Yep! Dats da way I looked at it. Chas, I, like you, cringe when I see the language slaughtered by a handful of individuals on the forums.
As to Donny's ridiculous statement "
My thought is who cares about the money?....your happiness when playing is PRICELESS!!
always remember someone else will always spend what ever you have left after you gone.....
enjoy life every day as if it was you last......the minute your born your dying!!"Get real, Donny. "Who cares about the money..." When someone pisses away every dime they had, not thinking about the future, that's usually about the time something catastrophic happens in their lives and they don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. The very next thing they do is lean on their friends and relatives for money they should have been saving and investing throughout their working lives, but didn't have the foresight to do so. When the friends and relatives cash stream runs out, what the Hell, they usually switch streams and rely on the feds to support their silly habits. Most of the musicians I know who had that attitude do not have anything other than minimal Social Security to look forward to if, and when they retire. They pissed away every dime they made, living a happy go lucky lifestyle, and when they died, nearly all left a mountain of debt to their surviving spouses and children.
My fondest wish when I was still working was to have a year where I paid $1-million in income tax for a single year's income. Unfortunately, that never materialized, though I would have loved to live that dream. The big difference between me and most of the musicians I know personally is that I looked at musical entertainment as a business. I ran the musical entertainment business just like I would have run any other business - strictly up front and legit, claimed every dime and took every legal deduction. I did my own bookkeeping and taxes, mainly because I figured I had a vested interest in learning as much as I could about this aspect of business and wanted to know where every penny went that was being invested in that business and what every expenditure would produce. That's the same thing every successful businessman does. I planned for my inevitable retirement from the very first day of my working, adult life. Since my retirement last year, I have been doing my best to enjoy what little life I have remaining. However, I, and my wife, intend to leave a lot for the children when we're dead and buried. And, over the years, I have instilled this lifestyle into my children, both of which have retirement accounts, both work related and individual.
Granted, you should to enjoy what you do for a living, especially if you are self employed. If not, it's gonna be a long, hard road to ride till you reach the end, which is never far away. So if someone purchases a new keyboard just for the happiness aspect, that's just fine for them - I really don't give a damned and sincerely hope the new board makes them very happy. But, from a business standpoint, it's not a capital investment - it becomes a toy. There is a difference! Sure, you can deduct it on your schedule "C", but unless you depreciated it out as a capital investment, you also must subtract from that deduction the amount you got when you either traded it in, or sold, the old keyboard.
As for "
The minute you're born, you are dying." That's true for everything in the universe - including the sun. However, it's what YOU do during the interim that makes the difference. I, personally, never lived for today. I lived for tomorrow and all the tomorrows I had and hoped that I had a positive impact on every person I met in life. Sure, you could be dead tomorrow, and I'm real close to that point, but there will always be tomorrows in my life until I draw that last gasping breath.
Sorry for the rant, guys and gals,
Gary
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