The tax man paid me!

So I finally got back to work on Friday.  It was an insane commute, and of course, maybe 15% of my coworkers were there.  So I chatted a lot, cleared out e-mail, did a few tasks, and then sat around.  When you go on vacation, it’s normal to come back to a lot of work, but so many of my projects are collaborative, which means that since no one was at work (our office doesn’t really allow telework – who wants to bet that changes!) there wasn’t a whole lot to do.

Today’s a holiday.  And it’s supposed to snow again.  I’m hoping that it’s not too bad.

Over the weekend, I discovered that my federal tax return was deposited.  Fast!  My state return arrived last week, which means that my dealings with the tax man are done for the year!  And it’s not even March!

I’ve been reading blog posts about what people are doing with their tax returns, and I’ve decided I must be boring.  I’m having a little bit of fun with it, I guess!  Just delayed fun.  I put most of it into savings, and a chunk of it went into my vacation fund.  I’ve got two trips planned for the year – a wedding in May and a half-marathon in September.  Unfortunately, the flights for both are going to be fairly expensive.

I also decided to put some into my running fund.  In cleaning out my drawers and closets, I’m realizing that a lot of my running gear is more worn out than I thought.  It still has some life left in it, but as I have to start replacing things, it will be nice to have the money set aside for those purposes.

As I have mentioned, I decided not to mess with my withholding to try to get less money back.  I think this year was a bit of a fluke with the markets not being so great.  I don’t have a whole lot of money invested, but those dividends add up come tax time.  I’m hoping that 2010 is a much better year  – which would lead to owing more taxes.

Plus it does feel good to get money back as opposed to owing a chunk.  It’s not ideal, and if I could figure out how to break even, I would. Sadly, I can’t see into the future.  I will work on that skill for next year.

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.