualify for a stimulus check, so I’ll be able to turn it around and pay it right back to the IRS, I may use it to pay the rest of my attorney’s fees for the bankruptcy, or I may have to use it to pay for a portion of the cost of my crown. I can work out a payment plan with the IRS and LDR if need be.

I was lucky to get in to see the dentist this afternoon, and they were able to put a temporary plug of cement in the hole in my tooth until next week. They didn’t charge me anything for today’s visit or for the temporary plug. I have an appointment at 11 a.m. next Wednesday to start the crown process.

Dental Work

The tooth is mostly amalgam from being filled many times during my life, and about 1/4 of the tooth broke off. There is so little tooth left that it can no longer be filled. It has to be crowned. We all hope that the temporary filling will last the whole week until they can grind the tooth down and put a temporary crown on it. I’m not looking forward to 2-3 hours of grinding in my mouth, but once the temporary crown is in place, my mouth will feel more normal. Right now I can’t chew on the right side and I’m supposed to eat only soft foods.

The other part of the bad news is I don’t have $1,000 I can put my hands on immediately. I had to use a little over a third of my savings to pay all the doctor bills we had during June. I schedule all the check-ups, dental appointments, and anything else I can in the summer so appointments won’t interfere with tutoring hours, and thus, income. The good news is the dentist will accept payments in 3-4 installments. There are 2-3 visits involved with a crown (depending on whether the tooth abscesses), and I can pay some at each one, and pay one in between. They do want payment in full by the day they place the permanent crown.

Taxes

I talked with my CPA at length about my options for paying the taxes since I don’t have $6,335 sitting around. He advised me to send in the returns without payment and wait for the letters from the IRS and LDR that will come in 4-6 weeks with my payment options. Those letters will also contain all the necessary contact information I will need to negotiate with both agencies.

My CPA advised putting the most energy into getting the IRS paid first, then work on paying the LDR. LDR is here in town, and I can go over to their office, sit down with them and talk to them in person. The IRS isn’t so easy to get with face-to-face.

The IRS will allow up to three years to pay off what I owe them. The other thing I must do is make sure I pay enough in taxes this year so I won’t owe any more for 2008 or going forward. I thought I had it all worked out, but I made too much money tutoring in 2007, and it offset all the losses from my failed business.

I work for a tutoring company, but I’m a 1099 contractor and I have to pay my own taxes. In 2006, I overpaid significantly because of all the losses and deductions from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Some of the bigger exemptions went away in 2007 and I made more than I planned. I paid more taxes in 2007, but it still wasn’t as much as I owed.

How I’m going to come up with the money

• Federal stimulus check
• Have another garage sale
• Sell the hundreds of zipper-pulls I made over the last year while watching TV or listening to audio books or podcasts.
• I just picked up another student this summer for at least 2 hours a week, bringing me to 13 hours per week. I asked for more students.
• I’ll get a tutoring pay raise in August.
• I was just notified someone bought some advertising on this blog through Text Link Ads.
• I’ve joined a new PPC program, ShopZilla, I earn per click and I earn a commission if anyone buys anything through one of my links. I get to pick the products that go on my sites and I got a $25 sign-on bonus.
• Keep up with the daily marketing of my blogs and keep my traffic counts increasing.
• Add another day a week to pizza delivery
• Add product/merchandise pages to more of my blogs to increase passive income. Some of my side-bar affiliate links get extremely few clicks and no sales, so removing them won’t hurt revenue and it may even help. I started getting more sales on a site just by adding a page where all my products were located. I guess people can go there and find what they want quickly and buy it instead of having to hunt a link down. If they have to hunt, they won’t, and they won’t buy from me.
• Find better-paying affiliate programs than Amazon.com. Clickbank and eBay are much better.
• Cut the budget again somewhere. I don’t know where, but I’ve got to try. We are taking more drastic energy-saving measures, and I hope those will lower the gas/electric bill at least a little. The measures we’ve taken so far kept our bill from going up 10% when rates went up 10% this spring. Our bill stayed the same. I can probably cut a little more out of the food budget by cutting back on the amount of meat I add to soups, sauces and beans. I can cut the amounts of meat from a pound to a half-pound and I doubt we’ll notice.

Technorati Tags: Cost Reductions, dental emergency, federal, state, taxes due, test of will, unexpected expense

UPDATE: The bee man came this morning and took care of the bees. Two large hives cost $350, but the bees are gone! Now we don’t have to run for the mail anymore! 

We have an unexpected cost this month, at least $200. There is either one really big bee hive or two somewhat big bee hives under the siding of the two-floor portion of the house. The bee man said they are probably also in the space between the two floors.

The bee man is coming at 7:30 in the morning. He thinks he’ll have to destroy them because they are really hard to get out of spaces like that. He may be able to capture some and place them in the wild, but likely most will have to be destroyed. I hope he can also seal up where ever they are getting in so a new hive doesn’t come in and take the space over again.

The bees are not completely docile honey bees. They are a bit aggressive. A few chased my son into the house this week and one stung him. About 50 swarm around the outside light each night. We can’t get in or out the front door without letting a few in the house. There are a lot of dead bees on the front porch and I can’t sweep them up because they come over and investigate anyone staying on the porch for more than a minute.

I’m not sure how the mail carrier delivers the mail, but he/she does, and so far hasn’t been stung. I also manage to get the mail, but it has to be during daylight and I have to move quickly. I guess the mail carrier moves pretty quickly and doesn’t attract their attention.

Technorati Tags: bee problem, unexpected cost