The Tax Man Cometh

This is the time of year when I really start to think my husband is insane. For real. No, not really. He’s just WEIRD! As soon as the first tax info starts to come out, he starts to run the numbers and tabulate our refund. As it stands right now we are looking at a fairly nice one which is ironic because we took steps last year to make future tax refunds small to non-existent. Jayme changed his tax withholdings and increased his pre-tax contributions to his 401K and our Health Savings Account (HSA). The plan was that more of our money would go in our pocket or towards our own life than towards an interest free loan to the government.


Of course, 2010 was not one to obey plans we made. Pattie spent the first 4 days of 2010 in the hospital. The total bill maxed out our HSA deductible for the year. Our portion of the bill was just over $5000. We were able to make the payments without too much trouble. We scaled back our lifestyle and watched the food budget. At the same time we had other bills to pay and we managed to pay off the Suburban 10 months after buying it. We had to stay home more and even cancelled our summer vacation which turned out to be a good thing. During the week we would have been camping at the beach, Raley got a stomach bug that made its way through the rest of the family fairly quickly.

Once we realized how much Pattie’s hospital stay was going to strap us, we knew we wouldn’t be able to make the trip with the rest of the family to see Jayme’s youngest brother get married in Hawaii in July. It was so hard hearing the other family members get ready and talk about their plans knowing we couldn’t go. Then on the day they were boarding a plane, we wound up in the hospital again! This time it was Jayme who spent 4 days in a bed with what they thought was appendicitis. Turned out to be (after extensive, invasive testing) a one-time infection of his intestine. Guess it was a good thing we hadn’t bought Hawaii tickets, huh?

Since our HSA deductible had started over in April, we once again maxed it out and owed another $5000 to the hospital system. We knew then it was going to take more money coming in to keep us afloat. Jayme volunteered to go back on the weekend shift at work so I could go back to subbing on his off days. Unfortunately, the only opening they had was weekend nights. But we have made it work.

As a result of my income, we have been able to pay off Pattie’s hospital bill in 7 months, we were still able to buy birthday and Christmas presents for our kids (although gifts to others were scaled way back or left out), and we have about 3 more payments left on Jayme’s hospital bill this year. We also paid off our one credit card and used cash for Christmas.

On the line where you enter your medical expenses on the tax form, we have just over $15,000. It’s staggering! Even to us. That’s money we have actually come up with and paid to a doctor or medical facility. If you had told me at the beginning of the year that we were going to have to come up with that much money by Christmas I would have fainted. But here we stand. We did it. We sold things, we got jobs, we scaled back, we cut down, we budgeted and STUCK to it.

Our outlook for 2011 is cautiously optimistic. We hope to establish our emergency fund and finish our remaining debt (minus the house) as quickly as we can. We may even buy some new things for us! Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted.