Today we paid off a Discover card and two small balance Chase cards. This leaves us with one more Chase credit card before we can tackle Sallie Mae and kick her butt to the curb. The other tax return will come from the state and I have no idea when that will show up. We filed the state return on Feb 5th and from what I understand that it can take 4 to 6 weeks to receive the refund by mail, I requested direct deposit and it is supposed to arrive faster. How much faster? I don’t know and the state does not identify how much faster. That refund will supply the money to our emergency fund. It will feel great to know that we have a backup up plan as right now we are merely crossing our fingers and hoping that Murphy stays far, far away.

Let me share with you things that we found and other ideas to stop the leaking from your wallet.

1. Scale the cable service back or get rid of it entirely.
Did that free promotion of HBO end? How much does your bill run? $80, $100, or $150 a month? Watch for those promotions on TV where you could combine your services. Give your local provider a call and threaten to cancel. You would be amazed at how quick they will offer to lower your rates to keep you as a customer. We recently did this and brought our internet service down from $44.95 a month to $29.95 a month for a year.

2. Cell Phone
Take a look at your monthly minute usage, text messaging, and premium services. Are you paying for insurance at $5 or $6 month on a phone that is 2 years old? Have an old phone sitting in a drawer? Use that if something were to happen to your current phone. Reduce your minute plan if you are not using all the minutes an instant savings of $20. Check to see if you have an employer discount. You could save as much as 22% of your service.
• Verizon Wireless – Dial #646 to check your minutes. Click here to check for employer discounts.
• AT&T – Dial #646 to check your minutes. Click here to check for employer discounts.
• Sprint – Click here to check for employer discounts.

3. Sell Your Storage Unit
Do you have a bunch of stuff? Does your stuff charge you rent? Have you visited your stuff recently? Your stuff doesn’t miss you and you will not miss it. Sell it! Apply your cash to your plasectomy. Two great avenues to get rid of your stuff is to sell it on eBay and Craigslist. For those items that are rare I would personally choose to sell on eBay as you have a global customer base. Craigslist is fantastic for local selling saving you on shipping and it’s free to post. We just sold several small kitchen appliances generating over $100 from Craigslist

4. Gym Membership
Bally’s Total Fitness, Gold’s Gym, 24 Hour Fitness are you a member to one of these chains? What does it run you? A few hundred a year? Have you tried your local YMCA/YWCA? What about running in your local neighborhood? It is still technically winter, but spring is right around the corner and it’s free.

5. Cut Your Electricity Usage
Are you using compact fluorescent bulbs in all lights in your home? Do you know how much electricity is being used by your computer, tv, dvd player, etc? If not, I would highly recommend purchasing a Kill A Watt meter to determine how much your idle electronics are costing you. By using this tool I have my computer that I was leaving on 24/7 was costing me $12-14 a month. That is over $150 a year.

Are you doing anything to stop the budget leaks in your home? Will the money you save by stopping these leaks be applied to your plasectomy or appropriated somewhere else?

It looks as though the TaxCut deal from my previous post is dead. The TurboTax deal is still alive with 25% off their software, you will need to click on the first link of the fidelity page to get the deal. I personally abandoned their software a few years ago when they had the spyware fiasco and haven’t looked back. I was going to use TaxCut, but I missed out on the 50% off deal. For the first time ever I will be using the online version of TaxAct. From what I have entered so far it is a fairly straight forward process just like the other two tax software companies. Best of all it’s FREE!

It is free to e-file your federal return and as cheap as $13.95 to file your state return. The other companies wanted to charge a minimum of $19.95 to e-file my state return in addition to their basic “free” software. This is important to me as I am on budget and every dollar that I can save will go to my plasectomy.

Do you use software to file your taxes, e-file, or paper return?

25% discount off Turbotax through Fidelity.

We personally use TaxCut now. We started with TurboTax and then a few years ago they had a grand idea to start adding spyware to their software disc, I immediately moved to TaxCut. Quite honestly, I can’t tell a difference unless you are a Intuit Quicken user. Besides, when I am estimating my tax refund at the end of December the TurboTax estimator NEVER worked, but TaxCut did.

50% off TaxCut

This year we are expecting a significant amount back, I know I know, you need to change your deductions….I did that. We now claim 8. The issue is that I was in sales and had a commission check where the government finds it prudent to take 45% of that check, FORTY FIVE PERCENT! Which, come tax season, I do get see some of that money back less social security, medicare(is that even in there), yada yada yada…

Anyway, where is this money going? To a big screen TV? A new car? Furniture? Clothes? Dining Out? The answer is a resounding YES! I bet you were not expecting that answer. I know what you are asking, what is the catch, I thought this was about getting out of debt? I will tell you, we already bought all of that on plastic and now it is time to pay the man and then violently cut him up to never be heard from again. Parting is such sweet freedom, I can’t to move onto Sallie in 6 months and kick her out as well.

How about you? Tax refund? What are you doing with it?