Don't Let The Taxman Get You Down

How to cope with money stress; plus some books and music recommendations...

Happy new year everyone. How’s it going? Shit probably. January is miserable. Not least because of the lurking spectre of the tax man.

It’s a cliche to moan about your January tax return. But because British people are so cagey about discussing money, we don’t really open up about just how stressful finances can be. We tend to keep money stuff to ourselves. But it’s such a massive trigger for anxiety, depression and all sorts of other mental health issues.

I’ve been self-employed most of my career and so January is traditionally a time of panic and sorrow for me. I am disorganised so my returns are usually characterised by an envelope of incomplete, coffee-stained receipts and some hastily downloaded bank statements. It’s a nightmare and I never, ever learn that all this stress can be avoided if I just remembered to log everything as I went along and put a bit of cash into a special tax account every month. Or something. I don’t know, that’s stuff’s for weirdos and accountants.

Part of the stress comes from assuming I am the only one who is so shambolic. I have an image of everyone else I know filing their returns early in neatly organised folders - then paying their bill promptly from the vast lumps of savings they studiously put aside throughout the year.

The truth is that most people are (probably) just as shit and desperate as I am. The problem is we just don’t talk to each other about money. It’s the last taboo. Most people would rather discuss the details of their daily bowel movements than discuss their bank balance. The upshot is that we all walk around feeling insecure, inadequate and more financially incompetent than we really are. Life’s busy and expensive. Of course bills are gonna creep up and bite you on the arse once in a while. It probably even happens to Bezos sometimes.

This year I have managed to avoid the usual anxiety by accepting that money is just one of those problems that will always be there. I have had periods in my life where I’ve earned quite a lot and other periods when I’ve been pretty skint. These days I’m somewhere in the middle. But the anxiety around tax, bills, debt and all that other stuff always remains, irrespective of the actual amounts I’ve got in the bank.