Rant #2,828: Taxman

Welcome to Rant #2,828 of the Ranting and Raving Blog.
 
This is a lucky blog entry, at least to me, because it has the number "28” in it.
 
Twenty eight is a lucky number for me, as I was born on the 28th day of April, so the number “28” holds a good place in my personal history.
 
And to have “2-8-2-8” as a blog entry … well to me at least, you cannot get any better than that.
 
And today I am going to need that luck to work for me, because today is the day my family and I have our taxes done, and I am prepared to for the worst.
 
My family and I were destroyed last year, as we had to pay both the federal and state government for our taxes, which was so unfair, because on 2020, my son and I were both receiving unemployment relief for pretty much the entire year, with my wife the only one of us who was employed the entire way through.
 
In 2021, I did not get unemployment, but I did begin my new life as a Social Security recipient, plus I have my freelance job to atone for. My son received a smidgen of unemployment, but now has two part-time jobs. My wife worked most of the year, but retired in November, and now collects Social Security.
 
So it is going to be interesting to see what exactly we all owe—and I guarantee that we are going to owe money to the state and federal governments, because that is the way it is.
 
Even though for most of 2021 I over-taxed myself on Social Security—in other woods, I took out excessive tax on what I was getting—I will bet it won’t have much of an impact, because for my freelance job, I was on my own with the taxes as an independent contractor, so I just know that we are going to owe money, and probably owe big-time.
 
Such is the life of someone who had to retire early through no fault of his own. You get hit every which way, which you don’t know until it happens to you.

 
I hope I explained a lot of that stuff in the article the I was featured in in yesterday’s Newsday newspaper.
 
You cannot completely understand what I went through unless you have been through it yourself, but I guess what I said was a cautionary tale of being aware that the same thing can happen to you, no matter where you are in your work history.
 
In a way, I was kind of lucky, because I had Social Security to fall back on if I could not get hired.
 
I can tell you that my fellow workers that were in the same pickle as me didn’t have that convenience, as I was the oldest one of our bunch.
 
There were two other fellow employees that were in sight of Social Security, but were not quite there yet.
 
And there were three fellow workers who weren’t even in shouting distance of Social Security, and I know that they suffered greatly when they were out of work.
 
I know of one who finally got something after about two years down the hole; the others, I have no idea about.
 
So yes, I was lucky that I could get Social Security when I did, but just look at the penalties that I am forced to go through for this “luck.”
 
I did want to work until I was 70, so I literally lost seven years of work time because no one would hire me …
 
And thus, my maximum salary was attained at age 62, not at a later date.
 
You have to figure that if someone would have hired me, my salary would have been higher than it was at the time I lost my job: thus, my Social Security checks, which are based on your maximum salary, would have been higher.
 
So I just have to live on what I am living on now, so that is just the way it is.
 
It isn’t fair, but even if you are not of Social Security age, it is something to think about in the future, because the same thing could very well happen to you.
 
I don’t wish it on any of you, but who knew that this was going to happen to me?
 
And I had no one telling me what the repercussions were, so I went into this completely blind … but I found out soon enough that being age 62 when I lost my job, and then becoming age 63 and then age 64 wasn’t going to help me in the job market, no matter what my experience was.
 
It was going to be nothing but a hindrance in finding work.
 
In this country, we claim that we revere our elders, but we really don’t.
 
And you see that in the job market, where the older you are, the worse off you are.
 
Right before the pandemic hit, I went to a few classes that the local unemployment office suggested that I go to under terms of my agreement with them.
 
I remember looking around at who was at these things, and like me, they were on the wrong side of age 50, with most of the people there who were out of work were in their 60s.
 
They had as much chance of getting a job as I did, which meant that they were basically going nowhere with their searches.
 
But anyway, that is kind of water under the bridge, because I am retired now … or really, semi-retired.
 
My sister said that as a result of the article that I was in, I would receive some job offers.
 
I told her she was nuts, She meant well by telling me this, but I now know better.

Happily, my sister is someone who really has been working steadily for more than 40 years--yes, she has had her "down time" but has always landed a new position pretty quickly--and she doesn’t really know or understand what I went through or know what the working climate is for those out of work past a certain age ... nor would I want her to know anything about this from personal experience.
 
I thanked her for her thoughts, but to date, I have been offered bupkis.
 
Believe me, I know what I am talking about.
 
If you are past a certain age, just be wary, because whether you think you are or not, you are very, very expendable.
 
Now, on to taxes … .