Tax Time

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I may be on my own here, but I get super excited to do our taxes every year. Since we’ve been married, I’ve been doing them myself online. H&R Block offers it free for military of all ranks through Military OneSource. I figure, if I have all of the same documentation that we’d give to a tax preparer, I can’t screw it up too bad. Online programs literally walk you through it. 

This year, since we’re renting out our house, I was a little unsure about one thing, but I was able to call Military OneSource (at 5pm Hawaii time, on a Saturday), and they answered my question right away. Since we rent out our home in Georgia, aside from federal taxes, we also had to file taxes with Georgia. This was our first time having to do state taxes, since we’re originally from Florida, and that’s Hubster’s home of record with the military, and Florida doesn’t tax your income. That might be the only cool part about Florida..

Aside from the scary state tax part, everything else was easy. We print out W2’s and all the other 1098/1099 things from savings and retirement accounts, and as I enter each one, I move it to the completed pile. I was extremely happy with the return amount that we got, especially since for 2012, Hubster had zero taxable income, which means zero tax return.

In the past, we’ve used our return to pay down debt such as student and car loans. Lucky for us, other than our mortgage, we’re essentially debt-free this year. Our plan is to use part of the return to make an extra payment towards the principal on our mortgage. I’d also like to put a decent chunk into each of the girls’ 529 plans for college. The more we save on that now, the less we’ll have to pay in the future. Hubster also just mentioned going on a Hawaiian island cruise. We’re big into cruising, and although it won’t be on our preferred cruise line, it’ll be a really nice fun way to get to see all of the Hawaiian islands. And I’m sure he’s going to want to put a bunch towards retirement. Is it possible to save too much towards retirement?!

Have you filed your taxes yet this year? What do you plan on doing with the money that you get back?

Love, Alex

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15 Comments

  2. I do ours myself, too 🙂 I love feeling a little more in control of how things are filed – even though I’m a bit clueless if the site (we use TurboTax) doesn’t guide me through the whole process. Hope you’re able to soak up that cruise & enjoy the fruits of your labor!

  3. As a retirement planner … you know I’m going to say no to that question! It’s awesome that you are being proactive about it as well as the girl’s 529 plans!
    Hawaiian cruises are a ton of fun!!! Have a blast!

    xoxo
    Lanaya

  6. We’re putting ours into savings. I think we might (finally) buy the kid’s the pre-paid college tutions from FL but I don’t know. It would be the best idea to use it since we’re basically debt free too.

  7. We filed ours before Chris left for the field, we also do it online through H&R. We used to pay to get them done, but online seems to be easy and get us the same amount back. I have no idea what we are doing with ours this year. Probably throw some to the kids college, and the rest to savings.

  8. Yes, we are waiting to get our return. We plan to pay off my student loan…yay! I also would like to get a Chrome book and my husband wants a few things as well. Everything else is going right into savings.

    A Hawaiian cruise will be so nice 🙂

  10. I’m really glad I’m not the only who loves doing taxes….I did ours in January and we already got our return too! Most of ours is going into saving but we might also fit something fun in too. 🙂 A Hawaiian cruise sounds nice!

  11. We had our taxes done by a professional and will have the return on wednesday, yay! 🙂 Time to start saving up for IVF.

  12. I filed ours a few weeks ago! We got our return last week and have already paid off three credit cards. It feels good to have that weight off our shoulders. We have one left, and its a dental credit card, so we’ll chip away at that {as we probably wind up adding more on it, anyways!} but at least the majority of the stuff is completely gone!

  13. So far the plan for us is to put it all on our debts. Husband has some left to pay on his motorcycle and he has a hefty amount on his credit card. Hopefully this will be the year we get rid of those extra expenses! I want tax money to be fun money again! I miss that.

  14. We’re military too and ended up GOING to H&R block and paying them a buttload of money to do it. I work independently both with my blog and my vet tech job so everything of mine was on a 1099 form. That’s a huge pain in the ass so I just wanted them done professionally. Still got some money back 😉 It’s going into savings.

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