Researching Tax Options

This is the first time that I can remember that we owe income taxes. Usually, there is enough withheld each year that we don't have to write a check to IRS, but this year was an exception. Because we don't have the mortgage and our expenses were lower last year, the deductions didn't amount to as much as in years past. As a result, we are looking at the tax deadline in a couple weeks and we still haven't finished ours yet. Usually, when we get refunds, we have it submitted in early February. We took a trip to our bank to discuss investment accounts and then to H & R Block to make sure we understood the tax implications for various options. The net of all this is that we can minimize the tax liability but we still owe some money.

The rest of the day we just did things around the apartment. Josie did laundry - mostly bedding from our fifth wheel to get ready for use again - and I did more work on our taxes and other accounts. It was such a nice day that we wished we had scheduled something to do outside. It was in the high 70's and clear the whole day. We're sure that there will be many more of those kind of days coming up.

I have another appointment with my Audiologist this morning to get the new hearing aids. These are the ones that are at the top of the range of hearing aids and will be upgraded at no charge. I'm sure there would have been a charge if I didn't mention that I wanted to downgrade and get some money back from the ones she originally sold to me. I hope these perform better.

It's also back to work today and we start the cycle all over again. It's too bad that the time seems to go so fast on our days off...