Using your tax refund for....

[DI]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:

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@DI wrote:
I'll be clicking send to pay off my car balance with my refund.  I cannot wait!   It's been almost 5 years paying GMAC.  The day I pay it off, I will get my vehicle shined up pending weather conditions. 

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lol, you know that will trigger an ice storm or something, right? --maybe an unprecedented migration by seagulls or mourning doves.

Congrats on the upcoming PIFmobile!

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LOL: Forecast for Friday in Mississippi  

Friday Night: Rain likely before 9pm, then rain likely, possibly mixed with snow and sleet between 9pm and 2am, then a chance of snow after 2am. Cloudy, with a low around 33. North northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

[Anonymous]

see whatcha did?

[MidnightVoice]

New roof

[Anonymous]

Storage shed ( A.K.A.- man cave for my husband)....I might even spring for a extra window in it..LOL!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Storage shed ( A.K.A.- man cave for my husband)....I might even spring for a extra window in it..LOL!

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meh, he doesn't need a window.  It will interfere with the lighting of the video games.  lol 

[Anonymous]

LOL!! As long as he has got a tv for the game and beer in hand he is good! I never understand why guys will stand out in the garage in the winter with coveralls on and the game on the tv freezing their butts off but I guess it is less beer stains to clean up off the floor!!! LOL!

[Anonymous]

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txjohn wrote:

I LOVE IT when I owe just a bit.  Means I didn't give any interest free loans 

As long as I don't end up with interest or penalty for underpaid taxes, then I would rather the money sit in my account drawing interest than in the government's account.

I also don't mind pushing the envelope on reducing taxes.  As long as it is legal and legit...I'm deducting it.  If it raises my audit chances...so be it, cause I'm not taking anything that isn't allowed.

IMO

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Personally I can't wait for our finances to settle down to where we can get things to where there isn't a yearly tax return.  My income was so inconsistent for the longest time, and then when my income stabilized DH's income started fluctuating.  We've only had one year where we owed money to the IRS, and that was about a grand the first year after we got married.  I never want to owe them money like that again.  I'd rather them owe me, even if it is interest free then me owe them.

[Math_Rocks]

Because of serious unemployment/underemployment issues for DH, we hiked the # of exemptions we were claiming sky high. So, I was pretty anxious about our taxes this year and sat down to start plugging things into Turbo Tax almost the instant all five(!!) of his W-2's and 1099's came in. Apparently we still had a lot of state taxes taken out. That and new legislation from a couple years ago that gives us $500 for having a special needs child means we are getting a large state refund. Surprisingly though, we don't owe on federal either which is a huge relief. Combined we will be getting about $3000. About half of that will pay our mortgage this month and help us get better settled into our new budget. (We have essentially been 29 days behind on the mortgage for several months; never getting a 30 day late but not being able to pay until the last day of the month, with a $50 late fee.)

Now that DH has a good, as-secure-as-you-can-get-these-days, job (just one!), I can't decide how to determine what our exemptions should be. I'd like to not owe but also to not be doing huge interest-free loans! Any suggestions?

[Math_Rocks]

Oops, forgot to add: the rest of the $ will go for a $1000 emergency fund and we are still debating the rest. We are incredibly grateful for the $ but there are a lot of things we have been putting off and putting off and now have to decide what should rise to the top of the list.

[MattH]

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@Math_Rocks wrote:

Because of serious unemployment/underemployment issues for DH, we hiked the # of exemptions we were claiming sky high. So, I was pretty anxious about our taxes this year and sat down to start plugging things into Turbo Tax almost the instant all five(!!) of his W-2's and 1099's came in. Apparently we still had a lot of state taxes taken out. That and new legislation from a couple years ago that gives us $500 for having a special needs child means we are getting a large state refund. Surprisingly though, we don't owe on federal either which is a huge relief. Combined we will be getting about $3000. About half of that will pay our mortgage this month and help us get better settled into our new budget. (We have essentially been 29 days behind on the mortgage for several months; never getting a 30 day late but not being able to pay until the last day of the month, with a $50 late fee.)

Now that DH has a good, as-secure-as-you-can-get-these-days, job (just one!), I can't decide how to determine what our exemptions should be. I'd like to not owe but also to not be doing huge interest-free loans! Any suggestions?

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Glad to learn DH has a good job now, congratulations.  As for figuring your exemptions, check whether Turbo Tax has a planning module.  I don't use TT myself, I use the program formerly known as TaxCut (recently renamed H&R Block At Home), which has a planning module where you can plan for the upcoming tax year.  However, any tax planning you do right now will be guesswork because the political environment is unusually unpredictable.  When the Bush tax cuts were passed, in order to avoid facing up to their full cost (which under the rules would have forced Congress to pay for them with some combination of spending cuts and raising other taxes) the cuts were passed with an expiration date of 2010, so the Congressional Budget Office would score them on the assumption they would actually expire.  Of course the political calculation was that when 2010 arrived it would be politically impossible for Congress to let that happen.  However, that expiration date happens to be arriving at an extremely awkward time just as the economy is making a very fragile recovery from the Great Recession.  Also every year for some time Congress has passed annual one-year-fixes to the Alternative Minimum Tax because letting the AMT hit half the middle class would be political suicide but a permanent fix to the AMT would force them to face the budgetary elephant in the room known as entitlements.  Nobody really knows what will happen now.  My best guess, and it's only a guess, is that we'll end up keeping the Bush tax cuts and fixing the AMT for everybody below some threshold income level and allowing automatic back-door tax increases for everybody above that threshold income level.  Most likely that threshold amount of household income will be somewhere between $100K and $300K.  For the really really rich there is even greater uncertainty about estate tax, but unless you expect to leave at least a few million behind that's basically a nonissue.