The wife and I have been discussing various things that we would like to do when our tax refund check shows up in the mail in the near future. We did pretty good this year, we had a lot of deductions and made good use of all of the receipts that we kept in our tax shoe box, that are such a pain in the neck to deal with. But it was well worth the extra effort it took in order the get the best bang for our buck.
We both have things that we would like to see done with the money. Most of it will be used for things concerning the house. She has her eyes on a nice hanging wine glass rack that she has found online at Glassstemwareracks.com. She is good at finding good deals on the Internet and found a site that offers all kinds of wine glass racks for sale that she was showing me last night. I’m good with that and see no reason why we can’t spend a few bucks on nice quality looking wine glass rack. She has good taste and I’m usually right on board with most things that she finds to spend our money on.
Our Lumina needs to be inspected, and we knew that there were a couple of issues we needed to address in order for it to pass inspection. So we dropped it off at the garage this morning and came home. We expected to be able to pick it tomorrow.
Well, the dreaded telephone call came in. The repairs are going to cost more than we had anticipated. We told the representative that we talked with to go ahead and do the repairs, but now we are going to have to put a few things that we wanted to do (like put in a remote starter) on hold. The car will be in the shop for an extra day or two. We have to repair it; we can’t afford a new car! That’s discouraging, but that’s life!
Part of growing up includes buying a car. What an irritating process buying a car is! Especially buying from a dealer. When you go into a dealership and the salesman asks you if you have a trade-in, the smart thing to do is to say no, that you are paying cash! If you say you have a trade-in, and say that you brought it with you they are going to ask for your keys so they can give you a trade-in value estimate. Well, once you hand over your keys, you are at their mercy until they agree to give your keys back to you! The last time that happened to us, my wife got irate that they weren’t forthcoming with the keys so she told the salesman that he had five minutes to return the keys or we were leaving anyway, since she brought another set of keys with her! She got her keys pretty fast then!
Another important part about buying a new car is getting car insurance. One should have a good idea how much the auto insurance is going to cost! Take some time to shop around for cheap car insurance. I can remember the last time I bought a new car that the cost of the insurance went sky high! That was an unpleasant surprise and now I’m careful to shop for that before I commit to buying the car!
I’m quite annoyed that several businesses that I’ve worked for over the past year have not yet sent out the 1099s to me. I’ve called them and asked for them, and they tell me that the information has been sent to their accountant and all I can do is wait. Well, I called the IRS to ask them what I should do, and the IRS told me that the deadline for 1099s to be mailed out is actually March 3, so I guess I shouldn’t panic until about March 10. I’m just discouraged because my business is a corporation and I have to file my taxes by March 15th! That does not give me much time to get my taxes done!
Well, it is certainly not my favorite time of year right now. It is tax time! My wife and I usually buy one of those software programs – either Turbo Tax or the H & R Block Tax Cut to help us with our taxes. We got really tired of paying an accountant hundreds of dollars to do our taxes when we found out that we could do it ourselves for so much less money! We’ve been trying very hard to make sure that our quarterlies were filed and that money has been sent in to cover all of our tax liabilities, but we always get nervous and worry that there might be something that we overlooked through the year that will come back and bite us in the back-side when we actually file.
I like how there is a lot of helpful tax information available on line from the IRS. And I know that we call call them on the phone for guidance, too. If we wanted to, we could even make an appointment with the IRS to have them prepare our taxes for us! I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, though! With this economy, I hope that I won’t have to apply for any emergency loans if I end up having to pay a lot of taxes!