We had changed the withholding on my husband's pay late in the year to account for overpaying. We have now changed it back to 8 for the coming year. It will go into effect for January 15 pay. The net check will be lower, but it is still higher than it had been before. It may still put us on target to pay around $400 each year, but that I can deal with.
I also remembered that we had put extra funds in my daughter's Educational Savings account (ESA) early last year and dropped our Roth IRA payments initially. By April we increased them to make sure we got the maximum funds in by year end. It worked well, but it means we now have $167 each month in our favor to budget with.
Along with a small pay increase, we actually have another $336 more each month to work with in 2016. I'm thinking I just need to funnel it away and not think to specifically what it needs to go for. By year end that would amount to $4032. I'd really like to make sure we are still adding to our savings, particularly now that we don't have a mortgage. I would pay that down if we did. 
In other news, I took my daughter to the dentist today. All good. We have known that she will need her wisdom teeth pulled. We have set into motion a plan to make that happen. We have a consult over spring break with the oral surgeon. We had to pay $95 to even make the appointment, but it will be applied to any costs we incur. We expect the oral surgeon will want to remove all four wisdom teeth, and will have that done in the summer when she is home on break. That will give us time to monitor her for any complications. I think our insurance will cover most of the cost of oral surgery, but I will be attempting to get more information on that soon so I can plan. Checked and our insurance covers 40% up to $1300, so we will definitely have some costs.
Do you need to change your paycheck withholding now that it is a new year? It's a good time to calculate what you might need it to be. The IRS has a withholding calculator on their website. Have you paid for wisdom teeth removal? What did you pay?
Changed Withholding and More
January 5th, 2016 at 05:38 pm
January 5th, 2016 at 08:11 pm 1452024710
January 5th, 2016 at 08:12 pm 1452024748
January 5th, 2016 at 08:56 pm 1452027378
January 6th, 2016 at 01:42 am 1452044524
I'm expecting a raise in February, so may change my withholding from 3 to 2. I'm also waiting to see what my taxes will look like.
January 7th, 2016 at 04:34 pm 1452184488
Also, that $1358 is the "negotiated rate" that the doctor had with our insurance. If we had been uninsured, it would have been over $2k. We're on a high deductible plan though, so we did pay the $1358 ourselves from an HSA. But I'm not complaining - not meeting the high deductible because we're all healthy is a good problem to have.