Time to meet the new accountant

[Karen]April 15th came and went. My new accountant, that I had not met, filed an extension. This bought me some time, quite a bit actually. Well, six months is never enough time so now October 15th is right around the corner. Reality finally set in last week so I called the accountant and I finally made an appointment. We met yesterday for the first time and it couldn't end soon enough.

Don’t get me wrong, he seems like a nice guy. The problem was me. Who is me? My name is Karen. I am smack dab in the middle of my 40’s. I am single but I bought a house in Yonkers about 20 years ago. I moved into the top apartment and gave my mother the other three floors. Hey, it works. I am a product of our economy. I was downsized about 4 months ago. Fortunately for me, I had adequate warning so I padded the ground to soften my fall. In the last two years, I have formed two individual companies, a partnership, started 5 home and Internet based businesses and I am continuously adding to my real estate investment portfolio. And there lies the rub.

At our first meeting, I realized that everything that I have done wrong in the last 20 months had become glaringly apparent and I did not like it one bit.

Asset protection? Well I did my research and the attorney, who seemed to know what he was talking about, suggested limited partnerships. Then why is my accountant asking me “why did he do this?” and “did you want it done this way?” All of this with the questioning faces to match.

What about the companies? Well, I have all of the documents for the Limited Liability Corporation but the agent neglected to give me anything on the S Corporation despite the fact that I have been asking for the last six months and forget about the partnership. What seal?

We spent just shy of two hours just trying to figure out what the attorney had done and who owned what houses, that we never even moved on to my expenses. Actually, I think that part may have been a good thing. Although, I don’t necessarily like many of the accounting programs on the market, I normally enter all of my expenses on a spreadsheet that I developed which suits me perfectly. I realized I had a problem when I realized that the spreadsheet was not up to date. Hey, where is the $12,200 that I spent rehabbing that house last year? What else am I missing?

I can’t believe all of this, after all, what is he going think of me? I’m not usually like this. I am usually knowledgeable and quite detailed. I have never had a problem like this before. I think it is because I haven’t had to deal with as many attorneys and accountants as I have in the last two years. Some have quite apparently been better than others. We aren’t expected to go to law school and get CPA’s to know how to police our professionals. The problem is that once you find out that there is a problem, you can only hope that it is not too late.

My accountant is going to call me when he figures out this mess. Hopefully, it will be after I finish updating my spreadsheet.

I’ll keep you posted.