Money Matters
als1982
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Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Monday Accountability
Since nobody's started one yet....
1. How was your weekend?
2. Any progress towards goals?
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between?
1. How was your weekend?
2. Any progress towards goals?
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between?
HeartlandHustle | Personal Finance and Betterment Blog
Re: Monday Accountability
Sorry, was slacking lol.
1. $20 Dinner, $10 tire rotation, $10 Suit deposit
2. $630 to vacation account
3. I have all our forms together, so I may get them done at my parents next weekend.
2) We ended January a few hundred under budget, so I sent that extra to H's loans.
3) We have filed already, and we are getting a few hundred back as a refund. Ideally I would like the IRS to owe me $50. But between year-end bonuses that have screwy withholdings and random charitable donations through the year, my planning is always off.
2. Any progress towards goals? I went on ahead and submitted the last $1,500 of my max yearly contribution to my Roth IRA for 2016. I've been holding on to it until I was 100% certain that our AGI would fall under $184k. I'm honestly not sad about the market today because it means I'll be buying a little bit lower.
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between? I've started it. As far as if it came down to owing or getting money back, I'd rather get a refund...but I still try to get as close as I can to our federal tax obligation. We're probably going to end up with around $600 back from the federal government this year after all of our deductions.
Okay. Spent $40 on groceries, and $50 on bras. Blah. Such a money waste.
2. Any progress towards goals?
Not really. I was right on budget for groceries this month. Yay!
However, we cash flowed so much this month it wasn't even funny. So many car repairs, things we'd been avoiding and needed to finally do or buy, fixing my laptop, ugh. We ended up pulling from savings to cover the difference. :-( But at least it was only a couple hundred and we'll replenish it in February.
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between?
We have our tax appointment tonight.
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We are ending the month under budget in a lot of categories so I'm going to transfer it to our vacation fund (we leave Sunday) as an extra cushion.
I'm okay with a refund because it is a nice little bonus savings, but we have been working to get our refund amount down to a more reasonable amount (less than $1,000). Each year we've been married we have something unusual and this year will be no different so it is hard to get a handle on what our withholdings really should be.
We need to get our tax stuff together and dropped off to our accountant this week before we leave. She is already working long hours so I want to get it to her as early as possible.
2. Not much. $100 to the house account and $100 in our cash stash.
3. I just made an appointment for Saturday with a new tax advisor. It's been so long since we've gotten a refund, I forget what that's like. Our situation is so complicated. I'd rather get a small refund, but we owe every single year; our estimations are never correct. Last year our bill came back as owing $5k. I hope that NEVER happens again, that was super annoying.
Otherwise we spent about $200 on groceries and household products. This was mostly a big stock up at Costco for things like toilet paper, freezer bags (for post-baby prep), vitamins, and some bulk items for the freezer. It was all on sale so I pounced.
2. Any progress towards goals? Husband was paid for the last big storm he worked so that was an extra $1,100 towards our home repairs fund. We also had a mason come out and measure so we can replace our front steps - they are literally falling apart (one railing down and the wood is rotting) so it's a top priority to make those safe. We're also changing them to brick to better fit the house.
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between? I've gathered up our documents but I still need to go see our tax guy (my dad who owns his own tax prep business). I did a quicky estimate myself and we likely owe a decent amount to federal this year. Although if our president doesn't have to pay taxes maybe I'll keep my money in protest! I'm anti-refund because it's just money you could have been saving and earning interest on yourself all year. I would like to nail it down so we either pay a small amount or get a small refund but we just keep missing the mark because we've had so many life changes the last couple of years. My dad has some clients that intentionally get refunds in the $10k or higher range and he gets so mad at them but they won't stop - these are people that literally have credit card debt to buy groceries and then get a massive refund and take a vacation with it. They think it's "free government money" even though he explains to them every year that it was their money the entire time!
Overall it was a really nice weekend. H took me out on a "date" and he declared that he is starting a movement (that probably won't get past our household, lol) to make the last weekend in January date weekend because it is the first non-football weekend.
