Queercents

Tax cheats are doing real damage to the government’s finances, with about $300 billion in missing taxes each year, according to the Associated Press. That money alone would balance our federal budget each year. The missing money is about $2,680 per household in the U.S. But that figure is misleading: about 85% of households pay the full taxes due, meaning only about 15% of households (and some corporations and small businesses) are cheating.

Interestingly, I found many liberal blogs which propose that cheating on taxes is a kind of treason and must be fought vigorously, while I found many conservative sites (including an editorial) that consider cheating on taxes actually ‘heroic’. Their thinking all comes from why people cheat, and what our relationship with our government is.

This question is particularly relevant for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, I think. If we believe our government, and our tax laws in particular, fairly represent us (or are getting more fair over time) then that’s motivation not to cheat. If we believe our government and our tax laws do not adequately represent us, then we may believe, like the Colonists of the Revolutionary period, that we are facing “taxation without representation” and look for ways to resist. Read the rest of this entry »

In the March/April issue of Mother Jones, Bill McKibben has a fascinating and far-reaching article, “Reversal of Fortune“. The subtitle reads “The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?”

Apparently, economists have begun taking ‘happiness’ seriously. Apparently, one’s state of happiness can be measured fairly accurately, and a group of economists have founded a new field called ‘hedonics’ to study it, led by Nobel Prize-winning Daniel Kahneman, author of Well-Being and professor at Princeton.

McKibben reflects, “the idea that there is a state called happiness, and that we can dependably figure out what it feels like and how to measure it, is extremely subversive. It allows economists to start thinking about life in richer (indeed) terms, to stop asking ‘What did you buy?’ and to start asking ‘Is your life good?’ And if you can ask someone ‘Is your life good?’ and count on the answer to mean something, then you’ll be able to move to the real heart of the matter, the question haunting our moment on earth: Is more better?” Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing our new series “Sleeping With Money” about money lessons learned in relationships, my story today is about one of the hottest guys I ever met, an honest-to-god park ranger in San Francisco. (This picture is of a hot model, not the guy I’m talking about.)

We met through a kind of club that a few friends and I had set up in the Bay Area, called “Gay Young Spirit” (GYS). It started out informally, meeting in people’s living rooms, as a way to socialize with other young gay people without getting drunk and/or felt up in the local bar scene. Eventually it grew large enough that I and a few roommates rented a house together to have a more enduring space to meet. And on one of those first evenings in the new house, in walked one of the most attractive, sincere, interesting men I had ever met.

Let’s call him Bo, and picture for a moment the burly arms, deep pecs, tan skin, and shaggy hair you probably already associate with outdoorsy ranger types. Add in the flattest stomach you’ve ever seen (because he’s vegetarian, of course, and loves sit ups) and legs of steel from bicycling to work 5 miles each way. And then top it off with the most sincere personality I have ever come across, and you have pretty much pictured the man I lusted after during much of my 20’s. Read the rest of this entry »

The fact is, many spiritual traditions aren’t welcoming of the LGBTQ community. So it is refreshing, and worth talking about, when they are. Even better when they are specifically about us!

While some people find that regular attendance at a church, temple, meditation center and/or mosque suits them, another option is to look into spiritual retreats. They usually happen on weekends, though longer retreats can be a week or more (in which case many people use vacation time, and consider it time well spent).

I myself have attended a number of retreats over the years, some of them silent retreats (no talking, no writing, no reading, no eye contact), some of them more interactive. While I personally attend a weekly practice in NYC, I have found that a retreat can give a deeper, more sustained experience. A retreat gets you completely out of your daily routine (I guess that’s why they call them ‘retreats’), and lets you focus much more than the hour or so of a weekly meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

Penelope Wang, you’re breaking my heart. Ms. Wang is a senior writer over at Money Magazine, and in the March 2007 issue her article “Retirement: Not So Far Out Anymore” really startled me.

It’s not like I’m clueless. Around the first quarter of every year, after I check my credit records and file for taxes, I look into my 401(k) and see what it’s been up to for the past year.

