MONEY SCREAMS

         It's December and you know what that means! Right!! The last minute tax planning rush is on. Hang on to the furniture, people are going to start throwing all sorts of ideas around the room.

         You know you are making real money when you have your investment advisor call your tax consultant to go over ideas. Jim is making REAL money. While preparing last year's taxes for him, I had this telephone conversation which bordered on the surreal. We tried to settle whether he had made 5.5 million or 7.4 million in 1999.

         I can actually remember back in the early seventies when I saw my first wage form showing over $100,000, not my wage form mind you, but some man named Marty. Now that is bird feed.

         My April phonefest with Jim followed a call late the previous December in which he outlined to me the fact that in the first week of the new millenium, he could pull in 26 million dollars~~you'll note I do not write out the numbers but put them in ordinal fashion.

         My employee will ask me what Jim does to make this money, and I will tell her honestly that I haven't the foggiest notion. I suspect he reports to someone because I have never seen his name in the Wall Street Journal. The best way to explain his riches is that he happened to be standing under this cloud when it began to rain money.

         Of my six clients who paid the most in taxes last year, I can only tell you what one did to make the money to pay those taxes, and in her case, it was to sell a piece of real estate. The rest seemed to have latched onto their own money clouds, including one idiot savant who lived ninety miles from my former office but still had to call each year to ask "how do I get to Philadelphia?"

         This inability to describe what a person does to make income is not new. Somewhere around 1977, vague terms replaced the definitive. Blacksmiths, butchers and hod carriers became administrators, marketing reps and managers. Administering what? Don’t ask me, but they all want to save taxes.

         So December rolls around and questions pop up. In the greedy 80's, clients would call to ask if they should buy a car to save taxes. What they really sought was Papal dispensation to feel less guilt about treating themselves to a new pair of wheels. I would put them on hold while I took calls from tax shelter promoters asking if I knew anyone who wanted some big write-offs. Money turned over fast in those days.

         Back then it seemed like every twenty-seven year old male in a suit, and every fluffy bow-tie clad female was making 50K selling computers and peripherals, and they were all so damned pleased with themselves. God was in his or her heaven; a BMW was just around the corner. I always made them feel better by telling them of my twenty-six year old salesman, straight out of Mamet, driving a ten year old car, and making 300K. Spreading envy on wounds is a helpful healing device.

         I wonder where those people are today. My Mamet man is still making mid-six figures, as we like to say, and he now drives a '95 model. I suspect the rest of those 80's Y-worders have become run-of-the-mill 100K a year people, if they didn't succumb to the downsizing of the early 90's. Most were never real sales people, but fancy dressed order takers who could never lower themselves to sell. Now the cream has risen to the top, even if I don't know what they do.

         While I wait for them to call, or 'touch base' as they love to say~~I think I could write a whole column in business talk~~, I am putting on my coat. I must go outside and see if I can spot my money cloud.


Author's note: this piece was written last December. The telephone calls of the last three days made me bring it out of mothballs.