Just ten days ago, I wrote on here to say that my wife and I had wrapped up our 2005 taxes, courtesy of using TurboTax online. This morning, I had the pleasant surprise of logging into my Wells Fargo account online and seeing I had quite a bit more cash than when I'd gone to bed the night before. That's always good. The reason for it was that both our tax refunds from the state and federal levels were deposited automatically, getting me the money that was rightly ours in the first place back a lot more quickly. Now, with it not even being March, we can close the door on our 2005 finances.Of course... that depends on whether our good friends at the IRS opt to open up the discussion at any point in the future. After all, it's their right to do so, but I say, bring it on. We're ready.
Every year, especially as the date moves closer to April 15th, you hear the inevitable belly-aching and gnashing of teeth over the stress of taxes, getting the forms right, making sure your deductions are in order. But I've never quite understood why. It's a right of passage. It's a challenge. There's some nostalgia involved - especially as I go through every single stock trade from the previous year. (I owned that? What was I thinking?) And there's definitely some self-satisfaction to finishing the task well ahead of time and with a minimum of fuss. I almost would beg for the sticker that says "I paid my taxes", the same way you get one that says "I voted", if you're one of the 38% of us who do that every couple of years or so.
At least today, I feel like we're financially secure. But almost all of the refund already has to be spent on bills that were outstanding, and simply catches us up. But today, I have cash - let's see if I can hold onto that feeling.