Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Uncle Sam vs. The Collector: A Preview

For the first time in our lives, my wife and I owe the IRS. (And here I thought we were supposed to save money in taxes as a married couple.) Not that big a deal, right? People all over the country owe Uncle Sam this time of year. But it totally came out of left field. We weren't expecting it. And like many young couples, we don't have three grand to be tossing around just because TurboTax says we need to.

To solve the problem, we only have two options. Both of them bad.

The first solution would be to put it on our credit cards. As newlyweds this close to paying off our debt, that's not a good idea. And for a collector, having the debt monkey on your back can haunt you for a very, very long time.

The other option is to tighten up our already tight budget. This means canceling plans for traveling on our first anniversary. That blows, but postponing a trip can be done with little hassle. No, what will really be difficult is trying to shut down the collector's mentality enough so we can save the money. That should be fun.

Books. Comics. Art. Football cards. Something has to give.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about getting the opinion of a good accountant? Maybe you screwed something up in that software...or maybe you're just overlooking something...

James said...

More than likely, we just add to many allowances on our W-4s. But yeah, I like that suggestion.