Before I retired they told me to invest as much of my salary as allowed since I would delay paying taxes on the income until after I retired and would therefore save beaucoup de bucks courtesy of a lower tax bracket. Young and working: High taxes; Old and retired: Low Taxes.
They lied. I pay more taxes at a higher rate now than I did back when I worked forty hours a week and supported a family of three. And the kicker is that since all I have now to base my taxes on is the government mandated annual allocation from my IRA, there is nothing I can do to take control of my taxes. They got me.
Yet I’m not too concerned. I worked for TPC for well over thirty years and retired early, taking a disability pension which I immediately converted into a managed IRA. The money is there, depending on how badly the Republicans tank the economy, and I seldom pay more attention to my accounts than I do selecting sushi for delivery during pandemic. The same goes for taxes: the IRS takes their share whether I like it or not so why worry?
I get my IRA allotment, pay my taxes, buy a new computer every few years, and have plenty of time to read .. and read.
I’m wearing old T-shirts that say Trim Bush, lounging pants that would easily double as pajamas, and a spiffy cap from New Jersey that screams old man. I bought a dozen fancy fitted socks and promptly stopped wearing socks and my moccasins are really slippers that get replaced regularly because of constant wear. What do I spend money on? Well, there are the grand-kids who are 5 or 6 and you can’t start early enough planning for college, right?
So look at all the new reading opportunities I highlighted in January. Did anyone read Antkind yet?
01-01-21 – Drifts — Kate Zambreno
01-02-21 – Antkind — Charlie Kaufman
01-03-21 – Life For Sale — Yukio Mishima
01-04-21 – The Mountains Sing — Nguyen Phan Que Mai
01-05-21 – Sensei and Sensibility: Stories — Karen Tei Yamashita
01-06-21 – Man of My Time — Dalia Sofer
01-07-21 – Andersonville — MacKinlay Kantor
01-08-21 – A History of the World in 100 Objects — Neil MacGregor
01-09-21 – The Broken Heart of America — Walter Johnson
01-10-21 – The Heptameron — Marguerite de Navarre
01-11-21 – Pachinko — Min Jin Lee
01-12-21 – Nights When Nothing Happened — Simon Han
01-13-21 – Lurking: How a Person Became a User — Joanne McNeil
01-14-21 – Zara’s Witness — Shubhrangshu Roy
01-15-21 – Black Widow — Randy Wayne White
01-16-21 – A Man — Keiichiro Hirano
01-17-21 – King Leopold’s Ghost — Adam Hochschild
01-18-21 – Confirmation Bias — Carl Hulse
01-19-21 – Pizza Girl — Jean Kyoung Frazier
01-20-21 – The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time: Gonzo Papers 1 — Hunter S. Thompson
01-21-21 – A Burning — Meghanns Majumdar
01-22-21 – Sex and Vanity — Kevin Kwan
01-23-21 – Rebel Publisher: Grove Press and the Revolution of the Word — Loren Glass
01-24-21 – Must I Go — Yiyun Li
01-25-21 – The Gendarme — Mark Mustian
01-26-21 – The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code — Michael E. McCullough
01-27-21 – Ornamental — Juan Cárdenas
01-28-21 – Rules For Being a Girl — Candace Bushnell and Katie Cotugno
01-29-21 – Asimov’s Guide to the Bible in Two Volumes in One the Old and New Testaments — Isaac Asimov
01-30-21 – Nobody’s Child — Marsha Skrypuch
01-31-21 – Sorry For Your Trouble — Richard Ford
A Celebration of Reading 