I kicked the snow's ass AND got my tax return!

Snowpocalypse (I have to use this name as much as possible because it amuses me immensely) will not keep me down! I kind of missed the memo that a snowstorm was coming, because apparently I live under a rock, and woke up with no food in my apartment. So today I traipsed through 15 inches of mostly unplowed, unshoveled snow to get some groceries (only $14 for all next week, not bad!), and returned home the conquering hero.

And when I finally did make it back home, it was like Christmas all over again! I got a package that I had bought from Ebay, an American Eagle gift card that I got from my credit card rewards, and $1,322 in my bank account from Uncle Sam. Again... Christmas! Unfortunately, that money is not sticking around for very long at all. I am using $1,000 of it to pay for the program deposit for Italy, $137 of it for stupid medical bills that my insurance didn't cover, and putting the rest in my EF. But you know what, I didn't have to take out of savings to cover any of that stuff, and that in itself deserves a little happy dance. That and the fact that I now have food.

Taxes are done, biyotches!

I just filed my federal taxes!! WOOT! I am such a nerd, I really love doing taxes. But I am not alone in my nerdyness- we got our W-2's today and everyone in the office was starting to file their taxes right away. Or maybe that's not nerdom, it's just being broke, haha. But I just finished mine, and it looks like my refund will be $1,322!!! That's more than I've ever gotten before, usually I hover around $500-600. So this is definitely awesome. I also e-filed for the first time ever, and so I should have the money direct deposited to me in like 3 weeks or so!! :-D

I love Tax Returns!

Today I got both of my tax returns in the mail! I got $118 back from local and $563 back from federal, for a grand total of $681! Sadly, I went to the mall and got a lot of new summer clothes the other day. They were needed, and I got a lot of new (and really awesome) things, but I spent about $120. So that leaves me $561 to save, and I decided to put it all into my "New Car Fund." Both of my ING savings accounts (for travel and for a new car) took a hit when I had to buy my new laptop a few months ago. But since I have a lot less saved in the car fund, I'm going to use this tax return to try and bump up the total. Sometimes I love tax season! ;-)

Taxes are done!!

Instead of being a good grad student last night and reading Heinrich von Ofterdingen like I was supposed to, I spent about three hours organizing and filing my taxes. It was pretty complicated this year because I had to pay taxes on the money I converted in my IRA, plus I had student loan interest deductions. Usually I just file the 1040EZ and get on with my life, but this year I wasn't allowed to, and had to jump to a 1040A.

I was trying to root through all the paperwork myself, and did a fairly good job of it, but I was still nervous about doing something wrong. So I ended up caving and using TurboTax's online program. I found out about it by accident, but it will help you do your taxes completely free if you made under $30,000 last year. Basically their program got the same answer that I did doing it myself, which means I was doing something right. But the cool thing is it found a deduction for me that I didn't even know about! So I mailed in all of my tax stuff today, now I can just sit back and wait for the money to come. Pretty sweet. :)

And on a side note, I made $24,000 this year! I know that is a paltry amount to some people, but I have never made so much money in one year before, so I am pretty impressed with myself.