Budgets Are Sexy

Ahem (clears throat):

A little boy wanted $100 badly and prayed for two weeks but nothing happened. Then he decided to write a letter to the Lord requesting the $100. When the postal authorities received the letter addressed to the Lord, USA, they decided to send it to President Obama. The President was so impressed, touched, and amused that he instructed his secretary to send the little boy a $5.00 bill, as this would appear to be a lot of money to a little boy. The little boy was delighted with the $5.00, and sat down to write a thank-you note to the Lord. It said: Dear Lord, Thank you very much for sending me the money. However, I noticed that for some reason you had to send it through Washington, DC and as usual, those jerks deducted $95.

This reminded me that I still haven’t filed my taxes ;) And to be honest with you, I’m kind of scared. This will be the first year I OWE money back and I kinda sorta don’t know how much that will be yet. Pretty bad for a finance guy, huh? (This will be changing in 2011, believe me)

What I do know, however, is that my nice little nest egg of over $40,000 won’t be so plump afterward. It’ll still be there and reminding me of all my hard work I put in to get it, but after the tax man stops by it’ll definitely need some topping off. You’ll find out how much at one of our next net worth updates ;)

On a related note, this brings up the age old question on whether it’s better to get money BACK at the end of the year, or to break even? The latter camp usually says this is the smartest route to go since it means you weren’t “loaning” money out to the gov’t the entire time, whereas the emotional ones (like me) favor getting cash handed back to us. It was technically owed to us all along, but we like the surprise and rush of excitement it gives us when we find out we’re getting this “free” chunk of money ;) Either method has its advantages and disadvantages though (and it’s fun to think about every now and then!), just make sure you’re purposely falling into the category by choice.

Now praytell – have you filed YOUR taxes already? And if so, did you get any back? I make a guess now that out of everyone who says yes to filing IS indeed getting money back. The ones who file the quickest are excited to get their hands on their money again ;) I’ll probably wait to the last minute this time around…

Originally published at budgetsaresexy.com.