Well the early tax payment has been made (see my prior entry for details). Turns out the county doesn't care how much you pay early, they will just keep applying the amounts from the pre-payment until it runs out. Since the further in the future the less likely it will benefit me, I hedged my bets. I paid enough for this coming year, plus some of 2019's bill. Assuming you can use these payments (and according to everyone that reads the laws there is no reason you can't) for itemizing taxes, I will be saving $1,250 this year on my fed taxes (& maybe a hundred or two for the state). And if for some reason I can't use it for taxes, its not a major loss anyway. The money was just sitting in my savings account not doing much.
Today was a nice day financially in other ways too. I went into Paypal and requested another $150 out of the account. I checked for the year, and I pulled out over $1,500. Now some of that is sales for the SG-GF, but even so I probably netted near $1,000 for my sales. Nice to see I can make some money with this stuff, but I think I need to be more proactive on some of my sales. I may need to lower the price on some things that just aren't selling. I want the stuff outta here - soon.
Also went to the credit union to deposit my latest electric company dividend check - $144. For the year that makes $570 in dividends, and totaling up my last 12 electric bills came to only $385. Now of course I get taxed on the $570 (boooo...), and my natural gas bill for the year is probably in the $300-$400 range, but still... nice to see another year come and go where I get dividends that more than pay for my electricity. Nice.
Now I need to work up my year end numbers for 2017. They're crazy good, almost too good to be true. Hmmmmmm..... And also get ready to put my 2018 money into my Roth IRA. Yikes my checking account balance is shrinking fast.
Tax prepayment is made, now I hold my breath
December 27th, 2017 at 09:41 pm
December 27th, 2017 at 11:26 pm 1514417180
December 28th, 2017 at 12:46 am 1514421990
In any case, this amount was less than 20% of my savings, so... no problem really. I should have more than enough, and there are always options if I need money (sell stocks in my brokerage and get out money, break a CD, redeem savings bonds, ask for over payment refund) and I'm sure there are other things I can do if push comes to shove. If I didn't have ways to get cash if needed, or if CDs had seriously good rates, I probably wouldn't have tried this. But there is so little downside I may as well give it a shot.
December 28th, 2017 at 02:13 am 1514427226
December 28th, 2017 at 02:18 am 1514427492
I just posted an interpretation of today's IRS announcement. Whether prepayment makes sense depends on your jurisdiction, but it sounds like this won't be the last clarification the IRS makes.
https://www.savingadvice.com/articles/2017/12/27/1052973_prepay-property-taxes.html
Please, by all means, comment on the post above. Thanks.
December 29th, 2017 at 07:23 pm 1514575415