Mine is going to stimulate the economy…in the UK (vacation).
Exactly. Most people don’t seem to get that.
Mine is going in savings. I want a house one day.
We miscalculated a bit on our taxes (actually, my husband worked a lot of unexpected PRN hours) and we’re getting a huge check back. We’re doing our bit for the economy and we’re buying a car. We have one car right now, a '96 Volvo with 160k miles on it and we’ve been planning to buy another car for awhile.
Or, you know…it just works out that way. I am single, no children, no big savings or investments, and no house. I claim a “1” for withholding, and when it comes time to do my taxes, I only take the standard deduction and hey look at that, I get money back! I don’t plan on getting money back, it’s not like I enjoy giving more to the federal government than I should, but I’d rather do this than claim MORE than I can and owe them money.
It’ll go toward the new mudroom I’m adding on to my farmhouse.
StG
YIKES! Do you at least have your last pay stub so you can try to prove to the IRS what was withheld? (my suspicion is that the withheld taxes have not yet found their way to the government).
Our tax refund will:
- Pay off some bills for some car repairs etc. we had in December (thereby retroactively stimulating it)
- Pay for the kids to attend summer camp for 2 weeks (thereby stimulating it… but not until the summer)
This assumes the bank that is holding my mother’s IRA straightens its act out and does indeed tell the IRS that they fucked up and I did NOT withdraw many thousands of taxable dollars from the inherited IRA… turning our very nice refund into thousands due to the government.
I hear ya!
We’ve had an odd tax situation for some years now (a household employee - nanny to watch the kids) and in order to cover the employment taxes (Social Security, her federal withholding) we’ve had to keep our withholding higher than average. Efforts to tweak that so we didn’t overwithhold so much resulted in us owing thousands one year, so we err on the side of caution.
Now that this is no longer a factor, we’re trying to get our withholding tweaked so it’s more in line with what it should be.
While I understand the rationale behind this viewpoint, it never works out that way for me. I can manage a steady paycheck a lot better than I can put money away for an annual payment, so when tax season comes around and I find out I owe, I’m suddenly put in a tough spot. I owe $700 this year, and I’m only barely going to be able to cover it.
If I had my druthers, I’d prefer to be taxed such that it came out to $0 owed for the year, but since it’s not possible to get that accurate, I’d rather manage less per paycheck than deal with a hefty loan payback at the end of the year.
Some of us have done the math, don’t trust their math, and would rather get $2000 back then have to PAY $2000.
Financial discipline enters into it too. I don’t have much. If I have the money, it’ll get spent, this way, some bigger ticket items can still enter the mix.
There’s a lot of Financial Rules of thumb (this one being one of many) that my experience is showing as not that big a deal. I and a number of folks I know have been raped by following similar financial rules (Stay the course, you don’t need the money today, it’ll come back eventually through the miracle of compound interest!)
I should be getting back a pretty healthy refund and I’m putting almost all of it towards my credit card. Boring, but I think it makes sense right now.
Car payments and a new computer. Boy did we buy that car at the right time…
Yup. I’d hate to get to tax time and find out I have to send the government money.
That said, I haven’t done my taxes yet. Rather, my boyfriend hasn’t helped me figure out my taxes yet. At least this year I only have to file a return in one country!
If I get any money back, I’ll put it towards my car fund. Or buy shoes.