<$Monday, April 16, 2007$>
The Tax Man Giveth
| My husband and I did our taxes this weekend. Actually, we went and got them done, and it made for two firsts for us: the first time we filed jointly, and the first time either of us has let a professional prepare our taxes instead of doing it ourselves. Overall, it was a great experience, and I think it just might become standard procedure. We decided to have someone else do our taxes this year because, between getting married and me having three W-2s from last year, plus a small but taxable payout from a class action suit against a former employer, plus 401K dividends and student loan interest and other stuff that we were pretty sure wouldn't go on a 1040-EZ, we thought it best to just go ahead and pay for someone who knew what they were doing, because we definitely didn't. We waited so long because we both just assumed we'd owe, or if we did get a refund that it would barely be enough to cover the preparer's fee--which goes to show exactly how much we know, which is, not much. Never having gone this route before, neither of us knew what to expect. Since it was the last weekend before the deadline, and since we didn't have an appointment, we expected a long wait. I packed up my current knitting project to take along, and Matt and I each brought a novel to get us through the wait. So imagine our delight (mostly; I admit to being slightly disappointed over not getting in any knitting time) when we signed in at reception and were told to go right in. We didn't even have time to take advantage of the free coffee and donuts, which is probably a good thing for my diet, although the penny pincher in me cries whenever I pass up free food and/or coffee. The rest was pretty painless. We handed the preparer our paperwork, he entered all of the relevant numbers, and in less than ten minutes he informed us that we were getting a pretty sizeable (for us) federal refund (we owe the state, the greedy sons of monkeys, but it's a small enough amount to be pretty well rendered painless by the refund we're getting). After that he led us out to another desk where they took care of all of the administrative processing, physical preparation (printing, attaching W2s, envelope stuffing, all that fun stuff), and made sure we paid them their fee, which took about another ten minutes. That's twenty stress-free minutes to get us back what the government owes us. TOTALLY worth the fee. So what are we doing with this windfall? Mostly, we're being responsible and applying it to credit card debt, although we're debating using part of it to pay for things we keep putting off because we don't have the money, like taking our dog for various veterinary treatments that could really improve the quality of his old age, or getting Matt some new glasses. But the vast majority of it is going straight to the credit cards, which should lower the minimum payment on the highest-balance card, which will mean more of my monthly payment going toward the principle, which ultimately means a faster pay-off. All of that definitely works for me. Labels: credit cards, extra income, money management, personal, spending |
Congrats on getting your taxes done. I filed ours on-line today, its the first time we owed money to the gov't. Most of my financial bloggers would say that I have done well this year, however I still miss the refund.
PS You should totally spend a portion of your money on the dog and the glasses.
The dog, definitely. Matt's pretty sure he can wait a while on the glasses, though.
Thanks, John. I'm just excited to be getting any refund at all. I'm sorry you ended up owing.