Usually some investments have grown more than others, and I rebalance like I’m supposed to, resetting the different buckets to the percentages I originally wanted. It can be frustrating selling those investments that have grown the most, because why do you want to dump a good thing? But I dwell on the investor’s maxim “sell high, buy low” and all that, and I do what I ought. So, I thought I was a pretty good boy with all this. Read the rest of this entry »

Long before I knew Suze Orman came out as a proud lesbian, she was my first financial teacher. Way back in 2001, her book The Road To Wealth was my introduction to the basics of personal finance. How appropriate that a “family” member should play the role of mentor at just the right time in my life!

My mom gave me The Road To Wealth for Christmas, soon after I landed my first ‘corporate’ job, and I was for the first time earning a paycheck that didn’t go straight to tuition.

While Suze’s advice and commentary in that volume is slightly dated now (six years later) at the time it was an absolute lifeline for me. Read the rest of this entry »

Details Magazine has an interesting article on their blog, “Why Gay Men Make The Best Bosses” by Danielle Sacks. Rather than go into the usual stereotypes and supposition, Ms. Sacks actually interviews a number of employees with gay bosses, and gay executives themselves, and also cites significant research.

According to the article, one young straight man, Brian Wachur, 23, did not get the promotion he’d wanted, so he approached his gay manager, Jason Smith. “I was nervous about what he was going to say, but he was able to tell me where I could improve in a really constructive way,” he says. “It was a big contrast to other managers I had had in the past.” Wachur soon got the new title, and he now considers Smith his professional mentor. “It’s definitely surprising to me that I have a 38-year-old gay male in my life who is such a huge influence.” Read the rest of this entry »

I saw a very disturbing analysis piece by Reuters news agency today, explaining how investors are borrowing money (because interest rates are very low right now) to buy stocks. This is happening not just in the U.S., but all over the world.

The article, “Stock bull rages globally fed by margin debt“, goes on to explain that this kind of debt (called ‘margin’ debt) has reached a new all-time high, $285.6 billion in January. This surpasses the previous high of margin debt, $278.5 billion in March 2000.

Does that date ring a bell with anyone? It should. It is the month that the NASDAQ reached its all-time high, 5048, before plummeting to lose nearly 80% of its value, landing at 1114 on October 9, 2002. I know many people who lost pretty much their entire investments in that bear market. Maybe you were one of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Reuters reports today on a new movie, “Maxed Out,” that will open in theatres March 9. It is a tale of tragedy and despair, in which people under a mountain of debt feel they can never dig themselves out.

On the movie website, you can see clips and read the brief description: “Maxed Out shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of ‘preferred customer’ and tells us why the poor are getting poorer and the rich getting richer. By turns hilarious and profoundly disturbing, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us.”

The director, James Scurlock, says “I thought this was going to be a light-hearted romp through the world of credit. But when I started interviewing people, I came to realize how emotional this topic is. We talked to bankruptcy attorneys and they said these clients will come in absolutely prepared to commit suicide.” Read the rest of this entry »

I have a terrible, terrible confession. I’m on the Pottery Barn mailing list, and I absolutely lust after the things I see in their catalog. Their items are rather pricey, in fact not at all frugal. And yet I can’t help myself, I love what I see. In the words of Absolutely Fabulous, “they have gorgeous things, darling, gorgeous.”

In fact, I have Pottery Barn’s Christmas 2006 catalog in front of me right now. Four months ago, I stuck a Post-It note on page 77, marking the beautiful “Montego” dining table, and saved it in my desk Inbox all this time. I was determined that, if my tax refund and bonus from work weren’t entirely taken up in paying off the Prius and the last of the credit card debt, I would use whatever extra I had to splurge on this gorgeous table.

Our current dining room set is sad: little more than a wooden card table that I’ve dragged around the country with me practically since college. The table is scratched and dinged, with numerous little droplets of paint on the chair backs and seats because they have served as stools for me during umpteen paint jobs in probably five different apartments before I finally bought a house. Really, it’s time to get a grown-up dining room table and (gasp) matching chairs. Read the rest of this entry »