Yesterday, on a bit of a whim, I signed up with TaxAct for tax filing. We won't qualify for a free version, but it it appears we can e file and print both federal and state for under $18. That I can handle.

Last year, I entered information as it came in the mail or was available online. I could already add in our donations and real estate taxes. I even looked back to see that our state refund was returned to us on January 30 and our federal was returned February 8. Fast!!

I have estimated our total refund to be $768. I'm looking forward to seeing how accurate I was. If the refund is in that ballpark, it will be less than half of what was returned to us last year. It's not because our income or withholding changed either! The government was withholding too much state income tax per the withholding tables. They finally corrected it earlier this year.

One last miscellaneous item: I redeemed our debit card points today for $25. It's always nice to have a little extra cash. I also need to redeem some mypoints soon.

The military posted the rates for basic allowance for housing early by at least a day. The website appears to have been updated yesterday. I wasn't expecting to see the rates until tomorrow. Our housing allowance is going up by $92 per month.

Anyone out there know what the BAS rates are for 2010? I added 3.8% to last the 2009 amount to get an estimated amount based on something I read.

I estimated our net paycheck on paycheckcity.com. If you are military and do this, make sure to only tax the basic pay portion and add BAH and BAS into the net pay the website provides. We will be getting an additional $105 each pay period. That's an additional $210 per month or $2520 per year!!

Of course, that money will help us meet all the goals we have for 2010. Yipee!!

This is the last of month of the year to make cash and non-cash donations to the charity of your choice. We tend to make cash donations throughout the year, so I just need to dig through closets. I hope to roundup a few more things to make a final donation to Goodwill and/or the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

I actually list every item I donate throughout the year. I also take pictures for auditing purposes. I attach my donation list to the charities receipt and stash it in a tax folder labeled by year. This year: 2009!

When January rolls around, I use a paper copy of It's Deductible to value the items I have donated. Yep, I add each item up one by one. I have had years where I have donated over $1000 worth of merchandise. That saves us about $250 in taxes! Those items wouldn't have fetched to much more at a garage sale. Maybe less!

If you aren't the type to have a garage sale, sell on ebay or craigslist this is the best way to benefit financially with your castoffs. Start digging through those closets and cupboards now and make a list as you go. It only takes a few minutes a day to find things you don't need. It helps to have a box or bag ready when you begin, too! Good luck.

In saving for our taxes and homeowner's insurance, I've come upon a snag. It's my error really.

I told the bank with our money market account to pull money from our regular savings account with our primary bank. Um...we don't have a savings account with our primary bank!! Opps.

I have to go through a few extra hoops. I now need the bank to confirm the account that I do want them to pull this escrow money from. They are going to give us those nifty small deposits that you have to verify. So, sometime next week everything should be up and running!

Remember, we deleted the escrow account with our mortgage? Here's the breakdown of how we will save for our own homeowners insurance and county taxes:

$1361.00 March Taxes
$1361.00 September Taxes
$658.47 Homeowner's Insurance (October)
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$3380.47 Annual Total
$281.71 Monthly Savings

I have simply rounded the amount up to $285. I have set up a monthly draft to our money market account where I will save this money until needed. Obviously, if taxes or insurance go up significantly, I will be short. However, since this money will be sitting with our emergency fund there will always be extra money available if needed. I also plan to stay on top of any tax changes or increases in homeowners insurance and adjust the draft when necessary.

When doing this calculation, it is important to run down the balances each month to make sure there is enough money in the account when the first payment will be due. If it is short, then you need to start your account with at least that amount, or divide it over several months prior to the first payment. Run through the full year to make sure you won't have a month where you are short on funds for the payment.

Automated savings is the only way to go!! It is so easy. Record and go.

I took care of it yesterday. I emailed Bank of America and confirmed that we did indeed like to delete our escrow account. They emailed back within a couple of hours that it was complete and a check with our escrow balance is on its way!!

As of November 1st, we will only send Bank of America our mortgage payment consisting of interest and principal. That will be strange!!

The escrow check will be for $404.34 which is just under the amount they would needed as a buffer or low balance amount. I may find something to do with that money. Maybe the home equity loan?

I will begin setting aside $281 per month to account for taxes and insurance right away. The first payment I need to make is not until March 2010!

I feel very confident this will work well for us. I plan to set up email reminders for the taxes since I will only be billed once a year for those.

I recently inquired with our mortgage lender about handling our own escrow. Their answer: Yes!

