Money To-Do Calendar: May

The great personal finance book Grow Your Money!: 101 Easy Tips to Plan, Save, and Invest ends with a list of what financial steps we should take each month. They list the May steps as follows:

• Begin planning strategies to reduce this year's income taxes.
• If you received a sizeable tax refund, adjust your withholding allowances to increase your take-home pay.
• If you had difficulty coming up with your IRA contribution in April, begin setting aside enough to fund this year's contribution.
• Time for an annual estate-planning checkup.

Here's what I do on these:

• Ha! Wait until May to think of ways to avoid taxes? I'm thinking of them all the time! ;-)
• I did get a sizeable tax refund, but the reason I did was because I received a big bonus this year and they took a ton out of it to pay for taxes. Can't really project if I'll get one or not this year and if so, how big it will be.
• I didn't have trouble coming up with any of my savings this year. If they'd let me, I'd put more into 401ks and IRAs.
• We had our estate plan done a year or so ago, so we're settled for now, though maybe next year we'll need to get it updated.

How about you? Are you working on these this month?

Comments

[Mcneri]

This month is another getting closer to the mid-year turnaround as I call it. I am expecting my first time homebuyer's refund...soon. 50% of it saved and 50% used for international travel (wifey needs to go visit momsy!). My finances are on autopilot. I am going to Mint right now to update my monthly budget and then visit some other PF blogs to see what they are buzzing about today. As I usually say, Finance Is Personal and there is always a personal touch to everybody's own.
Regarding adjusting witholding, it is better/easier to be owed than to owe, so when in doubt, I'd rather overpay taxes than owe next year. Having said that, I hope to break a tax bracket this year so I am not sure I should expect anything by way of refund next year. I love blogging about Personal Finance and really I sometimes wonder what I have been waiting for.
Good tips, thanks for sharing.

[Rich Avery]

Ever since I completed my taxes earlier in April, I've been thinking of ways to reduce this year's income taxes. One big change for us is our rental property. Until this year, we always had a loss on it because most of our mortgage payment went toward the interest. Starting this year, nearly all of our payment is going to the principal, so we'll have a much smaller interest deduction.

[Budgeting in the Fun Stuff]

Here's where we are on those suggestions:

- We deduct everything we can and save the receipts or proper documentation all year long.

- We got an $1800 refund due to grad school...we'll probably go back to owing about $200 every April after this year.

- We contribute to our Roth IRA evenly every month and polish it off by December. This year we may be opening a 2nd Roth IRA or putting that money towards our remaining car loan...we haven't fully decided yet.

- I have an emergency packet made for my husband since I know all our financial stuff and he doesn't (like account numbers and passowords), but we haven't made an actual will or power of attorney yet. We may look into that this year...I'm just not motivated enough yet. We're young, have no kids, and everything is in both of our names.