Around this time last year (actually more like around April 15), I filed my taxes and had to pay over $2,100! This was the second year in a row–for 2012 I had to pay $1,900! At least last year, I was prepared for it. Having two jobs in different states, I never quite figured out how to best do my withholding. But with Job 2 ending in June, the withholding from (permanent) Job 1 would probably be enough that I shouldn’t owe, or shouldn’t owe too much.
But the man and I had our civil ceremony this year, so we can file together. Seeing as he’s a full-time student, this is extremely beneficial to me because 1) the added personal exemption; and 2) the larger standard deduction. Add to that some deductions for expenses for our house, and education credits, and we’re very happy with preliminary numbers on our federal return. A good chunk of this will be paying for our honeymoon. I also expect that I will be zeroing out UG4 when the return hits my bank account. The only hold-up is that I’m waiting to receive my W-2 from former Job 2 — though my paycheck/withholding was the same every month, so I have a pretty good (if not exact) estimate in.
After elimination of UG4, I’ll be down to:
- UG5 (the last one from undergrad!): $4,410
- Law School 1: $6,056
- Law School 2: $13,145
- Former Federal Loans: $69,468
And with March’s payments, I’ll be under $93,000! I’m pretty happy with that. UG5 will soon be getting $225 a month. It’s a little hard to think that I used to pay about $1,000 to the federal loans (the minimum if they were on a 10 year term instead of a 25 or 30 year), and another extra couple hundred (or $1000!) to my undergrad loans! Damn I miss having a second job sometimes! Damn I hate paying a mortgage! Now it will take me four months of regular payments to get to a $1000 reduction in principal on UG5…but at least that’s an extra $200 a month, instead of just the minimum. Hopefully we can keep some costs down on the honeymoon (even though I haven’t been on a vacation in FIVE YEARS), so they’ll be a bit more to loans!
*I’m temporarily excluding my net worth, as I’m shuffling some money around accounts
blonderbetterfasterstronger 