Money Just When We Need It
We filed our taxes late this year - just a few days before tax day. This is a freak occurrence for me, normally I’ve got everything filed before February. This year was no exception, except that just before filing, I realized that I was missing a w-2. It’s a good thing I remembered this because it was another $10K in income and it changed a lot of things with our taxes.
Dealing with my old payroll office was a bear - the first time I called the woman said that she couldn’t mail me the duplicate request form (”I’m not really good at doing that”) or email it to me either (”I don’t understand how email works”). I was flabbergasted at these responses and feel she really was clueless and not just trying to get out of helping me. About a month later I called again and got someone new, thankfully, who had no problem emailing me the form. But, the duplicate W-2 just sat in the mail pile for a few more weeks until I realized that tax day was quickly approaching. But, procastination did have one good benefit in that I won a free tax gift from Money Smart Life site.
I’m pretty sure we filed on April 12 and by April 16, Maryland had already deposited our state refund. The timing was perfect as I knew this week was going to be a a near hit-or-miss in covering all our bills and spending. Thanks to the timing of some of our larger monthly bills, including the mortgage payment, and the next paycheck deposit, our buffer was being hit pretty hard. Then we had another major bill show up (life insurance premium) and knew that it was going to be a very scary week indeed. I initiated a transfer from savings just to fluff the buffer a bit more but wasn’t sure if it was going to be deposited in time (one downside to online savings accounts). I wish I’d reviewed our checking account balance first and seen the tax return, because now I don’t need the transfer from savings to get us through the next week. But, having a bit more cash is much nicer than being short.