Friday, February 12, 2010

Large tax return? How do you keep your hands off?

Twice a year Hubby and I get large amounts of money. He gets a re-enlistment bonus, and because of that his tax return is always quite large. When we were up to our eyeballs in debt, the majority of the money from the bonus and tax return would go to that. And while we enjoyed paying off the debt it always felt kind of like a loss. Here is this large amount of money and you do not get to spend ANY of it. Major bummer! What we've started doing (and it works quite well) is with each large sum of money we get a chunk to spend. We also get a chunk for clothes. This keeps us from feeling like we do not get to touch the money but still allows most of it to be saved. (or applied to the baby's loan!) We feel down right rich when we get the money, its 2.5 month's worth of spending money for us. I stashed mine away in my savings account in till there is something i really, really want to buy.

Using this method DH and I spend only 8% of our tax return on frivolous items. The rest went to the baby's loan, (60%) emergency fund, clothes and the small amount we had on our credit card from the foster baby's preparations. That 8% feels like a fortune to us, and both of us are incredibly excited about it!

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