Job 20:16

He will suck the poison of serpents,

   The tongue of the viper will slay him.

I have three major financial transactions to make soon: long-term care, taxes, and tithes. Long term care is the only one that does not keep repeating. Taxes are not optional, and forever seem to be huge chunks. Tithes are optional, but I want to be a cheerful giver, and indeed it will bring me joy to do so.

‘Serpents’ was only used once with various snakes being used the other times. ‘Poison’ was used more than ‘venom’ in this stitch.

‘Tongue’ was once also ‘fang’. ‘Viper’ was used more often, but other snakes as well. ‘’Slay’ was also ‘kill’.

My blood pressure was high when I was younger, and the doctor proscribed me some medicine. I assumed I would learn to handle the stress and get off the medicine soon. Thirty odd years later and I still take it. My blood pressure seems fine, but of course my stress levels are back up. I heard they changed the numbers for who needs medicine again. I think the drug companies are juicing the numbers to make it so. I hope to get off of them eventually.

The good thing about taxes is that they only tax you for what you ‘make’. I might not be as tax efficient as possible, but using debt to avoid taxes incurs interest and I do not like that path. If they start to tax what you have, I may have to update my stewardship plan. Until then, I will do what seems reasonable to minimize taxes and get them paid on time.

Tithes and offerings are things we are supposed to give because we love God. He asks us to test Him by giving the tithe and see how our lives are blessed. Once we started, the goal was set at this minimum. The next thing will be to put in an action plan to keep taxes off to the side and be more timely with cash flow. Lots of cash flow to plan out for work, so hopefully the personal side is easy. No idea how this relates to poison/venom and snakes/serpents, but its all I have for today.

Written 2/23/26, Posted 4/8/26, Job 474/~1070