Tax Season Is Ballin’ Season

It’s starting right on schedule.  My timeline on Facebook is starting to become flooded with pictures & status updates of people talking about how they just received their federal income refund back.  Now the fuckery begins…

Every year as far as I can remember, people have been treating tax season as if they have just won the Powerball Lottery.  People honestly think they just hit a lick when they recieve their income tax refund money back…I guess it could be viewed as a come up for some I suppose.  Now what gets me about tax season is not all of the time honored tricks in the tax refund playbook people implement in order to secure a larger refund (such as claiming other people’s kids or starting businesses they know are going to fail just so they can write stuff off); what entertains me the MOST is watching how people conduct themselves after they have their cash in hand.  People start acting like they just opened up their front door to discover a camera crew & a big ass check from Publisher’s Clearing House awaiting them.  They think life is about to change drastically & it’s nothing but good times ahead.  Well life does change and some good times do await them, but it’s only temporary.

What Changes?

First off, if you are a responsible adult who takes care of his family or yourself with little to no assistance whatsoever, then more than likely what’s about to change in your world is the elimination of a few bills from the previous year.  After you’ve knocked out that Christmas debt or credit card debt that’s been haunting you, your life is about to open the doors to a sense of mental calmness in knowing that’s one less bill you have to worry about.  After that, you might even treat yourself to something nice that you can pay for upfront in cash.  Nothing wrong with that, I do it all of the time.  What’s the sense in working hard all year only to pay off a creditor and not reward yourself?

For the rest of you out there that don’t fit the responsible adult category (& you know who you are), your life is about to change too.  Well, let me rephrase…your life is about to get turnt up.  You are about to skip the paying off debt step and move straight to the rewarding step.  You’re about to go from ashy to classy, ghetto to ghetto fabulous, popping Natural Ice to popping champagne bottles, fucked up weave to unbe-weave-able…nails done, hair done, everything did…

You are about to epitomize the definition of a person with no damn basic education in financial literacy.  To add to the embarrassment, you’re about to broadcast your every move on how to go from broke, to a few thousand dollar quick come up, to broke again all while putting it all on display on Facebook & Twitter so you can conjure up ridiculous fantasies in your mind to convince all the other ig-nant ass people out there like you that you are balling.

 What Are They Trying To Accomplish?

What’s really taking place here is not the celebration of “new” money or the eradication of debt, it’s really a contest of who can perpertrate the biggest fraud & who’s dumb enough to believe this shit.  You see it all the time, people taking selfies of themselves holding a stack as if stacks are just pilled up from floor to ceiling in their section 8 apartment.  People throwing bigger & shinier rims on their old beat up cutlass as if they are making dope boy moves when they really just work at McDonalds.  People talking about buying out the bar at the club when in reality, they are only tricking off for a few nights and then after that, it’s back to sneaking bottles inside the club again.  We see all of the stereotypical bullshit people who can’t manage $100 do when they all of sudden get $3K back in income taxes.  We damn sure don’t hear about these people paying off debt, getting their babies some new clothes or school supplies, investing that money or putting it away in an emergency fund…but then again, what responsible adult brags on shit of that nature.  That’s stuff a responsible adult with some basic common sense SHOULD be doing at a minimum.  But instead, time and time again around this part of the year, all I ever seem to hear or see is how people love to profess they are doing it…and doing it BIG.

Truth Is

You’re not doing it BIG.  You’re not balling.  You’re not making moves.  What you are doing is temporarily satisfying a need to appear to be doing better than the rest.  I understand how having “new” money can make one feel.  I say “new” because in reality, in most instances, a tax refund is simply money that you’ve overpaid to the government in taxes…that’s it for most people.  So, this isn’t lottery or ball-till-I-fall money.  This was already YOUR money that you’ve already earned.  Granted, we are free to do whatever we want to do with our earned money to include blowing it on bullshit so we can brag about how we were “stunting on them niggas” the other night.  But what’s the sense in balling out if after the ball out you go back to being broke again counting down the days till the following year so you can “ball” again?  Is the need to be viewed as the man/woman in terms of having money that strong amongst your friends that you purposely allow common sense to fly right out of the window?  If the need to be the man/woman who has all the money IS that strong, why not learn how money works in other forms other than spending it on shit that holds no value and will bring no value to your life in the long run?  You can’t.  All you want to do is get your shine on, yet failing to realize, that shine is merely a spark from a match that will quickly burn out.  I’m not saying you need to go to school to become a financial expert or learn the ins & outs of the stock market in order to learn how to really shine.  I’m simply saying stop fronting like you’re balling just because you recieved your income tax check.  Pay your damn bills off & put some of that money away so maybe you can grow from ghetto fabulous to possibly just fabulous.