$100 vet, $35 on a hockey jersey for the dog, $30 on concert tickets through Groupon (concert is in June), $30 on groceries, $25 on breakfast out, $4 on soft drinks at the play we went to last night (free tickets and found a free parking spot!).
We also grossed about $300 in guest room rental.
2. Not tracking goals right now
3. I'm still getting all of our paperwork together. I'll probably get in with the accountant at the end of Feb or beginning of March. I would like to get no refund or a small refund but I haven't figured out how to do that since getting married. LY we had a big refund so I adjusted my withholding for this year. I'm interested to see how that is going to play out.
1. How was your weekend?
From an MM stand point, terrible. I bought a new car this weekend since mine was totaled on MLK Day. Ended up getting $9700 for my 2010 Corolla with 104k miles (not too bad I don't think!), so I put all of that towards a new 2017 Corolla and financed $13,000 at 1.99%. I should be able to pay it off in 3-3.5 years pretty easily. Trying to get confirmation on my insurance increase, I received conflicting information.
2. Any progress towards goals?
Opposite of progress, but had to get a car. I've adjusted the budget for the payments and I'm planning to pay off early.
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between?
We filed last week. I was pro-refund before coming to this board and now I'm somewhere in between. H is 100% pro-refund thou, so I'm not sure if I should change my withholdings to be more balanced or not. Right now we get too big of a refund, but he likes getting that big chunk of change back.
2. We finished funding our emergency fund of 8-12 months worth of expenses thanks to an inheritance received from my grandparents/dad.
3. We finished and submitted ours last night. I like a big refund. This year we landed at $4,000 which is much more than past years, but we also had a lot more deductions.
2. Nothing this week, I will come in under budget on my groceries though, so I'll have a bit extra with next check to put in savings. I do feel "rich" though as the insurance payment from H's fender bender in my car came. But we can't get the car fixed til mid-March so the $3,000 just has to sit in my secondary checking account until then.
3. I think we're about ready to submit, the last few things arrived in the mail at the end of last week. I'd prefer to fall as close to $0 received/$0 owed as possible. H likes to have a refund. Last year we owed like $1600 so that wasn't great. Hopefully we'll do better this year.
As for the skillet, no time soon... What I have isn't ideal, but it works well enough! I'm that MM.
2. No, not this month. Goals are on pause right now, and we're just building substantial wiggle room into our budget until the baby is home and we find our new normal.
3. No. We need to get on that, it just hasn't been on our radar.
1. How was your weekend?
Good, picked up my $683 check on Friday for my flood insurance overage. It felt like "found" money, lol. I only wish I had that kind of found money every week. Had a mystery lunch shop with H on Sat. at a gourmet hot dog place. Good, but not great. Gorgeous weather and we went on a nice walk after it. I also binge watched "This is Us" over the weekend. I'd heard good reviews. It's an awesome show and now I'm hooked.
2. Any progress towards goals?
$1400 CC debt pay down, half of it thanks to that insurance refund check.
3. Have you started or submitted your tax return yet? And are you pro-refund, anti-refund or somewhere in between?
I always owe money, so I'm never in a hurry to file. I'm anti-refund, though I need to rein that in. I come close to having penalties, but not quite. I think that will change this year, and I regretfully need to set up some quarterly payments. Plus, even though it is expected, it's no fun to come up with a few thousand when I send in my return.
I think I'll be okay on my LLC, though. Most of my rental income is through that and my renovation costs for my first duplex will save me for last year and this year.
2) We got paid Friday, so we made our biweekly deposit of $350 to various savings accounts for vacation, car and house funds. We also made February's $400 extra mortgage payment to principal only.
3) I am more in between, but H is very pro-refund. He looks at it as another savings account since we don't get much in interest on those and that is where the money would be sitting. We are getting about $3k back this year, which has been earmarked to replenish our Misc. Savings account, then a big chunk to our vacation fund and the remainder to the car fund.