Ringing in 2014 the Right Way!

Here’s hoping you all enjoyed  a wonderful and healthy holiday season.

Closer to home, my local health club must have been monitoring my caloric intake during December as I was greeted on January 2 with a notice that my membership fees would rise. I debated whether that was directed at me personally or simply the first of several cost of living adjustments I would be hit with over 2014.

Happy New Year!

But I digress.

Here’s To a Great 2014!

To the sound of either cheers or jeers this will mark my final blog for 2013.

I hoped you’ve enjoyed my postings, and if not, after nearly 25 years as a journalist, I’ve developed a fairly thick skin, so I’ll take constructive criticism as well.

So keep those cards and letters coming.

So, to review:

A Mentor for the Ages

As many of you know, I spent nearly a dozen years covering the accounting profession.

During that span I met and engaged with a number of the profession’s most influential – occasionally in an adversarial capacity, but far more frequently in a tabula rasa mode – siphoning all the experience and knowledge of others to my rather blank mental slate in the accounting arena. There are those to whom I’ll be forever grateful for their patience and understanding and who helped guide me through a sector that even today, I still find myself in a learning mode.

CPA Firms Rarely Get “Do-Overs”

If you frequently go to the movies, or even if you only occasionally attend a must-see new release, you must have wondered at one time or another why they bother to remake films you thought were great the first time around.

Remember “The Longest Yard” with Burt Reynolds? Apparently it was not enough of a classic so the Tinsel town geniuses decided to give it another go-round a few years back, this time with Adam Sandler. Did anyone actually see that?

If so, I’ll bet you had buyer’s remorse about 10 minutes in.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not one of those people who gets all giddy and smiley during the holiday season. And for those who know me well, it hardly qualifies as a revelation when I admit I’m even less of a warm fuzzy this time of the year than the remaining 11 months.

There’s just something about hanging holiday lights in freezing weather, nearly getting into Pier 6 brawls at retail checkout counters, overeating to the point where I need a personal trainer to return my waistline to more comfortable dimensions and ultimately, receiving  credit card statements that approach my monthly mortgage.

And this past weekend did nothing to sway my anti-holiday sentiment. 

Don’t Bet On It!

Our family does not have a great history with regard to predictions.

My grandfather for example, took Germany and 7 points in World War II.

A generation later, my father was offered a half-interest in a parking garage on the west side of Manhattan, which he promptly turned down. Two years later, said garage sat at the foot of the newly revamped Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

In high school, I laughed out loud when CBS announced that it was launching a new series based on a 1970s hit movie. I assured everyone who would listen that it would last one season, if that.

The series was M*A*S*H.

“No” is the second-best answer you can give me

In the classic film Wall Street, Charlie Sheen’s overly ambitious Bud Fox character is getting a lecture on life from his blue-collar airline mechanic father who rather simplistically frames what his younger son actually does for a living.  

Despite the racks of custom-tailored suits he wears and the white-shoe brokerage firm where he works, he’s a salesman.

“Dad, I keep telling you, I’m an account executive not a salesman,” he pleads.

“You ask strangers for money don’t you? You’re a salesman.”