What will you do with your tax refund?

[Ka' eo]

We are trying to decide if we should make 2 extra mortgage payments, put it in the kids' college fund, or do a roth ira. Any suggestions on which is best?

What are you all doing with your refund?

 

[HeyIt'sMe]

I vote for the Roth IRA.

We are getting a $3 federal and $286 state refund.....I try to break even every year so I came pretty close. I'm just putting the money in our savings account.

 

[MickeyMomOfThree]

I don't know what you should do, but we paid off our roof, FINALLY!!! We still owed $2000 and we got back $2050. Our roof needed to be redone and we knew it and were saving for it but about a year ago it caved in, ruining our ceiling and causing other damage. It was very coslty and we came up short. My grandparents loaned us the money and said no hurry paying it back, but we hated that feeling of knowing we owed them so it was nice to know we could pay them off and be done with the roof!

 

[dhdozier]

I don't have an opinion on your options, but Dh and I are using ours on paying down his credit card. It had a great rate of 0% for a year and he used it to buy a '69 mustang fastback. Well, now time is up and it has gone to 5% or something in that neighborhood so we are going to take a big dent out of it with the refund. My brother is using his to pay for a March Disney cruise and a new central heating and air unit (the one he has now is a dinosaur that has heating bills of $500 a month!!!)

 

[sherry7]

Our appointment with the CPA isn't until next week, so I don't know what we're getting back yet. Typically though, we either get back a small refund ($200-$300), or have to pay a small amount...so I'm not expecting much as usual.

Whatever we get will go straight into the savings account I think. I plan on taking about 8 months off work after the baby comes, so we're trying to build up the account.

 

[griergirl2]

I wish we were able to put away more of our's, but we are using it to completely pay off our CC's and to pay our DD's hospital bills. No fun, but at least we are going to be able to pay them all off.

 

[gracie1]

I wish we were able to put away more of our's, but we are using it to completely pay off our CC's and to pay our DD's hospital bills. No fun, but at least we are going to be able to pay them all off.

Just think, you atleast will be able to get it all paid off, and in the end will have the extra money each month you were paying out

 

[branv]

I'd put it into a Roth IRA -- that way it serves multiple purposes. Principal can be withdrawn for an emergency...or later to fund your kids college, and any interest made can still be held towards retirement. But then I also am of the belief that people need to fund their retirement first, their kids education next (i.e. what's the point in keeping them from education debt if they have to financially support the parent in retirement/ill health )

We're using our return towards our trip in 2011 The funny thing of it is is that we adjusted withholdings last year so we were earning interest on the money through out the year rather than the government. But darned if we still didn't get almost as much back, with no real life changes. Go figure...feel like I need to earn another degree just to understand how many exemptions to take

 

[LovableGluttons]

we don't usually get enough of one to do anything fun with it. LOLOL

 

[puffkin]

We are paying off our credit card and paying my parents back for the money they loaned us for new tires back in December.

I lost my job last year and have been working a temp job at a 40% paycut so we got into a little debt on our cards. It took us a little bit of time to adjust our spending habits, cut some bills, etc.....but I am thankful we were able to make those adjustments and only walk away with a small amount of debt that we can now pay off. The relief to not have those obligations is great. Now going forward we are going to work on building up a savings.

 

[Zookeeperof4]

I would say to save it in an acct for an unknown. If you have the money to pay two months worth it might be wise to save it, in this economy we just never know our job situations. that two payments that you have to pay now can save you two months of worrying where the money will come from if someone lost a job unexpectedly later.
I was raised to think and expect the worst....so sorry if I sound bad to say plan ahead.

I had planned to use mine to buy a new couch set, new mattresses for my kids, and a Dis Deposit. Instead my car decided to bite the dust so I am looking for a car......thankfully it bite the dust before a new couch came into the living room. And hopefullly I have enough to buy at least one of the kids a new mattress.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

Were getting back $8066 combined from both fed and state returns. We are putting most of it in savings and using the rest on our Sept 2010 WDW trip. It will feel good to see our saving grow again.

 

[MsStinkerBelle]

I'm putting mine towards LLC fees for my home business.

 

[3"Mouse"keteers]

I think I would go with the roth too. We are paying off our last credit card, buying a new dishwasher (ours isn't properly cleaning our dishes), and puting the rest toward our next Disney Vacation.

 

[LisaNJ25]

Paid off a lot of bills and are putting money into savings for an emergency fund.

 

[Cindy B]

Well, we owe about $200 for state (better than the $1500 original estimate!), getting about $700 back from other state and are pretty much brokeven on other flat tax state. (either owe or get $1)

Fed-well we ordered some kitchen improvements so the fed refund will cover most of my new counter or the install of my new cabinets.

 

[lisaross]

i would probably put 1/2 in a roth unless u don't have much savings for retirement, then i'd put it all and 1/2 to the kids college fund.

I didn't do my taxed yet, But last year we got about 4000.00 so i'm hoping to get about eh same and i will put

1000.00 - towards summer vacation
2000.00 - into a savings acct. for my son's bar mitzvah in 3 years
1000.00 - towards new living furniture i want to buy.

We are trying to decide if we should make 2 extra mortgage payments, put it in the kids' college fund, or do a roth ira. Any suggestions on which is best?

What are you all doing with your refund?

 

[bookgirl]

If I have any refund I'll probably throw it in my savings. That's what I always do. I'm right at the end of my Student loans and then I'll have all my debts paid, so I might put it towards that this year, but my fallback is always my savings account.

 

[Thumper_Man]

For DW and I, we're using part of it to go to WDW of course.

My truck is also due for some much needed maintenance (tune-up, timing belt). So I will use part of our refund for this. If there's anything left after this and our trip, then we will use the rest to pay down our cc's.

 

[runwad]

I'd use your's for a roth! I was going to use our's to replenish our savings somewhat (ok a miniscule amount) from the kid's ortho bills. BUT our furnace went out so we had to replace that and our little refund went towards that bill: