financial reflections

FeeMoneyFinance has an interesting article on how to spend your tax refund.  Well, mine has come and gone, so I thought I’d do a post-mortem on where that refund went.

Here’s how it broke down:

• Debt Reduction.  I wiped out one of my cards with part of the return.  That felt so good.
• Dental Bills.  I had some non-credit card bills I owed to dentists and orthodontists.  The beauty here is that I’m avoiding putting these costs on plastic.  I’m setting a trend of paying for things without the debt.
• Laptop.  I bought a toy.   Kind of.  The old PC is now 4 years old, and it’s showing its age in a big way.  I had to get something as a replacement.  The laptop also lets me update this blog, measure my financial progress, or just surf from anywhere in the house.  The new laptop is now the family PC for everyone.  I cringed a bit, because I could have partially killed another card with the money, but I had that thought while I did my monthly budget on my laptop.

That was a big refund, so I could do three different things with it.  But the fact that I don’t want a big refund next year.  At the end of last year I used a link a friend pointed out to adjust my withholdings for this year.  Hopefully I’ll just get a small refund or owe very little next year.  I’ll keep you posted.