Taxes...blech!

We finally went and got our taxes done today.  It was a bit weird because in the past we always went in with friends on the Turbo Tax and the wife would do all of our taxes.  It was sort of a win-win; we split the cost of the program, I cooked dinner, we made a night of it.

Well, we are no longer "close" to those friends and had to fend for ourselves this year.  I was a bit nervous because being that Frank hasn't been working, we certainly didn't have any extra money to PAY anyone or even buy the damn program ourselves.  And don't even get me started on how much I cannot understand the whole Turbo Tax program and do it myself.  That wasn't going to happen.

So about a month ago, I was in the Human Services office dropping off our application for Medicaid and I saw a flier for free tax preparation.  Seriously.  I grabbed it, brought it in the house, and promptly forgot about it.  Not smart, I know.  Well, I finally found it again and there were two locations here in town that were offering the service so Frank and I, along with Nick, went to location number one - it was at the local Senior Citizens center.  We walk in, this woman with a HEAVY New Jersey accent asked us what we wanted and when I said we were there to get our taxes done, she was like "When's your appointment?"  Well, we didn't have an appointment because both the flier AND the website said that no appointment was necessary.

To this woman, it was.

Location number two was right across the street and although Miss New Jersey said that she would help us, there were three people ahead of us.  I told Nick to run across the street and see what their wait was like and within 5 minutes he called and said to come over, we were next.

No lie, within 5 minutes of our arrival someone was working on our taxes and 20 minutes later we were done.  FOR FREE!  FOR REAL!  I was quite giddy about the whole thing.  You know what sucks, though?  My 19 year old son lives with us, doesn't pay rent, while we don't "fully" support him, we still pay a lot to "help" him and we can't claim him on his taxes because he has a job and makes more than $3600 a year.  Dang it!

So we are getting money back, but not as much as last year since we can no longer claim the boy but Nick is getting a LOT back and he is positively ecstatic over it and probably already has the money spent.

But the taxes are done and that is one less thing to worry about.   Praise God!