The thing I have always liked best about them is the user programmability. The ability to hold one guitar and with the turn of a knob tune down a half step, moved to open E, open G or dropped D tuning alone would make it worth my while. Especially to switch to and from slide guitar tuning. When you get into the timbres it's beyond remarkable how much they do. From 50s Les Paul to 60s Strat to Martin acoustic to 12 string... I saw a guy once doing a solo with a Variax, a looper, and a drum machine. A blind man would not have known it was not a whole band.

But Pat makes the most cogent point of all by bringing age and end of life concerns into the equation. He has chose to spend some money to own things he enjoys rather than worry abut an ever expiring future. I can't tell you how many people live a contradictory life where in one sentence they want to push every dollar into paying off their mortgage "So I can retire" and then never retire. I love and appreciate having good credit and not a lot of debt, but I will soon hit that threshold where I say "Screw the credit", run my credit cards to the max buying toys I want to enjoy, and wish the creditors well when they try to sue a dead man to recover the debt. That "richest corpse in the graveyard" mentality is just baffling to me. But I understand it from this aspect. Most of us in a certain age group are children of parent from the depression. We were taught that money is the way to keep score. And people work themselves into a stress induced stroke by age 60 trying to squeeze that last dollar out of the consumers. Just consider how it was some strange badge of courage for parents in the 60s to brag that they put their kids through college, because at that time, again based on THEIR history where college was for the elite and affluent, that made them somehow feel like they succeeded. Well, with the changing times came the changing mores. Everybody goes to college now. Most end up back in their parent's basement because they chose some obscure major that doesn't relate to the 2020s workforce. Nobody wins that scenario but the college that took $200,000 from the student (loans), and you have a 22 year old kid starting life in massive debt for an education that is meaningless in this world.

My own different drummer beats outa pattern of "Earn it, spend it, and don't worry about a tomorrow that never comes." Now, for perspective... I have always marched to my own beat. It has not always worked out, but I am what I am and would not change for anything. I am 70 and I don't even HAVE a savings account. I don't need one. Every month, you wonderful taxpayers give me enough money to pay my bills (by way of Social Security and disability) and have plenty of toy money left over. It is stable, it can never stop, and I have no threat of a medical event taking my money due to the VA taking care of veterans. So my situation is specific to me, though I won't say unique as there are a lot of me. I had a guy do some handyman work for me. At the time he was 69 (I was 65) and he said he was going to work until he had 1 million in the bank due to his all-consuming fear of a medical event that could wipe him out. He was heavily invested in order to speed up that process. I once asked him "What happens if your investments crash and burn? Then you love what you have invested. Does that mean you will NEVER retire? And what if you DO hit that million dollar goal and then NOT have that medical even that you worry so much about? You then die and leave one million bucks for the state to absorb into the state troth? And give it away to welfare people? Who wins then? Wouldn't it be a better plan to stop drinking yourself into a coma every day, to quit smoking, and improve the odds of that medical event never happening? Wouldn't that work too?

So Patrick Marr, you enjoy those new toys my friend. You worked long and hard through your life to have the stuff around you that makes you feel good! We truly have no future. We have a series of "presents", so you enjoy those new presents you bought yourself to enjoy your present!!

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.