Is anyone else really excited about tax season?
No, just me then?
But I have to admit it. I’m really excited to do my taxes. It’s like an adventure, hoping that I made the proper choices and that I’m getting close to breaking even.
(Actually, I’m hoping I’m getting money back – I made some changes to my withholding when I bought the house, but I wasn’t sure how much of a change to make. I’m hoping that I underestimated.)
I like the excitement of all of the paperwork coming in and entering it all into TurboTax to see what comes out. It’s fun! I know that it’s crazy. But I’m still excited. I can’t wait til the files come in!
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.
That IS crazy…but good for you! As I am a partial-year VA resident, a partial-year DC resident, and someone who just got married in October, I’m not really excited about filing this go-round.