Balance Your Checkbook and Your Life

How can you get the most out of your investments? Are you sufficiently informed and experienced to handle delicate money matters or should you hire a financial planner?

Do you have a will? Are you aware that holographic wills are valid in California? All that's required is to write your wishes on any piece of paper (even toilet paper would suffice), entirely in your own hand writing, signed, and dated. 

If you often put off dealing with these issues until the last minute, it’s not too late to get some expert advice from tax maven, Larry Bruskoff, who’s been helping people like you with their taxes for over 20 years. 

Working with Larry, you’ll receive personal, customized guidance; save time and money, reduce stress; comply with current laws and regulations; enjoy prompt accurate tax filings, eliminate penalties; receive confidential, honest, and innovative service with integrity; gain a partner, friend, confidante, and mentor.

Contact Mr. Bruskoff at 818-886-4880; labtax@aol.com; 9036 Reseda Blvd., Suite #103, Northridge CA 91324, www.LarryBruskoffandCompany.com.

Once you’ve stabilized your financial concerns, it’s equally vital to obtain equilibrium in the rest of your affairs, maintaining mental and emotional health. 

When’s the last occasion you sat down under a shady tree, read a book, listened to the birds chirping, the pigeons cooing? Are you a type-A personality constantly running, too frantic to smell the roses or appreciate the miracles surrounding you?  

Are you a ‘black or white’ thinker? Do you fall into the ‘all or nothing’ category? In what areas are you lacking involvement? In what fields are you on overload?

Do you sit in front of the boob tube for hours on end in isolation or socialize every night until you drop from exhaustion?

The solution is contrary action. If you usually have dinner alone, ask a friend to join you. If you’re habitually doing laundry on Saturday evenings, instead join a meet-up group that appeals to you.

If you’re normally on a date, dreading solitary seconds, spend stretches taking pleasure in your abode, indulging in your favorite novel, listening to your preferred CD collection, benefiting from a hot bubble bath with deliciously scented candles.

Are you a spendthrift frequently in debt at the close of the month beneath a pile of unpaid bills? Do you hoard your millions, never treating yourself or anyone else to a splurge, afraid of becoming a pauper? How long has it been since you’ve gone on a vacation, bought designer clothes, furniture, or tickets to see your rock n roll idols in concert?

Many single men and women remain in the same rut repeatedly, a comfort zone they’re used to, scared to venture out from beneath the homogeny. It’s difficult to modify old habits.

In order to forge an innovative path, it’s crucial to summon up the courage to abandon your secure syndrome, acting in a divergent mode to your normal patterns.

The choice is to stay stuck or stray deeper and shift to an altered level.

Today is Easter Sunday and the second day of Passover. With spiritual themes of resurrection and freedom, it’s apropos to seek internal and external change.

What is it you’ve been avoiding so you won’t have to deal with the possibility of falling short, disappointment, rejection? Is it putting a ring on her finger or telling him “I love you?” Is it asking for a second date or revealing what pleases you sexually?

What’s been holding you back from pursuing your dreams, from experimenting with a fresh approach to interpersonal relationships? Are you just surviving or are you living each day to its fullest? 

Life is too short to stand on ceremony waiting for the perfect moment that seldom materializes. Now is the season to celebrate your gifts, your presents (presence), to rejoice in every breath you take, every move you make.

Are you cognizant that everything you have is everything you need or are you still mistaking paradise for the home across the way? Do you count your blessings or are you continually complaining you don’t have enough?

There’s an endless, eternal abundance of love, never too much to go around and always room for more. No one can ever love or be loved in excess. Don’t be embarrassed for overflowing passion, ardor, zeal, fervor, and eagerness. 

Filling precious minutes with money, fame, power, or possessions, will not produce satisfaction. Discover what authentically brings you joy, bliss, delight, peace, serenity, contentment. Be still and you’ll intuitively fathom what makes you shine and excel.

Practice breathing in the light and exhaling the dark; breathe in the positive, exhale the negative; breathe in hope, breathe out despair; breathe in faith, breathe out fear; breathe in gladness, breathe out sadness; breathe in excitement, breathe out boredom; breathe out tension, breathe in calm.

Be true to yourself, letting your heart and the love within, lead the way. This is your nourishment, chi, center, core, oxygen, sustenance. Nothing else will suffice. Without it, you’re dormant; with it you’re explosive, eruptive, on fire, exhilarated.

Let the dark evil forces pass over you, i.e. the message of Passover. Refuse to allow malevolence to consume you, ignoring influences that want to see you alone, defeated, despondent, forlorn, and unloved.

Arise and be resurrected, i.e. the message of Easter. Achieve a rebirth of optimism, freedom from pessimism.

Singles Slogan for Today: I’m loveable and valuable just because I’m me and something I adore and admire about myself is my sense of humor, my kindness, my compassion, my creativity, my steadfastness, my enthusiasm, my honesty, my_________________________ (list five more characteristics).   

If you can’t make it to Coachella Valley for the awesome music festival next weekend, a substitute option is The Valley’s Biggest Single’s Dinner Party & Dance on Saturday April 14 from 7 p.m. - Midnight, at the beautiful Glendale Embassy Suites Ballroom, 800 N. Central Av., Glendale, 91203, 1 block North of the 134.

Arrive early and meet dozens of eligible singles during a free beginner salsa dance lesson, 7-8 p.m., on Glendale’s newest and largest dance floor.

Italian Buffet & Salad Bar, 8 -9:30 p.m., plus live music by The Generation Gap Band, and top Music Videos of the 80’s and 90’s (Best of Madonna, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Pointer Sisters, Huey Lewis, Springsteen and more).

$20 prepaid admission at www.lemondropclub.com or $25 cash at the door.