Jonesin' Again

Huh, what do you know, Pacman Jones was pulled over and received several driving citations while driving his orange (?) Lamborghini. By now nothing that I read about this guy surprises me. But, being an accountant, I figured I’d put my limited knowledge about taxes to the test.

Again, I don’t deal with taxes on a daily basis. Hell, I buy Turbo Tax to do my own taxes. Taxes suck, both preparing taxes and especially paying taxes. Taxes can suck my ass. However, when calculating my future lottery winnings (please!) I always use 65% as the actual take home after Uncle Sammy takes his cut. At one point I did research this to come up with the figure. I’m not sure if it’s still the case or not, but I’m going to use it for this example.

See, I’m going to treat an NFL contract like winning the lottery. Doing a quick 3 minute search I found out that Adam Jones was scheduled to make $1,292,500 next year. “Was scheduled” as he is currently suspended for the whole year after witnesses heard him say “Let’s smoke this fool.” just before two bouncers were shot by Jones’ accomplices outside a Las Vegas strip club. Now, I know he didn’t make $1,292,500 his first two years, but we’ll just use it as a guideline for the moment. Two years at that rate would be $2,585,000. 65% of $2,585,000 is $1,680,250. The cheapest Lamborghini you can buy is $175,000. So, not taking into account any performance bonuses or endorsements for Glock and Smith & Wesson, Mr. Jones (good song by the way) spent 10% of his two year take home pay on a car. 10% of his two year take home. Huh? And that’s just one car. You know the brother has to have at least one Cadillac Escalade parked in the garage. How could you spend that much money on something that’s only going to depreciate in value?

So I decided I’d figure out how much my Jeep Wrangler cost me compared to my take home pay. My Jeep Wrangler, which I ordered without air conditioning because it was a $600 option and what the hell, I had a removable soft top, came off the showroom floor at just under $20,000. I roughly estimated the last five years of my income, subtracted a very roughly estimated amount for taxes, and came up with an even more roughly estimated percentage of what I paid for my Jeep verses my after tax income. Guess what? 8%. 8% a year just to make my stupid car payments. But now that it’s paid off, do you think I’m going to skip on over to the Jeep dealership and pick up a new model? Ha, ha, hell no. (Funny how that $300 a month I was paying isn’t stockpiling in my checking account.) I figure I have another eight good years left on the Jeep. I only have 18,500 miles on it due to a couple of years when the State of Wisconsin said I wasn’t allowed to operate a motor vehicle. And I only drive 120 miles a week to work and to the parents’ house for vitals. In eight years, barring any change in jobs or home location, I should have 68,400 miles on the Jeep. So in reality it could go for a lot more than eight years.

I don’t know why I got off on this tangent, maybe because I get off every night to pictures of women I find on Yahoo Personals. And if you say you wouldn’t bone that one you’re a fucking liar, both men and women.

But there you have it; I’m in the same category as Adam “Pacman” Jones. I pay 8%-10% of my take home pay on transportation. I’d like to see him spend 16% of his take home on alcohol like I do.


(On a side note, do you think Vin Baker, who played for the Bucks for a while and had signed one of those max contracts at one point, ever purchased Roundy’s Vodka?)