Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Dreaded Tax Appointment

I hate when I feel like I just can't get it together. Especially when it could have easily been prevented. We had our tax appointment tonight. Ugggh. I had been putting all of our tax related paperwork into a pile as each thing arrived in the mail. What I should have done was actually LOOK at what was in this pile sometime before, oh, say, FIVE MINUTES before it was time to leave! I guess I just assumed everything we needed to bring was in that pile. Wrong. Right before we left I realized we were missing the statement for one of our mortgages. Of course, it's with a credit union, without online access to print it out myself and they don't send monthly statements (just coupon books) where I could have looked up or interest paid in 2009.

So, after collecting all of the other necessary paperwork (having sold a rental home and purchased a new primary residence) in 2009, apologizing over and over again to my husband, and kicking myself for not taking care of all of this earlier today when I could have actually gone to the bank and gotten a print out or at least CALLED them, we left... 10 minutes late... for our tax appointment. After we had gotten 2 miles or so down the road I realized that I had forgotten the check book. So, we turned around, went back home, I got the check book and we headed to our appointment... 20 minutes late! Then when we got there, we realized we also didn't have my student loan tax statement. Uggh! So now I have to e-mail the information for both to our tax lady tomorrow. Next year I'm making a checklist of all the tax forms we need and I'll check them off as we receive them in the mail. That should make me less scatterbrained!

Trust me when I say that if I had pictured a night out with my husband and without our son, it would NOT have gone like this!

Anyway, I'm tired and lazy tonight so I picked the two things on my list that I could do while parked right in front of the computer! I ordered checks and I made a hotel reservation. I pay most of our bills through Bank of America's Bill Pay, so I don't use checks very often. For 9 months now, the checks I did have had our old address on them, and for the past month, I've been completely out of checks for our main account. If I have had to write a check (like to pay the tax lady tonight) I have written it out of another account and have to transfer the money out of our main account, over to that account. Very efficient. I know. But, on or about March 15th, I should have 2 nice little boxes of checks arriving in my mail box... in a very boring blue color... because that is what was the cheapest!

I also needed to make a hotel reservation for the weekend of my brother's wedding. Even though he is getting married in Charleston, we still wanted to stay the night at the hotel downtown where the reception will be. I've been holding off on making our reservation because I was hoping a good deal would come along since the rooms are a little pricey, but, that hadn't happened yet, so tonight I Googled "promotional codes" for this hotel and found one that saved me 10% off our room! I actually booked it for two nights because I know the bride doesn't know where she is staying yet... and since I'm the Matron of Honor, I'm really hoping that now she will stay with me the night before the wedding, as my gift to her, instead of bunking in with whichever family member has the extra space.

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