Today 11:19 am
Oh and one more thing.Cannonpointer » Today, 12:07 am » wrote: ↑ Tax bracket creep automatically follows inflation. The only other option is starvation - they GOTTA raise your wages. I'm 1099 and flush with very generous write-offs, so I pay zip to the tax man; but those write-offs aren't just whistling Dixie. A goodly portion of those write-offs represent real money spent and significant amortization realized. If I could trade places with a W2 employee and get away with 20-25% income taxes instead of 35-40% costs on every dollar I take in - while still making the same gross income, - I'd be a happy man.
I'm not earning my best-ever rate, but I'm about 30% below that, paying zero taxes. Even after costs, I'm pretty happy with the NUMBERS. I'm just not happy with how the numbers behave. I pull out a wad of cash, and it's looking at its feet, afraid to meet a vendor's eye. It KNOWS it ain't worth a ****. Deezer was looking at a 75-cent grapefruit, and it was selling for 3 bucks. I bought a side of beef last June, and at the time I was thinking **** me, this is gonna run 5.75 a pound! I'm buying in volume and taking on the liability of keeping it deep-frozen, and still paying that rate? Looking at prices - and low **** quality, - it was the best move I ever made. I saved a fortune, and the meat is far superior store meat. Damned if I know why - beef is beef, right? - but it is much better meat.
I'm looking at buying a hog, and I'm likely gonna start producing meat chickens in the spring.
Of the people I know who are living big / enjoying life with ZERO stresses, here is what they ACTUALLY did:
1) bought Bitcoin or Nvidia 10 yrs ago and held thru every crash (probably not a good idea going forward as the next crash will be "different") and is probably worth 25M+
2) committed some kind of fraud (woman in her late 50s does acupuncture and billed insurance 2-3x the actual work done for years. She lives in a $2.5M+ house)
3) Sell drugs (Toronto guy who takes 3-4 overseas vacations every yr and doesn't worry about paying da billz unlike most cash strapped Canadians) and pays zero income tax
4) UCLA microbiology researcher who married the daughter of a wealthy media company owner
5) Wife of a businessman in China - he lusts after other women and cheated on her more than once. She refused to get a legal divorce and kept hounding him for infidelity reasons until he paid her a "basic income" (probably like $8000-10K/month on top letting her have full access to their jointly owned house in the Bay Area that's paid off and is probably worth $2M). She goes on 5 overseas vacations every year and never has to work.
I would say - of a very limited sample size of 15-17 people - about 40% of the ones I know who "made it big" worked very hard. The other 60% got lucky with only marginal effort.
So, you'll have to excuse me if my goal is to TAKE the money from Wall Street instead of "workin' hard for da man" just because I happened to not be in the right places at the right times...and **** these retarded MAGATs who think they are "rich" when they were just glorified MCWS (Middle Class Wage Slaves).