First of all, I want to say we have been lucky in that both Wife and I have maintained our pay the same as when the virus started ruining things all over the country. Schools have pretty much been shut down, but the teachers and others are still getting paid, I guess is why they continue to teach online and putting all that effort out there. We are still working as well, we are considered "essential" because some of our customers do work for the DOD, so we must continue supporting them. The one beautiful turn of events is that we have permission and are actually encouraged to go home if there is no pressing work to worry about. I have already explained my new work habits, so I will leave that alone. What I am trying to say is that we have not been hurt like some households where the person who pays the bills is now unemployed and they are in dire straits.
President Trump started mentioning that we were getting a stimulus check about a month ago, and sure enough, Boy got his within a couple days. We had not and not that we needed it, but if someone is giving free money to all, you better believe I want my cut. We have been paying taxes the last few years, so the IRS did not have our banking info. We got on their website and corrected this problem last weekend. Yesterday, around 3:00pm, Wife got a notice of a deposit for a healthy amount and I jumped on my laptop to check it out. It was from the US Treasury. I immediately paid off Best Buy, we only owed $500 at this point, and another credit card which I owed $330, mostly from that shotgun I purchased awhile back. I asked Boy to give me half his money which I used to pay the rest of the freezer off. We were still able to put away a huge chunk of that money in our savings, which got us talking about our income tax situation. We know we have until June or July this year, but that is only a few weeks away.
Wife does not want to go to H&R Block anymore, it costs us $350-$500 every year. That just seems like a lot, although when the IRS comes a calling like they have the last two years for additional paperwork, H&R Block has been helpful at making them go away. Wife said she was reading online that H&R Block have a "free" online way to get our taxes done, then we can choose to pay for some of their services, such as they will check that we did everything correctly and they will also give us that assurance that if the IRS comes calling, they will represent us. It took a few hours last night, but I think we got it done. Of course, we are ending up paying over $3000, but we did see it as a win since we didn't pay H&R Block the extra $350, it is still a savings of 10% or so.
I had some questions, such as we got a child earned income credit or something and it said $2000, but I didn't see it reduce any amounts from when it showed up to the end of the work. Still, we paid within $100 of this amount last year, so I believe what we are paying is within the ballpark and I guess if we look at the money just given to us by Trump, we are paying only about $600-$700 out of our pocket.
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