Both the popular vote (reader’s) and the electoral vote (mine and my husband’s) have been heard and everybody won! I was ready to call it quits and spend the $36 to E-File but with the help of my readers I just saved that amount of money.
First, thank you so much to everyone that voted. Having the majority say to mail it in gave me the patience to spend the past three hours reworking my tax return on TurboTax online.
Second, HUGE thank you to the reader who suggested that I check with State Farm for free prep and e-filing. They carry our auto and home insurance so the offer was available to us. Reworking our return helped me catch a mistake that saved me $50 on our federal taxes. It also unveiled another form I had to file on my state taxes that cost me $100. Not a wash, but both returns are good now.
All in all this turned out to be a huge frugal flop. We ended up overpaying on the desktop version of Turbotax ($38) when we could have done the whole thing for free. But at least redoing them saved me the extra $36 I would have had to pay if I hadn’t asked for your help. Also, as much as I drum about checking your paycheck withholdings so you don’t get a huge refund, look at the one we are getting. In our defense, having a baby on the last month of the year added $1,000 to our federal. Also, for some reason I can’t adjust my state tax withholding too low. When I increase the number of deductions the amount withheld from every paycheck barely changes. So, we are in for another return from them next year. But I think I have adjusted our federal withholding enough to make up for this.
Oh! and this is where the money is going: $800 goes to youngest son 529 and $700 to oldest son 529. The rest we are saving for a possible trip to my home country. So that my family can meet my children.
