Death and Taxes...

Ugh, taxes.  Do I need to say more?  I got a phone call from Michael while sitting in the JFK airport about to board an airplane to come home.  I was sad to leave but so excited to return home to my hard working hubby. The phone call was about our taxes.  You can probably guess where this is going.

Let me preface by saying money is very much on the forefront of our minds these days for obvious reasons.  We have tightened our purse strings, count every penny, and are constantly looking for opportunities to make or save more money.  Let me also say, I'm a planner.  I like to plan for the future and consider every possible scenario and option.  So, naturally I have mapped out how much money we could possibly save between now and the time we are ready to do our IVF.  Sparing boring details, I figured out between extra jobs, money already saved and our sure fire TAX RETURN we would be pretty close to having all $13,000.

The phone call was obviously not good news.  He finally had news about our tax return that I had been bugging him about for weeks.  I was excited...was it $2000...possibly more?  We had conservatively guessed that it would be at least $2000.  We received $1600 the year before and now we own a house and paid an insane amount of interest on it last year.  We have been told owning a home makes a huge difference when it comes to tax returns.  No, it wasn't $2000.  It was quite the opposite.  We OWE $1700!  What?  How did this happen?

Mostly my fault for not closely paying attention to my pay stubs but IHC failed to take out the right amount of taxes last year.  I claim ONE deduction and they only took out $175 in federal taxes!  Yes, I know my paychecks would have been a lot less if they had been taking out the correct amount but it just didn't occur to me that my checks were too big.  My mom could not understand why I was so upset and began to lecture me about how taxes work.  Yes, I know that if you do not pay enough in the year, you will owe and if you pay too much, they give money back.  She further tried to explain that there is no difference, I had larger paychecks so the money we have in savings wouldn't have been there if they had been taking the correct amount of taxes out.  Wrong.  Had I known they weren't taking enough out, maybe, we would have saved the money but I didn't.

Sparing more details of mine and my mom's argument here is the bottom line.  We were counting on that money to help reach our $13000 goal.  No, the money that is in our saving account is not from saving excess money that should have gone to taxes, it's been given to us mostly as gifts and from odd little reimbursements. To us, we feel that not only are we not getting the $2000 we were counting on but we also have to take $1700 from the little savings that we do have already.  So to us, it's like being down $3700.  I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it again.  We have been working so hard and we were going to be close.  It is so disheartening to know now we may not even have half of what we need, when need it.

Michael's second job has been a huge blessing to us.  We would never even have half if it weren't for his willingness to take care of his family.  It's a huge sacrifice he is making and we agreed that no matter what, we would not use that money for anything else.  Such is life.  We sometimes feel like there is one force working against us and one with us.  For every trial that we have faced regarding this, there always seems to be a blessing.  We pray that we will be able to recover from this and will continue to work toward our goal.