Before I started Ride Free Fearless Money, my freelance game was consistent but never flush.
Cue: learning about imposter syndrome and raising my consulting rates, and doing market research and figuring out how to deliver value in the form of serving you good people on the topic of money.
The response to this project in particular has consistently blown me away, and it’s caused me to treat my money with more respect as well as make more money, for which I am truly stoked and grateful.
Enter tax season: Because I’d started teaching people how to prep for doing small-business taxes, I had my freelance money ducks in a very straight row and was able to get my taxes done in February. For. The. First. Time. Ever. Usually I did a more typical small business thing and filed an extension, knowing I wouldn’t owe and then spent a sweaty August weekend disliking my procrastination tendency surrounded by receipts.
This year, because biz was good both here with Ride Free and in my tech consulting, I figured I’d owe, and wanted to know how much well ahead of time. (I owe $2,350 – no prob, it’s been chilling in my biz savings account).
Doing my taxes earlyish, it was only about a month after I’d done my annual planning and goal setting.
This year, I wanted to be more connected to the business goals I had in mind, and had been thinking about setting a goal that would be a meaningful number for me.
Like many of you, I have a complex relationship with money and family, and a money thing that had been bothering me for years came up as something I could do healing work towards: To be brief, about a decade ago, someone died in my family and instead of passing forward some money allocated to me and my brother, one person transferred it into their name and kept it.
The amount was $14,000.
People tear apart families for less, but it still seems so petty.
It was pretty devastating at the time, being that the amount would have almost tripled my savings account. I was making about $24k/year working part time, in grad school.
Over the years, every once in a while I’d try to address the issue, or just think about the whole thing and I’d end up GRINDING on it. You know what I mean – I’d go into a pit of godforsaken feelings and revenge fantasies and long emails to people who could not help. To be honest, I never felt vindicated or better afterwards, just sad, and like my time was worth more than this.
So, for 2018 I made a goal of earning $14,000 in course sales to help myself release the tragic grinding by making the damn mulah on my own.
Sure, it’s a jump, but with the new Let’s Talk About Money Partners Guide course launching soon, and other things down the pipeline post-summer I feel confident that it’s doable, because I’ve listened very closely to so many of you and designed the courses to truly help solve real people’s problems efficiently and collaboratively. I meditated on the number $14k, and started planning around it and thinking about what I need to do to hit my goal.
Therefore, imagine my surprise when I did my 2017 taxes, and … guess how much money I made from all of my freelance in 2017, after my expenses.
$14,510.47
You better believe that got my attention.
Here I was, still plotting away at plans for the future, when I HIT MY DAMN GOAL LAST YEAR.
This, I believe, is why I did my taxes early. So I could know that it was already ok to release the grinding.
Byeeeeee petty sadness. I made the money. It’s over.
I now have a new goal for 2018.
A way bigger goal that’s tied in to my work to unblock what I believe is possible for myself. For this goal, I’ll be working on another healing of something I grind on: getting my mom out of her subpar public housing by buying a duplex in her city and giving her an apartment.
How hustler is that!?! #totaldiva #thisisgonnahappen #meJayZandCardiBandourmoms
All I need is $50k post-tax for a down payment. I’m open to it coming to me many ways, including by creating badass super helpful courses to lift up others about their money.
More on that later — for now, if you want to make sure you’re among the first to know when Let’s Talk About Money: Partners and Money Course pre-launches, click here to learn about the course or get on the pre-launch announcement list.
Most timely, however, it’s TAX TIME.
If you’re not a type A recovering from a lifetime of scarcity like I am, perhaps you haven’t done your taxes yet – and that’s ok, they’re not due until Tuesday April 17. You have a whole week.
Below are links to a bunch of tax tools to help you out. You got this!
If you have questions about taxes like:
* Can I file an extension if I owe and how do I do that?
* Does the IRS hate me, personally?
* I didn’t file for … awhile, now what?
Or if you just want to send the options over to a stressed-out friend, then check out my tax time top 10 list. No, the IRS does not play – but it also responds well to being treated like an organization made of people and not ignored. Funny how that works.
And remember – you have until April 17 to make a 2017-year contribution to a Traditional or ROTH IRA account you may have. A very good idea since it can lower your taxable income and keep you in style/food when you retire.
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