Here’s my current situation: I’m in Fort Walton Beach Florida. As the waves roll in, their sound makes a constant yet subtle roar that I’m sure was designed by The All Mighty to soothe the soul. The bleached white sand gently tapers down into clear, light blue water that mixes with varying shades of green as you move deeper into the Gulf of Mexico — I now understand why they call this the emerald coast.
As I take in this scene, a Zack Brown song pops into my head. I’ll take a little liberty with the lyrics here to fit us more exactly. “I’ve got my toes in the water, chair in the sand. Not a worry in the world, a cup of joe in my hand. Life is good today. Life is good today.”
We’ve had a lot of firsts on this trip. For one, my 5-year-old lost his first tooth. We noticed it was loose the day before we left and at our first dinner here, he looked up and exclaimed that he’d lost it. We never got to see the actual tooth. He was eating a breadstick and felt something hard in it. Instead of pulling the hard thing out of his mouth to investigate, he decided to just swallow it. Neither Ashley nor I were prepared to go looking for it. So we’ll just say it was lost at sea.
This was the first time my children had seen the ocean. I love the coast. I used to live on Saint Simons Island, so the ocean and its inhabitants are no strangers to me. Ashley and the kids, however, got to see dolphins, crabs and jellyfish in the wild for the first time. I had to warn the kids about trying to feed the seagulls. If you’ve never been flocked by ferocious feeding fowl, you should have that experience at least one time. After surviving the dive-bombing birds, and getting all the poo off of you, I’m sure you’ll decide watching others feed the seagulls is much more entertaining.
We’ve lain by the pool, played in the sand, and I even got to push my kids off into waves so they could body surf on their newly-acquired boogey boards. All this was done without phone calls from rehabs or rentals. And since my children have been born, having this uninterrupted time for any sustained period has been a first. And I’m praising Yahweh for it.
There’s another first I’d like to tell you about. Before I do, however, I want you to know something. I’m not an attorney or a CPA. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I have some licenses, however, but they came from either the DMV or the DNR. So before you take my word, go talk to someone certified to tell you what to do.
This first that we experienced is our trip was almost totally tax deductible.
You may be asking how we can do that. That’s because we elected for our flip company to be organized as an S- Corporation.
By having an S-Corp, we are allowed to write off traveling for business purposes. The reason we came to Fort Walton when we did was so we could have some time away to evaluate our business.
While here, we’ve had board meetings that have gone well into the night. We’ve also had goal-planning sessions where we’re exploring the idea of starting a new venture in our real estate career. But most importantly, we’ve been away from the normal grind of our daily business routine. Being away allowed us to have clarity and perspective to objectively evaluate our business, and that’s invaluable. The fact that the trip was tax free was just a perk.
Joe and Ashley English buy houses and mobile homes in Northwest Georgia. For more information or to ask a question, go to www.cashflowwithjoe.com or call Joe at 678-986-6813.