Filing Income Taxes

It is that time of the year again. And I have to admit, I am not the best person at taxes. But, I used to do my taxes in the past. After we got married we started going to H & R block. Last year it cost us $172 dollars. But we are on a budget and in no hurry for the tax return. So we did our taxes ourselves this year. And we mailed them in a couple days ago.

We are only going to get back a little over $400.

But I realized I need to keep better records. Since we have been working on the house. I need to keep all the receipts for exterior doors & windows, and insulation for IRS Form 5695. I couldn't find any of them. We could have had 30% of that money credited back on our taxes. That was hundreds of dollars back we could have had.

Also I pay my medical bills, but don't have any receipts. We need to start requesting receipts for my Medical bills, and File them away. Its hard telling how many thousands of dollars we paid out this year with my knee surgery and other medical expenses. But you need receipts to itemize.

So this year we will do better, keeping records, for more deductions next year.

First Month on a budget is complete.

Our first month on a budget has come to a close. As expected we have went over budget on a few categories. We went over budget on spending by $225. But the good thing is we worked more, and brought in an extra $1600. And all the extra money goes on the debt snowball.

Categories went over on.

Phone Bills - Not over by much, long distance charges got us.

Groceries - We forget about paying for school lunches. So we decided to use the Groceries money for this. We will budget more for this next month.

Car Service - This category builds up over time, and we didn't have any money in it before the month started. We had to pay for auto license plate registration. And we use this category for this expense. This fee was the only expense we had in this category and it put us over budget.

Auto Fuel - We went over by about 1 to 2 tank fulls. We go through a lot of gas since we both have 30+ mile drives to work. This is over probably due to the added work and is acceptable.

Medical bills - We had more bills come than we expected. Medical bills seem to be for visits a month or two ago, and are hard to remember. Plus we all had our teeth cleaned.

Gas & Electric utilities - We have had some very cold spells this winter. We will need to budget more next month.


Saving for yearly expenses

Using our budget we were able to save for vacation, property taxes, house insurance, and Pet care. But no auto service was saved since we went over budget.


1st Debt snowball Payment is......Payments + $1500 extra! we had budgeted for $125, so the extra work is paying off.

Overall the Budget was very close, we will make adjustments for next month. Hopefully we'll get to work as much extra was we did this month.

Activities that don't cost much money...

Our family is used to going out on the weekends. We are used to eating out, going to movie theaters, shopping, etc. It wasn't uncommon for us to spend a few hundred dollars on the weekend. But we have totally turned that around. We only set aside $100 for recreation and dining. So we went out to eat a nice meal for my birthday and we went and had breakfast the morning we went to go early Vote at the courthouse.

So we have been forced to come up with alternative activities to keep us busy. Plus it is winter, and cold outside, which keeps the activities limited to mostly inside. We have played video games together, and had Wii competitions. We gone and visited family on the weekends. We have popped popcorn and had a movie night at home. And the Game of "Uno" is always a family favorite.

This weekend my wife is working, and I was sick of being inside the house. So Me and boys met with my Dad and went and shot .22 caliber pistols and rifles. I had a few hundred rounds in the gun cabinet, so it only cost a couple gallons of gas. My Dad built a fire to help keep us warm. And the boys had a blast shooting guns. They took turns shooting for 2 hours. They had a blast, as did I and my dad.

Their are so many activities you can do outside, I can't wait for winter to be over.

Halfway thru first Month on written budget......

Were are Halfway Through January. We are sticking to the budget. My Birthday was this last week. So we planned to go out this weekend to eat out for the first time this month. I was looking forward to it for a while. But after we got there, my son spilled his entire glass of lemon aide, switch spilled on my lap. Which ruined my experience at the restaurant. This got me Thinking.....

When we plan out something which should end with a desirable result. We are very disappointed when the result is different than what we planned. This is probably one reason why people give up on a budget. They plan it out and put it work, but something happens and the budget breaks. Since we are so disappointed that the plan didn't work we just say "forget it, I'm done". But this is just life. Just brush it off and say "it will end up be better next time". Don't give up when disappointment strikes.

So far we are doing great this month. My wife and I have picked up any extra work we could. We have probably added an extra $1000 to our budget. We have budgeted $400 for Groceries and household items. So far we have spent around $210 dollars and I just went shopping 2 days ago. I was afraid we would go over budget on this, but it seems to be on track.

With extra work we should be on track for a large snowball debt payment by the end of the month.