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Taxes, Tuition & More

January 21st, 2017 at 02:49 pm

I was looking for our interest statement on Navy Federal Credit Union's website yesterday. I couldn't find it, or last years. Turns out they mail it to you, and it arrived in our mailbox yesterday afternoon. My husband's W2 was also available on the MyPay website, so that meant I could start working on our taxes! I am still waiting for one more interest form, but I do know the amount. It looks like we will get a $1497 refund. We couldn't quite claim the full American Opportunity tax credit, but we were very close, having spent $3813 in qualified expenses out of pocket in 2016. I do prefer to have a smaller refund, but I think I deliberately did this last year, knowing the refund could be used towards tuition in February.

Tuition and housing bill was forwarded to me by my daughter last night. The total is $10,426, which includes $4662 for room and board. The rest is tuition, fees and books after her scholarship of $7250. She is taking 17 credit hours this semester, so that inflates the bill a bit. And remember she is an non resident student. I'll write more about tuition and paying the bill in another post.

Yesterday, I bought a few groceries and some junk food. I spent about $15 on six items. Three will be used for meals, but we also bought ice cream, cookies and a diet coke! Ugh. That isn't frugal in the least, and definitely not healthy. And it was all my idea to stop because I suggested ice cream to my daughter.

We are going to the matinee of Hidden Figures today. The admission will be $16.50 for the three of us. I expect my husband will get something at the concession stand. I have $40 allocated in our entertainment budget, anything we don't spend I'm putting towards that tuition bill! Every dollar counts.

Tonight we will have fried rice for dinner. I have peas to add, since I bought those for the tuna casserole I made a couple nights ago. Today we will probably just have leftover pizza, pasta and salad for lunch. There is a lot of salad to use up!

I might write more about this later, but there was discussion of annual credit card spending on the forums. Our annual credit card spending for 2016 was $49,384. I'm not sure I have ever looked at the annual amount before. I'm not sure if that is good or bad. It's good as it is less than half of our gross income. And we didn't pay any interest to use those cards for spending. I'm guessing it is slightly inflated, because it includes my daughter's Europe trip.

Have you started your taxes? Do you know what your annual credit card spending is? What are you having for dinner?

5 Responses to “Taxes, Tuition & More”

  1. My English Castle Says:
    1485017878

    I should look at our annual credit card spending, CCF. We put everything we can on the credit card, and like you, never pay interest. The 1-2% back is pretty darn nice.I don't think we have any other larger expenses that we can actually pay another way. Not property taxes or the municipal water bill. All our insurance goes on the credit card, but perhaps I should check if the electric and gas can--they're direct debited now.

  2. creditcardfree Says:
    1485031804

    Our electric bill is put on a credit card, water and trash are taken from our checking account.

  3. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1485116536

    I hope the movie is good - it's one I'm thinking of seeing.

  4. creditcardfree Says:
    1485116682

    FT, it was VERY good. It was very well done! I highly recommend.

  5. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1485124094

    Great! - maybe I'll see it this Tuesday.

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