The primary loan is for less than 80% of the homes value, so I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before!

So...should I do it?

I do our own escrow for things like auto insurance, registrations and life insurance, so I know how to save ahead. It works really well.

I would not need to escrow the same amount as the mortgage company because I have our own emergency fund to dip into should something increase drastically. Right now they need a cushion of 16.6% of my total escrow to cover increases. I would also be able to earn interest on this money!!

Any disadvantages that anyone can think of? Let me hear what you think.

I'm such a nerd. Last night I estimated our income tax refunds for 2009.

It appears I'm finally getting us closer to zero, since the military started withholding the correct state amount from DH's paycheck. They were withholding almost more than $70/mo than the state tax tables allowed.

This is what I expect for the spring:

Federal: $300
State: $400

Not bad. But, of course, no windfall either. That's okay. I don't need a government agency borrowing too much of our money!

OMG!! OMG!! I think I may have had an impact on the federal government. I know for sure I impacted our paycheck. Wow!

Short story: We moved to Iowa over 2.5 years ago. Being the nerd, I noticed that too much tax was being withheld for state taxes(currently $77/mo too much). I had DH check with his finance office for corrections. They said they couldn't change it. Of course, too much withholding comes back in the end as a refund...so I just let it go. Every so often, I run numbers and check the state withholding tables only to confirm that I have been right all along. They are withholding to much based on the tables.

Last week, I emailed the defense finance office about it. I let DH know I sent the email. I had to include his rank and ssn. I told them according to Iowa withholding tables they were illegally withholding too much!

Today, I go to check DH's pay that will be deposited this week. Normally, the numbers are always the same...I only do this because I'm a nerd! The amount is almost $40 more. I notice there is a note in the comments section. They have updated state income tax withholding tables for 30 states! Thirty states! OMG!

Apparently 17 of those states will get a one time payment of the amount over withheld. I don't think that is us...but I'm beyond thrilled that this has finally changed. I can't believe how many people that probably impacts!

OMG!! Oh, and do you know what I'm going to do now? I'm going to increase my husbands retirement contributions (TSP) by at least 1%....maybe even 2%. In the end it will put our net check to about the same amount AND it will reduce our taxable income.

I can't believe how excited I am! Victory for nerds. Victory for soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen everywhere!

Happy dancing!! Come on...dance with me!!

Settling your debt for pennies on the dollar can have tax implications. Check out this

I did some digging at the irs site and found

It looks like my Federal refund is pending to be deposited tomorrow...just as expected! That's another $610 that will go to the home equity loan.

Our water bill went down by $7 this past month. Apparently, we are not showering as much or doing as much laundry! Maybe that's not a good thing.

Our electricity usage went down as well by 181 kWh's. That equals a savings of $15. We did intall $50 worth of CFL bulbs early in January and I stopped using our desktop computer as much (it is just too slow). So, I hope that trend continues. That $50 in for the CFL's was a gift...so $0 out of our pocket.

Next week, DH is out of town. I usually save money when he is gone, since all of his expenses (i.e. coke addiction) are paid by the Army. He also won't be driving to work for a full week and one less mouth to feed!

That's all of the tidbits for now!

So, you KNOW you will need to file your taxes and you THINK you might get a refund to pay off that credit card, medical bill. It would be nice to get it to them before the next billing cycle, right?

If you check out the link

This past Monday night I e-filed our state and federal income tax returns.

Today, I see a pending deposit for our state refund. Wow! That is fast. So, by Monday it will be available in the account. That's technically less than 7 days from the time I hit the submit button. Amazing!

I wonder if it has to do with filing so early? If so, get those taxes done this weekend, if you have your forms. No reason not to wait...well, if you owe there is!!! LOL

Next week I will be sending in some big money to that home equity loan! I'm so excited.

Yes!!! I'm done...early again this year. It sure helped to enter all the information as I received it. Little pieces of information at a time, rather than one long day of it.

Last night, I double checked the return, electronically signed, printed copies, paid the small fee for state and hit the submit button. Quick!

Today, I checked my email and the federal return has already been accepted. The email states I should have the refund next Friday, February 6th.

The final refund results are
Federal: $610
State: $1350
Total:$1960

The plan is to use it towards home equity loan payoff. I will, of course, report that here when it happens.

Good luck filing your tax return!

I can file our taxes anytime! I have all the tax documents we need. I'm so excited!! I know, I know...I'm weird.

