Anonymous Lawyer

I left work early today to meet Anonymous Wife at our accountant's office so he could do our taxes. We always seem to leave it to the last minute -- my wife never calls up early enough for an appointment, so we end up stuck with something right before they're due. We lucked into this accountant. He's terrific. He narrowly escaped jail time a few years ago, because he was being overly aggressive with some of his tax planning strategies and the IRS went after him. But, fortunately for his clients, he hasn't learned his lesson, and he has continued to push the envelope, saving us tens of thousands of dollars in the process. It's how his business has continued to thrive even among increased competition from the H&R Blocks of the world.

I used to let Anonymous Wife keep track of the checkbook and save receipts and bills throughout the year, but after a few years I realized she had no idea what she was doing, so ever since then I handle most of it and hope she sticks to her agreed-upon budget, but it's all on the joint credit card so I can't really control her. It's more the principle of it than the actual money. We have enough that she can throw it away on pocketbooks, but I just don't like her doing it. She has no self-control. No will power. No moral backbone when it comes to this stuff. I draw the line at lottery tickets. I saw her with a scratch-off lottery ticket and I tore it up, threw it out, and made her donate ten pairs of her pants to charity, just out of spite. She's already won the lottery -- she married *me*. What could the lottery give her that I can't? Besides financial independence, of course. Although I suppose if we ever got divorced the court would give her way too much money.

But she wouldn't get the kids. She's a disaster with them. Even though my work hours are crazy, no sane judge would pick her over me. At least I hope not.