Taxes

I'm getting a refund! I'm getting a refund! I'm getting a refund!

Each year I dread doing our family's taxes. But we like to do it as soon as possible so that if we owe a substantial amount of money, we will have time to save for it prior to April 15th. In our home, I'm the tax preparer. My sweetie does all the other money stuff, like update and balance the checkbook, pay bills, spend money, make land payments, spend money...but I digress.

One year we owed over $3,000 - it was scary. It was a large amount of money and I was petrified that I hadn't done the taxes correctly. I still don't know - it still doesn't seem possible. I do them, and then I do them again, and then I usually check them against somebody elses knowledge to make sure I haven't gone stupid.

This year I did a rough estimate and using the standard deduction I could tell we would get money back, so I didn't sweat it. Then a friend loaned me a trial TurboTax disk so I did that today. It also showed a refund, but wouldn't allow me to print or do anything without purchasing the program. I'm too cheap for that. So I itemized on my own and figured it all out and VOILA! I do get a refund.

Can you tell I'm relieved and ecstatic? And so as not to bum out those of you who may owe, I won't divulge the amount. Let's just say it's very nice.

And to those of you who owe, I'm deeply sorry and my heart goes out to you because I know that sinking feeling in my gut when I owe. It's not a good feeling.