I did my taxes tonight. There were a couple of 'huh?' moments; first when I realized I earned less in 2010 than I did the year before. Then I figured out it was because I began contributing to retirement (before the company hadn't required any matching from us but they used the poor economy to wriggle out of that benefit). Our income dropped another 20% when my son finished high school and no longer qualified for survivor's benefits. It's good that I had already gone frugal and begun the debt payoff by then.
Because of the American Opportunity credits on tuition I'm actually getting a decent return this year. No wild plans here though, it's going straight to debt. In fact, if it shows up in the next three weeks I will finally be saying farewell to Chase credit card for good. I hope I've been a huge disappointment to them; I believe they increased my minimum payments to 5% in the hopes that I wouldn't be able to keep up and they could increase the interest rates. Ha! It's still at 4.9% and once it's gone I'm never going back.
2 comments:
I will be having talks next week about taking my early retirement teacher's pension - June this year.
Good for you...sometimes losing a bit makes us realise we can probably do without some of the stuff thought we 'needed' in the first place!
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