I hate taxes.
I don’t begrudge paying for a functioning government, it’s the dysfunctional favoritism that ticks me off.
This amorphous blob in Washington sucks dollars out of my wallet and then tells me not to worry about how it’s spent, even as I watch the government hand my dollars out like candy.
I’m still beside myself about General Motors.
The common version of events tells us that the company went bankrupt. Right.
Tell that to the investors that owned GM bonds backed by physical equipment. They were told to go to the back of the line. Instead, union pension funds (junior creditors, mind you) were given first dibs on the assets and ended up with 100% of their benefits.
That doesn’t really sound like a bankruptcy, does it?
And then GM was allowed to punt what became known as “old GM,†saddling that sad sack with all the debts and burdens but hanging on to its operating losses.
This meant GM wouldn’t pay income taxes for years as it raked in cash with no debt.
And don’t get me started on the home builders, who were allowed to extend their lookback when matching up losses in the late 2000s, against earlier profits, again to drive their tax burdens below zero.
Did I mention I hate taxes? But I pay them.
The IRS can confiscate assets like no other entity, so I never get close to the questionable line. In fact, I estimate my taxes and pay quarterly.
I’m so conservative that I hold a year’s worth of tax payments aside, to make sure that I can write the checks as they come due.
But keeping the funds in just cash makes no sense, so I create a short-term bond ladder. The returns are tiny, but they exist, and I’m always looking for another way to boost my balance sheet.
To find suitable investments, I turned to my brokerage firm’s website, searching A-rated bonds with maturities two months, five months, and eight months out. As an ex-bond trader, I’m very familiar with how yield curves work, even when they are as short as two to eight months.
