Some good news, some not as good news. The good news is I logged into my mortgage account online today and the delinquent property taxes have been paid! Maybe my call yesterday gave someone the nudge they needed to get this taken care of. However it came about, I am relieved it is fixed.
The not as good news is I started my tax return online. New territory for me with living in a state that has income tax and how does it work that we only lived here the last 3 months of the year? As I assumed it is a partial year percentage applied to my total adjusted gross income. And DD was a dependent half the year and half not, not yet sure how that works out. I wasn't going to claim her this year, but it appears in order to claim her college tuition on my tax return (for the education credit) I have to list her as a dependent. A tax accountant I am not!
I hate doing those online tax returns where it tallies what you owe (I never get a refund anymore) up in the corner. It's always such a huge amount in the beginning (before deductions factored in) that it freaks me out and causes stress and I just want to stop and work on it another day. At one point, between federal and state I owed over $10,000! I knew it wasn't right, but still made me hyperventilate! Once I was done with my "rough draft" I was down to $1041 for Federal and $945 for State. Not terrible, but I had really hoped my Federal would be lower, as I increased my withholding last year to help cover it. Plus, our payroll company never got me set up in October to start having state income tax withheld, so nothing was set aside for that at all (I knew this and just decided to fix it this January, so now I have plenty going there and should come out about even with State for 2017). I'll probably get this all a little bit lower. I haven't entered everything. I know somewhere I have a "tax folder" where I saved all my donation receipts to Goodwill and Salvation Army. The state tax return seems almost harder to figure out than Federal, but maybe that's just because I'm not familiar with it.
The other not as good news yet, is I still haven't had my review for work to see if/what salary increase I might be getting. Last year it was done by mid February and was on my end of February paycheck. Would be nice to get an extra hundred or two a month. I went through our payroll and see about 1/2 have gotten their increases so far. The raise percentages range for the "regular folk" from 4% to 8.3% (so far), with the majority being in the 6% range. Though management got 38% raises last Fall! and the owners gave themselves almost 30% raises! I'm not sure why the past couple of years I have been the only one to be under even the minimum range of what everyone else got. Two years ago I got a measly 1.3% and last year was at 2.6%. Prior to that I always got nice raises in the 4-5% range. I really have no idea how they decide on how much for everyone. You'd think they'd kind of just decide on a percentage range, mainly so they can stick in their salaries budget for the year. I'm just budgeting/anticipating a 2.5% raise for me. If I get more than that, then I will be pleasantly surprised.
I always kind of chuckle to myself when my boss occasionally makes a comment that she will have to work until she's 80 to afford to retire, to which I of course agree that I will be for sure! She makes over $200k a year plus her husband has a decent job. Pretty sure she could retire right now if she wanted to LOL.
So glad the property taxes were finally paid. I hope you get a nice raise this year. My employer does not give yearly salary increases or conduct performance reviews. Funny about your boss working until she is 80. My boss makes over $200,000 a year and his wife works, but he is completely broke (car payments, mortgage, etc.). He often complains about how his credit card gets turned off...go figure.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are a lot of people who make really good money and spend every dime they have. My boss doesn't come across that way (she drives older mid priced car), but you never know.
DeleteI think the downside to your job is that you know how much everybody makes. That is usually why employers don't want employees talking about how much money they make. They start asking questions about why they don't make as much or get as much of a raise. In my opinion, put aside what everybody else makes and make a list of the assets you bring to the job to negotiate your next raise.
ReplyDeleteyes, I try not to let it affect me too much, knowing it all. I'm paid decent and it's a very good company to work for.
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