I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Affectionately titled My Spouse’s Stupid Tax

Last week my spouse got to pay what I am affectionately calling a stupid tax (term borrowed from DebtFREE-Revolution, where I heard it first, although I read this morning on Gather Little By Little it is actually a Dave Ramsey term). Although it could have been worse, at which point the “affectionately” would have been dropped from my description.

About 11am I got a call from my spouse at work. This made me nervous, because he only calls when he’s on lunch (noon to 1pm), and his tone of voice didn’t sound very reassuring. I asked him what was wrong and he exclaims “My license is expired!”. I said okay…. well, renew it then. He said he was going over to the BMV right away, but he’d looked online, and it cost $5 more to renew if it was expired. He sounded rather put out about the whole idea.

Well, okay then. It isn’t like he can go back in time and make it unexpired. I told him that no one from the BMV had sent anything reminding me his license was expiring, and, really, yes I handled the finances and organization stuff, but was I expected to go through his wallet and keep track of his license? Sometimes we just have to take responsibility for our own actions (or non-actions). I did toy with the idea of telling him I was taking the extra $5 out of his birthday money he is still saving to buy a Playstation 3 someday, but I decided to let him off the hook this time.

Of course, it could have been worse. The license expired in June. JUNE! He could have been pulled over and found out from a police officer his license was expired. I’m sure that would have been more than $5. Lucky for us, he’s a very law-abiding driver generally. He barely even speeds. And the BMV didn’t even mention the fact the license was expired when he renewed it. But they did charge him the extra $5.

Hence, the $5 stupid tax. Next time, don’t think I won’t be garnishing his personal money ;).

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