Backstory: President Obama wanted to let the Bush era tax cuts expire for the wealthy but not for couples making less than $300,000. The idea was to stimulate the economy. The thinking was that those couples making less than $300,000 would spend any tax savings. The argument for not extending them to the really wealthy was that if the wealthy got an extra $1,000 they would probably save it because they could already buy everything they want. The money wouldn't get recirculated so the government might as well tax it.
However, the Republicans wanted an extension and got it. This is despite the existence of a group of wealthy Americans pushing for the cuts to expire for the over $300k crowd as they were willing to pay those taxes and thought it was good for the country.
My wife and I don't mind paying extra taxes as long as they are going to pay off the debt and not perpetuate government waste. We in fact would not normally spend the extra money we saved because we can already afford everything we want and are just socking money away. So, as a result of the extension in the tax cuts, we will have extra money and this is where you come in.
We will have an extra $245,000 or thereabouts. This is based on our expected income for 2011 multiplied by the 4.9% that the tax rate didn't increase. So basically we need to spend almost $1,000 every Monday to Friday for the entire year.
So we have an idea. We are going to do the right thing. We are going to spend it. All of it. And we need you to help us because we really aren't very good at spending.
We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to be in the position we are in. We both started companies that were successful. Both of us scrimped and saved to be able to start those companies. When our peers were buying cars and eating in restaurants we were eating pasta at home. So we came of age not being good spenders...so please help us.
We want to develop some rules. We want the majority of the money to remain in the USA. For example (if we hadn't already bought 5 iPads) we could buy an $800 iPad because only about $150 goes overseas while the rest goes to an American company.
We could get lots of massages as that money stays right here in the U.S. We could buy American art.
Outrageous tipping is a good way to get money into the economy. But our schedule and waistlines don't allow eating out too much. The same schedule problem limits how many luxury vacations we can take.
We want most of it to be in smaller purchases, no houses, boats etc. because we want to spread it around.
None will go to organized charity as we already have a gifting plan outside of this money.
We were thinking things like hiring people we don't normally hire to do stuff for us...we just don't know what stuff we don't need but will get anyway.
Give us suggestions!
We will blog, Twitter and Facebook our daily spending starting Jan 1, 2011.
P.S.
Please don't flame us for being fortunate...all our companies provide tangible services and products to people who voluntarily purchase them. We are just trying to give back in a fun way. If too many people annoy us we'll just take our tax cut and go home :)
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