My husband would fall over laughing if he knew I was sharing advice about financial success and tax preparation. Lord knows I have spent many tear-filled nights struggling to prepare a whole year of taxes or figure out how many miles I drove to that last meeting. Over the last six years, I have realized that I am great at so many things, but taxes are just not one of them.
What? Meggie, how is this helpful?
Well, I encourage you to find those things that you’re great at and do them well. Pursue them wholeheartedly, and then leave the others things alone. For me, it took four years in my photography business to finally decide to hire someone to do my books. Every month I would sit down and ask my husband (a finance major in college) to help me with my taxes. And every month I would end up in tears, which as you can imagine, wasn’t good for our marriage. But now that I have a fabulous CPA, I just organize all of my receipts by month and send her my bank statements, inventory, and mileage records.
Normally I’m a big saver when it comes to my finances. (For example, I don’t like to pay monthly for a service to track my mileage, so I do it the old-fashioned way with a little tiny notebook and a pen.) However, I feel that every month of paying my CPA is worth it. Especially when April rolls around. I just give her my mileage and she does the rest—it’s so simple.
If, unlike me, you’re amazing at finances, then by all means, embrace it! But for me, the key to getting my books done was simply accepting my weaknesses.
