Fearless Money

Yesterday was my last day at my old job, and a simply outstanding day for me. We got our final paychecks and severance pay as a “live check” at 11 o’clock. Work was basically over at that point. I went to lunch with some friend/coworkers but left before the massive drinking started, since I had a mission. Time to get my wife a laptop that was created after the stone age.

Her iBook G3, one of the original “white books” had died a lingering death in the first quarter of the year. Since then, she’d been making due with my cruddy old Dell C610. That thing doesn’t close anymore, since it has a broken hinge repaired with duct tape and bent plexiglass. You get the idea. Plus, it runs Linux, so was not the best move for a Mac girl.

Macbook Pro Time!

Yup, we took an enormous step forward in time. I got her a 1.8 Ghz dual-core Macbook 15″ laptop. I had it all set up and sitting by her favorite chair when she came home from work. “What did you do?!?!” was the only thing I heard when she came home. She’s in heaven, as well she should be, since it is the single nicest laptop I’ve ever touched.

No debt incurred

I’d wanted a new laptop for her for months. But, it is not a “debt-worthy” event for me, not even as a business expense. I had to wait until I had the money free of other obligations. The severance check more than covered the laptop, so no worries there. It really felt good to stick to my “no new consumer debt” resolution.

Dustin is the art director for our business, so she really does need the laptop for business purposes. Accordingly, I bought the laptop like so:

• Deposit severance check in personal bank account.
• Buy laptop with AmEx business card.
• Transfer $2500 from personal bank account to business account as “owner investment”.
• (when the transfer is complete), pay off AmEx.
• Depreciate the laptop on a three-year straight-line schedule. That is approximately $800 per year deducted from business profits, saving me approximately $250 per year in taxes, netting me a total discount for the laptop of $750.

Did you see how much I saved from the total price just by buying the laptop through my company? That’s quite the savings for doing a little paperwork. Anyone with any legitimate excuse to have a business is simply insane to not take advantage of this tax savings.

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