Goal Progress - Bad Things Happen To Good People

We all know that bad things happen to good people, and that good things happen to bad people in life sometimes. But sometimes it seems like the bad people get ahead more than the good. If you look at a drug dealer pulling up in a nice car, with nice clothes, and pulling out wads of money. Or the politicians who get paid amazingly well to screw the common people. That kind of thing. Yet the honest, hard working people, the ones who do the day to day jobs live paycheck to paycheck. And then turn around and get hit again and again. Now, this is not always the case, but I see more and more of it every day. I have more and more friends who were doing okay are now struggling and looking for help. Now, I know not everyone agrees that the government should offer "hand outs". That there shouldn't be welfare, that there shouldn't be extended unemployment benefits. But, what are the people suppose to do who honestly want to work, want to support their families and can't? What about the ones willing to do any job they can find for a paycheck? They say that the illegals here in this country are doing jobs that Americans don't want to do. But honestly, every person I know that is looking for work is willing to do any job they can find. There is no unwanted jobs. So, you may be asking why I am ranting about this in my blog about change. Good question. Glad you asked. Every year, my family looks forward to tax time. I know that many don't, but we fall below the poverty line. Most of the year this sucks. But, at tax time, this means that we get money back. And usually, it's a lot of money - well, a lot of money for us anyway. We use this money in a lot of different ways. We use it to either catch up on bills we are behind on, put into savings, take care of things we have been putting off, even take care of things we couldn't afford all year long - such as medical and dental issues. Yup, no medical insurance, so gotta find ways to make do without. So, this year was particularly hard on us. We were really looking forward to the tax return. We not only needed to catch up, but we needed to move. Moving is a huge expense, we would have to come up with a lot of money for deposits and such. So, we were holding our breath waiting for our W2s to come in. When they did, I was so excited. It meant we might see light at the end of the tunnel. As I sat doing our taxes, I was a bit puzzled. The amount wasn't quite what I expected, in fact, it was a lot lower than I expected. Sigh, okay, after making sure everything was right, I filed. It wasn't going to be as much of a boost as I thought, but we could work with it. With efile and direct deposit, it should only take a week or so and we should have our money. Both state and federal. Then, we get notice that our state return has been seized for over due property taxes. Sigh, okay, well so it's going to be a bit less than we thought even more. We wait, we wait, no deposit. The IRS site was having problems, no information. Okay, there are delays. We wait. But then, the final blow, we receive notice in the mail that they have seized our federal returns too. No money. No deposit, no help. No boost to help us get out of this hole that seems to get deeper and deeper. Sigh. We can't move. We can't get ahead. So, now what? I spent a day or so depressed about it. Angry. Pretty much just ready to say forget it. Nothing is going to change. Nothing is going to get better. The rich are going to keep getting richer, we are just going to continue busting our butts to fall behind. It's like a frustrating Rubik's cube. I twisted and turned and looked at it over and over. I would like to say that I got all the colors lined up and everything is good now. But it's not. But - it's not going to be that easy. So, instead, I started working on our budget, I started doing more figuring. And, it's going to be okay. It's not the end of the world. We shall persevere. We will get ahead somehow. The right job is out there for me. It's just going to take time to find it. And once again, I have to keep myself on track. I have to remember that all things change, all things pass. This isn't forever, nothing is forever. So, there may be others out there who are doing better. But, I always have to remember that there are also those out there who are doing far worse. So, just like Dory says in Finding Nemo (she's my hero) - just keep swimming, just keep swimming.