This year was a banner year for taxes in my household! I actually put off filing as long as I possibly could because we owe more than I possibly thought possible. How much, you ask? Oh, only about $2500.
My husband freaked when I first did them (as did I, obviously), so I went back through and checked the numbers. Then I checked them again. And again. They were in fact correct.
Now, I know to many people this is nothing, but we’ve almost always gotten a refund and we have no side hustles that we need to pay taxes out of pocket for. We have one kid and therefore one standard deduction, and a whole bunch of job expenses that are deductible. We were confounded as to why we would owe at all. Finally I went through the numbers again to figure out why we owe so much, and discovered that my husband’s paycheck is taxed a couple percentage points lower than we as a couple should pay.
Knowing why we owe money is refreshing, but still doesn’t mean I’m super happy paying it…
…like my husband’s COBRA, which, albeit dumbly, we haven’t paid in the last 2 months because I never saw a bill for it. Which was another $950 for the past 2 months and the next one.
It was an expensive day.
The *perfect* day to read Sam’s epically long post about achieving financial freedom. Dude makes $6,500 in passive income a month. Right now we don’t even make that much in regular income a month! But! In the spirit of the article, I decided to add up our passive income per month. I am not including any dividend income from IRA’s or other retirement vehicles – to stay fair to the idea that Sam is talking about. So here goes…
Dividends: About $35 per month, reinvested
Real Estate Investment Property: -$221.56
So my passive income comes out to…a passive outcome of $-186.56
Ha! Not exactly how it is supposed to work…
On the plus side, moving back into our house while we settle down, try to find me a job (my husband has one), and try to find a place to live that is more conducive to 4 humans and a cat, means that we will be able to refinance our house as primary homeowners, which will lower our payments enough that when we rent it out again we should not owe anything after the property management company takes their share. In fact, if we can find a rate low enough, we might even bank a couple of bucks! Literally, like maybe $6-8 a month. On the plus side again, that would mean we would have $500 in passive income a year (before taxes…) which is sort of…nice.
I like seeing small numbers grow. What can I say, I like playing with money.
Anyway, that’s my take away from Sam’s article. That and we are far, far behind where we should be. But! Life has curveballs, and I’m only 30. Seems to me that I’ve got another 35 years to go as a professional, which is longer than I’ve been alive. But that’s a topic for a different day.
What about you? Did you read Sam’s article and add up your passive income to see where you are at in attaining financial freedom?
I have like $5 in passive income a month. That’s interest, haha.
It’s fun to play around and watch it grow. It’s really like a game of many moving parts and optimization strategies. Give it some time, and good things happen.
BTW, several of us will be in Honolulu 3rd week in May. You should come join and eat at Ono’s on Kapahulu (? I forget) with us!
S
We had our first ever taxes due this year as well. Same problem of under-withholding, although ours is a little more complex because we both work and I changed jobs mid year (and had unemployment). What’s really frustrating is that I changed my withholding and they are STILL under withholding on my paycheck. Our effective tax rate for last year was 7.5%, but my employer is only withholding 5%.
$6500, I wish!! Two income household and we don’t make anywhere near that as it is. I think it’s safe to say we have $0 passive income at this point, but we’re working our asses off to change that.
Thankfully we didn’t owe this year, but received a small income ($9 state, woohoo!) I dread the day we actually owe.
Kris, are you leaving Hawaii? I might have missed the post. Coming here from Untemplater from your comment. thx
Angelina – Just give it 13 years, and I’m sure you’ll develop a good amount of passive income too.