Weekend Top 5 is hosted by Kristi at The Wheelz are Rolling
The husband drove me absolutely bonkers this weekend. Picture this: I’m standing, stock still, in a room. I’m not moving a muscle. The husband, on the other hand, is a blur, zipping from room to room, never stopping to take a breath, never stopping to take a break. He’s in constant motion.
He was like that the entire day yesterday. I think the man was on speed. Or he drank too much caffeine or … something. No human being should have that much energy, it’s sick.
I think it bothered me mainly because I felt guilty. He was getting so much done! He vacuumed, he shined up our dining room table that had been sticky and grungy for months (we used this stuff – GOOD stuff. It looks brand new again). And quite honestly? I don’t even know what else he got done because I was too busy being annoyed with him to pay too much attention.
Where does that man get all of his energy? I think I might have one thimbleful of his energy. Which annoys me and it annoys him because he wants to go-go-go and I want to sleep-sleep-sleep.
However, I forced myself to just sort of step back and allow the man to leave tire tracks on me because he spent FIVE HOURS on our taxes.
Five. As in one more than four. Apparently, our taxes are more complicated this year than in previous years because my husband’s company set up stock options for him and that required about 50 more forms than we’re normally used to.
Thank God he’s an accountant because there would be no way I could even attempt to do our taxes.
But he’s done and I’d like to run some totals by you because taxes are one of my biggest pet peeves and I don’t think people truly think about how much the government is taking from us.
I’ve been forbidden to give you actual numbers, but consider this – the government took enough from us this past year to pay for two cars.
Really nice cars.
And in the end? We’re getting six percent of that back. Six. That means, the government demanded a big chunk of our money, squandered it and then had the decency to feel a bit bad about it and gave us our six percent back. That’s why I get so angry when people say, “But I’ll get that back in April!”
Uh no. People get a small sliver of what they pay out back in April. Heck, some people don’t even get that. AARGH! Message to government: manage our money more wisely and stop bleeding us dry!
Okay, rant over.
Here are some facts that I thought were interesting:
We spent a little under half of what we made last year. Not bad! I think that’s mainly because we do not have any debt save for my car. Everything else (including the house), is paid off.
Since my husband is an accountant, he keeps track of this sort of thing …
I spent $317.00 dollars on hair last year (me and the boys – the husband uses a Flowbee on his hair. I know, dorky right? But wow, it does a good job on his hair).
I spent $1,274.00 dollars at Amazon.com last year – I really thought that would be higher as it seems like I’m always ordering stuff from them.
I spent $118.00 dollars on scented lotions.
I spent $138.00 to tan.
We spent $1,296.00 dollars to enable MK to play his saxophone.
I spent $743.00 at Starbucks. (Which will stop because I’m about 92% sure there is something in Starbucks coffee that is giving me digestive problems).
And a whopping $11,711.00 dollars at Wal-Mart. Wow.
And the list goes on and on (like five pages on). It’s really interesting to see where all your money goes. I wonder if people kept better track of where their money was going if the government would even be successful in raising taxes to begin with. They would certainly be forced to manage existing money more carefully, that’s for sure.
Now that we’ve crunched some numbers and have an accurate idea of our financial situation, we have decided that we’re going to go ahead and plan for a Disney vacation this summer.
The boys are not excited. In fact, when I enthusiastically mentioned that we were going on a Disney World vacation this summer (!), they actually grimaced.
It’s because they still associate Mickey Mouse with little kids. They honestly have no idea just how COOL Disney World is. I mean, given our interests in technology and science alone, we could spend our entire vacation at Epcot center and be very happy.
But they’ll come around. In the meantime, I bought a guide and I’ve been haunting the American Airline website looking for travel packages. The husband is not excited about spending the money (of course), but I’m being insistent. Not because I’m crazy about spending the money (hello?! I’m Queen Cheap, remember?) but because we only have a few good years left with our boys before they move on with their lives. GD will graduate in two years!! Then he’ll either go to college and/or get a job. He won’t have the freedom (or even the desire) to spend his vacation with us.
So, tough. We’re going to make the most of these next few years and create some pretty awesome family memories – while we can. We can sit home and be cheap when we’re old.
GD wanted to buy Halo 2 for his computer. So, we went to Game Stop to see if they had it.
Have I mentioned that GD would like to get a job at Game Stop? And this particular Game Stop is pretty close to our house so technically, he could ride his bike there, no problem. (Because he’s not ready to drive yet).
GD is pretty laid back. And he doesn’t really show a lot of emotion. But I have to say, that boy CAME ALIVE in that place. His eyes sparkled and he just looked so … animated – it was really quite cool.
He wants to work there. He’s a die-hard gamer and the thought of being surrounded by all those games, by all the new gaming news and being on the cutting edge of everything just made his mouth water. I’m really going to try and (gently) push him into getting a job there. I think that would be such a good place for him to interact with the world – on his terms.
But since he’s not ready to get his driver’s license yet and he still needs an ID in order to apply for a job (which is his plan for the summer), then I plan on taking him up to the DMV on spring break and helping him get an ID.
That should be an experience.
We’re finally trading our old house heater in for a newer model. It all started with smelling gas.
Well, GD and the husband smelled gas – I have never smelled it but that doesn’t surprise me – my sniffer sucks.
It was weird because they didn’t smell gas all the time, just sometimes and only in certain areas of the house – and those areas would be different each time. So, I’m thinking they smelled something that smelled like gas but wasn’t actually gas.
But this freaked the husband out and now he’s on a mission to make sure we don’t have a gas leak. He bought some sort of gas-detecting instrument and spent some time walking around the house to see if he could detect any gas – I’m relieved to say he didn’t detect any.
But the episode got us to thinking. This house is over 30 years old. And that heater is the original heater that came with the house when it was built. It’s probably about time to replace it. Not only that, but heaters nowadays are so much more energy efficient than ours that it’ll save us money in the long run.
The guy came out and gave us an estimate of what it would cost – which was lower than what the husband was predicting so it’s a done deal. The guy will come out in a few weeks and do the deed. He told us that our current heater is only running about 40% efficient at this time and our new one will run at 90% efficient.
It’ll be interesting to see what difference that makes in how that heats our home and how that effects our pocket book.
We’re slowly, but steadily, making the move to be more “green.”
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It’s happening right now!
thursday thirteen
