Living Off the Books—an 8th House Quicksand

©5-5-2010 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

 I shoulda known this series about money was trouble. I thought I could write a couple of nice, informative little pieces about the 2^nd house, speak my mind about the 2^nd=values +self-esteem equation, and move on blithely to more congenial topics. Yeah, right. That’s just not how writing works for me.

 How writing works for me is that I go to bed relieved that I’ve written all I’m going to write on a tough subject. Given my Pluto, that’s mostly what I’m compelled to write about—tough subjects. Not writing about them is NOT an option or I get no peace.

 Then I wake up at 3:00 AM with a new and unexpected facet of the issue rapidly scrolling through my mind. I have to get up, even if the house is as icy as Dakota in January, and rush to the computer. If I don’t jot the ideas down as fast as I can, I won’t remember any of them in the morning.

So what I unexpectedly woke up writing about in the middle of the night this time is the 8^th house, astrologers, and taxes. Oh, yeah, and insurance. I don’t quite recall why I decided the 8^th house represented insurance—maybe because I did charts for many insurance agents over the years, and their charts had vocational indicators in the 8^th. (If you can think of any other logical house for it, let me know.)

I don’t WANT to write about taxes and insurance—facts of life too many astrologers do their best to ignore—but it follows logically from yesterday’s post on Neptune transits and the 8^th house. There’s something I neglected to mention yesterday while ranting on the scams and frauds those transits can bring.

And that’s a heads up about the perils of keeping your income off the books. Given the right Neptune or Pluto transits to the 8^th or 2^nd or the right transits to natal 8^th house planets, you may hear from the IRS, and it won’t be friendly.  In fact, any financial finagling you’re doing that’s not strictly on the up and up may come back to bite you. But taxes are particularly risky.  Don’t mess with Taxes.

So many astrologers take that risk—and the reasons come right back to the difficulties in dealing with money we talked about in another article. They rationalize keeping their practice off the books in several ways:

1) we aren’t making enough that we can afford to pay taxes,

2) our VALUES say that charging what we’re worth and treating our practice as a business isn’t spiritual, and

3) we don’t want our money used to wage war and oppress 3^rd world countries while the corporate fat cats don’t pay a dime in taxes, etc, etc.

Hey, I can relate to every bit of that. No argument on any of it. It’s not fair. But I was always squeaky clean in paying taxes, even though it was a serious hardship. April was the most terrifying month of the year.

Why would I pay, you wonder?  It’s not like our clients send in 1040 forms on us.

I did it because my chart said that not doing it would get me into serious trouble.

Knowing my chart has saved me from tons of grief—warning me not to take up smoking in order to lose weight, for instance. (With a Mercury like mine, only an idiot would smoke!)  

What my chart had to say about taxes was that I would most likely go to jail if I cheated on them. I have the South Node in Pisces in the 8^th, squared by Uranus and Saturn. The ruler of my 2^nd is in the 12^th, the house of prisons.

 In my early days in astrology, prison was one of the commonly listed meanings of the 12^th. Now we’re too spiritually evolved to mention it, despite the alarming statistics on overcrowded prisons.

I paid and paid and paid, and, yeah, I struggled. Just so you know, anyone who believes writers make tons of money is living in a dream world. And then during a Neptune transit, my hips swiftly deteriorated, leaving me housebound and in continual pain because I did not have insurance to pay for hip replacement.

In order to cover insurance premiums, I had to stop paying quarterly estimated taxes for more than two years.

Once I’d healed from the surgeries, I filed my back tax forms, and the IRS came down on me like a ton of bricks. There were heavy threats to take everything, and I feared I’d wind up homeless. I had to ask for help from friends and even from the astrology organizations, the most humiliating thing I’ve ever had to do.

My tax man negotiated an Offer in Compromise that took an ulcer-making year to come through. We settled the IRS problem, though it meant being on their radar for seven years. I paid back all my friends and kept up with my quarterly payments.

The trouble with the IRS that my natal chart predicted did happen after all, though I didn’t quite wind up in prison. I didn’t do anything wrong; the trouble came because of another 8^th house problem, insurance.

I decided to start collecting my Social Security benefits as soon as I was entitled to them at age 62, and it has been such a blessing.  It has enabled me to stop doing consultations, something I desperately needed. And I am fully covered by Medicaid and supplemental insurance. I thank God every month when that check arrives that I listened to my chart and paid taxes all my life.

My fellow astrologers, you worry me, because very few full time astrologers have insurance. And lots of us are getting old and falling ill—we hear such heartbreaking stories. More than I’d really care to know are living off the books. They will not be eligible for Social Security or Medicaid. Folks, as hard as it may be to envision, we do get old!!

It’s really odd for me to be writing this series.  I’m no kind of financial expert—I’m Moon Maven, not a money maven.  But what I have finally learned through all that trouble is how to live within my means.  And maybe that’s the most valuable thing I can impart in this time of Pluto in Capricorn and the Cardinal t-square.  I promise you, I’m almost done–two more pieces to go. 

If this article rang bells for you, you’ll want to read  The Unsuspected Role of the 8th House in Fiscal Fitness   and the followup: Pluto Transits to the 2nd or 8th —Money Issues Get Murky .  The comments on these posts give me the courage to keep on writing about this topic.  Thanks, folks. If you can shed any light on this particular issue, by all means use the comment section.

Articles in the Astrology and Personal Finances series:

• Astrologers’ Hang-ups about Money—How they Hurt our Clients
• Readers Ask: Q & A about the 2nd House
• The 2nd House and Money Management Patterns
• Your 2nd House—A Clue to Extra Income
• The Unsuspected Role of the 8th House in Fiscal Fitness
• Uranus in the 2nd—Freedom & Individuality, vs. Financial Stability
• Saturn and Uranus Transits to the 2nd/8th House Axis
• Neptune in the 2nd—Money, Boundaries, & Codependency
• Neptune Transits to the 2nd-8th Axis—Time to Get Real about Money
• Money and Pluto in the 2nd House—The Haves vs. the Have Nots 
•  Pluto Transits to the 2nd or 8th —Money Issues Get Murky
•  Thought Forms–How They Add to Money Blocks
• More Help for Money Blocks—Clearing Past Life Barriers

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