I was waiting for a 1099-INT from Revolution Money Exchange for the $25 bonus I received for opening an account. I emailed them a second time about the form and received a response right back. It was in my spam folder...so maybe they did email last time, too. This was their response:

Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the issuance of a 1099 for your MoneyExchange account.

If you received $600.00 or more in bonus funds from Revolution Money in 2008 and have not already received a 1099 for this period, please contact a customer service representative to obtain a 1099.

For further account information, you may also contact a Customer Service Representative between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, seven days a week at 1-800-794-9071. Or you can write to Revolution MoneyExchange at P.O. Box 989, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. We appreciate the opportunity to serve you.

Thank you,
The Revolution MoneyExchange Team

So, this is one of those situations where they don't send out a 1099 unless the amount is over $600. Last time I checked, $25 was less than $600!! Time to get busy filing.

I had a comment, from D, on my last entry about filing taxes now and whether a tax refund of $1K that has yet to be passed by congress would effect our refunds.

I found an answer. The tax cuts would come in the form of reductions in the amount of social security tax that is withheld from paychecks. For those of us who might be able to file our taxes any day, this will not impact our refunds. No reason to delay.

Here's a link to the

My DH's W2 is finally available online! So, I plugged the numbers into the tax software and my previous calculations seem to be right on target.

However, I'm still waiting on two 1099-INT statements. One is from our money market account with FNBOdirect. Online it states the statement will be mailed.

I think we may also get a 1099-INT from Revolution Money Exchange. I opened an account to obtain the $25 they were offering last spring. I never did anything else with the account. I assume this payout is considered interest. So, I wait on that as well. I will be calling if it gets to be the last thing I'm waiting for!!

I will be filing ASAP...I want our money back! Of course, it will only be in my hands for a day or so. Because, hey, we have a home equity loan to payoff.

By the end of February, or before, I hope to pay the home equity loan down to under $10K. I should be able to do this easily. I needed to put it here, so that I avoid spending the money on a new couch. The wants are getting in my brain...help!!

I have estimated our tax refund to be about $2K. I also have over $1500 from February paychecks that could be allocated to the loan as well. I just need to stay away from the furniture store!

Well, with increased income in this last year it turns out we no longer qualify to free file with any of the IRS authorized providers. You can see if you qualify

It started when I decided to sit down and value all the donations we've given to Goodwill and other various thrift stores this year. The value of our donations was $560! I've had years where our values were much higher...like over $1500 one year!! This year they were lower because I've been selling quite a few things on ebay.

So, once I was done with that I started calculating the amount of our auto registration fees that could be deducted. Next thing I know, I have estimated our entire tax returns. Both Federal and State.It's possible I missed a couple items, but I've been doing our own taxes since I had my first job at 16, so I don't think so.

Expected Estimated Refund Amounts:
Federal $602
State $1413

Total $2,015

Nice to have a more concrete number in mind. I'm anxious to have all the forms in my hands, so I can actually file. I'm being a little impatient about it right now.
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No, I did not go to the gym today. I didn't want to go out...since it is only zero degrees. I will try to get some resistance exercises in while I watch the Biggest Loser. I'm only 20 pounds overweight, but it is a motivator!

Yesterday, I received our 1099-G from the state of Iowa for the refund we received last year. I also saw our 1098 is available from our mortgage company. It is online and can be printed off. No need to wait for it in the mail!! Love it.

I have a folder that I started last year, for items related to filing taxes. So, I will drop these two items in. As the rest arrive they will go there, too. I will be all ready in a couple weeks to get started. Are you this organized, too? If not, is there something you can do now to start getting organized? I would at least be looking for donations you made in 2008, if you itemize.
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We received about 6 inches of snow overnight. They predicted up to 3 inches. A little off. The girls and I will stay home, since DH is working. They are already having a good time playing. I just need to figure out how I'm going to work out here at home today.

I was curious. I looked back at our check register to see when we received our income tax refunds last year.

Federal Feb 8, 2008
State Feb 13, 2008

Obviously, we e-filed both returns with direct deposit. That's only about 4-5 weeks away!! I should be able to have our returns this early this year,too, since DH will get his W2 on January 23rd. I can have everything else by the end of January.

I'm just a little excited about this since the money will be going to our (drum roll, please) home equity loan payoff!!

My rough estimate is to expect $499 from the federal government and over $1300 from the state of Iowa. I can't seem to get them to withhold any less...crazy!