I am reading a great book

It's called Overcoming Underearning by Barbara Stanny. She wrote one of my favorite personal finance books for women called Prince Charming isn't Coming: How women get smart about money. Well this book came from a workshop aimed at helping women earn more money and is filled with some good advice about getting over your psychological blocks to bringing in more money. I love this stuff, I confess.

I am an underearner. I give away a lot more of my time than I get paid for, I pay myself way less than I pay others for doing the same job, I often put off doing my bills, signing contracts, and doing other things that would bring me money faster (as I write this I am stressing about an email I need to write making an appointment to sign a contract with a new client for some academic translations-- what the HELL is my problem??). I blame my underearning on external factors (If I had a more expensive phone, I could be more available, I could pounce on jobs faster because I could see my email anywhere!!...),  yet... 


I think I would be a great rich person... given the chance!


So I decided to take one of the first tests in the book about what my earning ceiling is. It has you visualize and write about how you would feel if you made 5,000 bucks a year, 10,000, then 25,000, then 75,000 then 250,000 and finally a million.

Now I have made nowhere near 75 or 100 g's, but I sure didn't have a problem visualizing them. They almost seemed like too little (I'm worth so much more!!)- Then I got to 250,000 and realized I was completely insecure... The panic took over and I realized that at that much money, people would figure me out, that they would somehow find out that I am a fraud and have no business making that kind of money.

Isn't that interesting? That being said, 75,000 would put me in a new tax bracket and swipe away my poor person VAT number safety net of only having to pay taxes once a year in Italy, and that also scares the bejeezus out of me.

But I track all of my earnings, and immediately count them as 40% less than what I get (yeah, I honestly pay 39% tax-- I think the highest you can pay in America is 35%, but who really does??!), so having to pay quarterly or having to pay ahead of expected income shouldn't freak me out, but it does.

Which is all the more reason to learn more about money. Taxes are never going to be MORE than you earn, right? So earning should be a POSITIVE thing, not NEGATIVE. Right? Right?