Tax Refunds--Whatcha gonna do with it?

[Slandgie]

Wow, I just got our cell phone/regular phone/ISP bill in the mail today. Mind you, this is one of the few bills that I am not paying (my wife is). That and the water/sewer bill. Well, it was pretty big.....REALLY big! It was $450....

I mentioned to my wife that we need to use some of our upcoming federal tax refund to get this bill caught up (and then I am taking it over!)....I didn't get much of a response...well at least it wasn't a "no"!

If I had 100% voting authority in our household, I would use about 75% of the refund for an EF (emergency fund) and getting that aforementioned bill caught up. The other 25% would be "play money"...you know, putting a FULL tank of gas in the car, buying a new pair of tennis shoes, some clothes...

So what is everybody else doing with their refunds??

[creditcardfree]

I'm sending ours to our home equity loan. The home equity loan should be paid off by March, if all goes to plan.

[bjl584]

The goal should be to not get a refund. Otherwise you are giving Uncle Sam a 0% interest loan on your money. Change your witholding status and it should get rid of at least most of your refund. But, if I do get anything back it's going into savings,

[disneysteve]

Whatever refund we get, and hopefully it will be very small as bjl584 already explained, but any money we do get goes straight to Vanguard toward our Roth contributions for the year.

[GREENBACK]

Whenever I get a refund it's usually pretty small and I use it for play money. Got to have some fun 'ya know.

[Slandgie]

We don't get much back, usually less than $1K....it changes from year to year based on how many deductions I can claim. i.e. mileage, depreciation, donations, etc.

The state, on the other hand, we usually end up owing a couple hundred dollars...

[Snodog]

Never had a tax refund in my life.

[Radiance]

Interesting. I am definetively going to see how to reduce that refund. I thought my withholding status was up to date but I usually get between 1000 and 1500.

In any case mine is going to pay off debt. I am having enough fun watching those balances go down

[Slandgie]

Good for you Rad! I would do the same thing, but the significant other is harder to convince....

I am a long-term thinker, she is a short-term and immediate thinker....

[graceful]

Replenishing savings used to fully fund 2009 IRAs, buy a new upright freezer (have $300 gift cards to use towards this also), and the rest will probably go to our savings account set aside to buy a second vehicle later this year. If the return is extraordinarily large this year (adding first time buyer credit and house deductions, etc.), may put some towards the mortgage. But will probably want to fund the car fund first.

[fruitbowlk]

I will be going to get my I-Mac. I have waited long enought. So my refund will be dedicated to that.

[Beppington]

Even though we live so we don't need a refund, a refund usually makes me smile ... until I think about the interest I lost by letting the gov't hold it for that year.

Heck, here, I'll smile anyway -->

[Caoineag]

Pay what little we are getting towards debt or just adding it to our savings cushion. Usually we have to pay in...

[MonkeyMama]

Any refund would go to savings.

As is, we owe about $250 to state, with a $250 Fed refund. So guess my refund is going to the state. I try to get rather breakeven - but I think this is a new record.

[ActYourWage]

What refund? Not receiving a refund.

[kork13]

my internet's acting screwy, duplicated post... sorry.

[kork13]

I'm actually expecting to get a higher refund than I intended, somewhere between $500-$1k... Not sure where my estimates went awry, but I think I had figured out that I need about 1.5 exemptions from my paycheck, so I meant to change it to '2' in June to make it work... and I'm pretty sure I forgot to do it. Hopefully I remember it this year.

anyway, I don't really have any plans for whatever it may be, so I'll probably put most of it toward my EF. Depending on the size, I may earmark some of it for future spending, but we'll see.


Honestly, I'm not surprised by the largely blasé responses (save it, pay off debt, or not getting one)... We're all far too reasonable to actually do something cool with a check from the government... jeeeez...

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by kork13

Honestly, I'm not surprised by the largely blasé responses (save it, pay off debt, or not getting one)... We're all far too reasonable to actually do something cool with a check from the government... jeeeez...

Yep, we're a rather boring and un-American group, aren't we.

Besides, I think funding my Roth is pretty cool.

[mdcrim]

I will be getting a ridiculous refund this year (self employed), did not earn as much last year as normal and bought a work truck (179 deduction). I will probably take a partial 179 to spread the deduction over a few years but I'm still looking at a ton of money coming back (not that I'm complaining). As a result of my income being reduced last year, we are now eligible for a lot of tax breaks we weren't able to get when I was making more. Now every deductions seems to add pretty significantly to the refund. For the past few years, a loss on a rental property wasn't even affecting my taxes-this year it is crazy how it's helping.

We refinanced our primary residence at 4.5% fixed (from 5.0%) to fund the purchase of a vacation home, which increased our monthly payments by $244 per month. I'm going to use my refund to pay for this years worth of the increase, as well as utility and entertainment expenses at the weekend place. Beauty is that there is no mortgage on the vacation home...

[Thrif-t]

We usually don't get much but this year we bought a new car and some energy efficient appliances for the house. We got credits for those and will get a 1k refund. It's going to savings to replenish a little that came out for the kids ortho bills.