Thursday, March 19, 2009

Taxes

I can breathe, it's over. I was worried about how mystery shopping would affect us, as well as how R's claiming us would change our deductions (we had more of his paycheck every month). The only notible difference- our income decreased (no overtime last year), and so did our refund. I had all our paperwork-sticking it in a file all year made it less stressful, so the process only took 90 minutes at the office. I also learned first hand what we can claim, (insurance premiums, all copays, medical expenses) and what we could not- the internet bill, although we claimed part of our phone bill (since we use it for work). The base refund total is a little over $6,000 from federal, and $2000 from state. That excludes the fees for getting our taxes done at H&R Block, but I'll submit the report tonight and we'll get an additional $375 for doing our taxes. We'll have our refund soon enough, and I'll replenish our savings/emergency fund, and make a large payment on the credit card. I see us moving closer, baby step by baby step towards our gaol,and I know we'll get situated. Now if only I don't second guess putting that money towards our goal and blow it on a trip, we'll be okay. I'll just have to decide how much we want in our emergency fund.

2 comments:

Melanie said...

I always feel relief when we've filed our taxes. I do have to say that I personally would hesitate to give the government a 8k interest free loan. If you could adjust your holdings so that you kept more in your paychecks and saved all that money in a high interest account, you would have more money in the longrun.

socialworkeratheart said...

That's the interesting part-we did that. We weren't expecting anything since we get everything we can from his paycheck. We got everything we could-the most we could take from his check every month than last year and we still had a hefty refund. It was all the deductions that made the difference and we have documents to back it up. I definitely got our money's worth from having H&R Block help, since when I tried it myself I didn't catch everything we could claim.