My dentist has the next best thing to an annuity. You know! Those financial investments that keep paying back money. Me!
My latest video game is Turbo-Tax. I turn on my computer, bring up the 2013 version of the tax program and begin filling in requested financial stuff. Two hours later I push a button and I have 83 pages of Federal and State Income Tax forms. That is before I print out my copies. Are the forms correct? Absolutely, my computer tells me so. I still file the forms by mail because I am not smart enough to transmit electronically. In another life I’ll learn to trust “bits and bytes”.
My luxury car dealer (BMW) has designed a car with electronic messages that appear on the dash at random times. Their most common light is “service engine soon”. It is a fear tactic. If I don’t service the engine, will it explode? So I try to schedule service and I can get an appointment in a week. What if the engine breaks down? I try to get an indication of what is wrong but all I got is “we can’t tell until we put it on computer diagnostics”. There is that damn electronic voodoo again. Here is the bottom line. The engine problem will be a surprise and expensive. The computer said so!
So you can see between dentists, the tax man and the local car dealer, my increase in social security for the year has disappeared.
Love,
Dad