Money

I filed my taxes last week, and my refund check was supposed to be in last Wednesday. 

I am still waiting for it. I don't know why they IRS is holding it, but the place I filed with said this sometimes happens, and that I should have it this Wednesday. I wish I was confident enough to do them myself online.  I think next year, once I am officially divorced, I am going to try.

My friend used to work in a tax office, and she really liked it.  I could probably take an income tax course and learn everything I need to know.  I might even find it interesting.  Who knows, I could even become a tax preparer and get a job doing other people's taxes.  I am sure there is good money to be made doing that, especially this time of year.

Right now, though, I am patiently waiting for my check to come in.  I plan on banking a good bit of it, just so I have a cushion should anything happen this year that requires money, like car repairs.  I have spent too much of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck.  Now that I am a single mom, I don't want to do that anymore.  I want to sleep at night knowing that if God forbid something were to happen to me and I couldn't work for a while, the kids and I will be okay.

Did You Qualify For The $6,500 Tax Credit?

Have you filed your taxes yet? I know we all have until April 15th to do it, but if you are anything like me, you filed the moment that W2 hit your hands. In fact, our refund has already been spent.

It never lasts as long as I would like.

We qualified for a bunch of credits this year, but the one we missed out on was the homeowner tax credit. I wish we had bought a home last year instead of continuing to rent. A nice $8,000 credit would have been nice. Heck, I would have settled for the $6,500 tax credit, but we have been renting for the past 15 years, so that was out of the question, too.

To find out more about these tax credits, check out the video below.


Still have questions? Talk to your accountant. I am sure he or she will be able to guide you to the best deductions for you. My husband and I would be lost without our tax preparers. We have been using the same company for years, so they know us pretty well. In fact, they gave Junior and I all kinds of advice for next year, like which receipts to save and which bills we can deduct as business expenses. Hopefully, this will help us get a bigger refund.

And that would be really nice.

Real Estate Bailout

Junior and I went and had our taxes filled out last week. We can not file yet, because I am still waiting on one more 1099, but we did get some idea of how much money we will be getting back. Let's just say it brought a huge smile to my face. We usually don't have any deductions, but this year the lady who filled out our taxes asked us a ton of questions, and ended up finding a few we qualified for since I work from home.

The big one I wish we qualified for is the Real Estate Bailout. Buying a house is a dream of ours, but we just can't do it right now, which means we are going to miss out on this. If you haven't yet heard about this, and let's face it, unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard something about it, check out this video. It explains things a whole lot better than I can.

Basically, if you want a nice big chunk of money, buy a house before the end of April. I wish we were buying instead of trying to find another place to rent, but that's not in the cards for us this year. I am hoping that we can find a rent to own place, so that we won't be throwing away thousands of dollars. Because let's face it, when you rent, you are basically throwing money away.

I'm tired of it.

Who Does Your Taxes?

Are you in need of IRS tax relief? Do you find yourself facing IRS tax audits? For the past few years, we have had our taxes done by one of those places that pop up at the first of the year inside Walmart. I know we could save a ton of money if we just did them ourselves, but I am not that confident in my ability, because I am really not that good at math. I know there are programs that you can use on the computer that can offer state income tax help, but I still don't trust myself. I feel better knowing that a reputable company is responsible if any mistakes are made.

We did have an issue today, though. With all of our financial worries recently, we decided that we needed a little help right now, so we applied for food stamps. Junior went down last week, and our case worker said we needed to bring in a copy of our tax return from last year. Of course, I couldn't find our copy, because I had put it somewhere safe. Junior called the place that did our taxes, and they said their computer was down, and they didn't know when they would be able to make us another copy. I ended up ripping the house apart this afternoon, and I finally found our copy. I am hoping it won't take long for our case worker to approve us. We could really use some food around here.