I have just finished our tax return for 2021.  Mostly it was waiting to see if there were any corrections for the 1099.  There wasn't but there has been in the past and usually it's Ameritrade and I wait until March 15th.  Anyway we filed and we owe $237.  Nice.  That the closest to $0 we have ever been. It's pretty nuts to be so close.  I also had to file the kiddos with their 1099B since I tax loss harvested in 2020 and then harvested some gains in 2021. 

I find it intersting how all over the place we've always been. You'd think we'd be more predictable since I do taxes for a living.  But there is always something so this is awesome that we are so close.  I would prefer to be plus or minus $500 every year.  But we've seemed to either a lot like four figures or get back four figures and I'm not usually happy either way.

How did your taxes turn out?

Sigh, so I took in the 2015 Sienna minivan for a repair to the sliding door.  Covered by recall and it wasn't opening.  A clip thing was broken or missing.  Well anyway I come back and they say great free.  But we recommend you do the water pump, 90k service, and drive belt for $1700. I say thanks I'll have to consider it and will make an appointment later.  The guy says if your car starts to overheat stop driving.  I will probably call a friends mechanic and see if I can get a better deal.  

No i'm not replacing the minivan it's great. I plan on keeping it forever.  I'd rather buy 2 more cars and keep the minivan until it breathes it's last breath.  Which in my world will be another 15 years.  But that aside, I realize that DH and seriously not car people and maybe it's because we just aren't great drivers and we get super unlucky with our cars.

So then on the legacy which just got repaired over the bumper, sensor and light, I emailed the adjuster and was told it went to adjucation and we'll see what happens.  Maybe I get my deductible maybe I don't.  It'll be another few months. Okay but then my DH came home and told me that the car was hit again.  Sigh.  No idea but on driver door bottom.  I am sitting staring at it thinking do I really need to get it repaired?  Do we make a claim?  Or just pay out of pocket?

Then I get in one morning and the subaru windshield is cracked. I don't recall a rock hitting it but we've had a ton of rock claims.  Like I said cars and us aren't exactly great friends.  FWIW we typically pay $1000/6 month for insurance on 2 cars and 2 drivers. This is on me since I've had two speeding tickets within a year.  3/2020 I got a ticket for 36 miles an hour in a 30 mph zone.  And second ticket i got was 77 mph on freeway of 70 mph limit in 8/2020.  So I deserve my stupid tax.  DH also got a few tickets of 26  and 28 mph in 20 mph zone (camera tickets so not moving violations you just pay stupidity).  

This could also be why we are just blah and meh about cars they seem like headaches for us.  I do think it would be nice to get a newer EV but then I think nope. It's too much and I might like it too much. Better off sticking with boring and safe.

See if you understand this headache merrill lynch is giving me.  They issued me a 1099R for money i did not take out in 2021 from a Roth IRA because i moved it to chase.  Then they cashed it out in February 2022 because I called and it was a headache to move the $65.  Well I got the 1099 and argued with them and now they are trying to give me another 1099 for 2022 for the same money.  

I called and said how can it be legal to give me a 1099R for the same money two years in a row? They said they could make a 60 day rollover but then they were told that it wasn't possible.  When I pointed out it was incorrect they kept trying to fix everything but the right way of sending me a 1099R corrected. 

I gave up today and called them and told them stop already.  Send me a corrected 1099R period.  No more lies, no more "fixing" a problem to cause more problems. I am filing a form 4852 and that's it.  I'm done.   Sometimes these companies do things to cover their own behind instead of the right thing.

Well we have a 2016 Subaru Legacy and a 2015 Toyota Sienna and they are both great cars in great shape and fairly new.  The legacy has 51k miles and the Sienna has 85k miles.  So they have I think a lot of life in them. If we did the 10 year rule we have another 3 years left on the Sienna and 4 years on the legacy.  I've always thought that we would replace both cars in about 2-3 years and keep the Sienna but replace the legacy with another sedan and then get a SUV but keep the Sienna.  Mostly because it'll be getting very worthless at 10 years and it's very useful to haul stuff and people around in a pinch.  But I'd like to also think we could afford to have a third car and still buy me something newish if not new. 

In the past we had considered buying a used BMW i3 or Nissan Leaf because they were cheap.  They would replace the Subaru Legacy but we just didn't want to spend the money.  We've owned our cars since 2019 for the subaru and 9/2020 for Sienna.  We are coming up on 2 years without car payments again (we previously went from 2003-2010 without a car payment then got into a cycle of car payments till 2020.

But back to the topic at hand.  On the Legacy we drove 367 gallons of gas last year.  At the current price of $4.39/gallon that is $1611.37/year in gas.  We drove 340 gallons of gas on the Sienna.  $1492.60.  So it's more likely we'd replace the Legacy sedan because there isn't a viable option to replace the Sienna.  The Tesla X isn't really as big, much nicer but there are other nice SUV more comparable for practical purposes.

$1611/year in gas minus electric costs plus maintenance of the car is what we would be saving.  You can't count tires, but more like oil changes 2x/year at $100 = $200 and once every 3 years $900 for 30k mile service.  So $500/year or I could estimate say $900/ year so $2500/year is what we could be saving having an electric car.  

A long range Tesla model 3 is $51k plus taxes and fee so $55k/$2500 year = 22 years to break even.  But living what if gas costs $6/gallon?  Then $2202/year in gas for our subaru legacy plus $800/year maintenance = $3k.  That would still be 18 years to break even.

Even with the tax credits it's not financially advantagous for us to buy an electric car.  One day it might make sense, like our cars need replacement or they get into an acccident.  But otherwise?  Have you actually looked at what it would cost to get one?  And what you would really save

So My dental bill as you know was like $4k. I paid $500 on a credit card because as I was walking out they said you need to pay $500.  I was like well shouldn't we wait for the bill?  They said no.   They said they would refund me if I overpaid but it would take months to sort it out so they wanted a deposit.  I have no idea if this normal but what choice do I really have right?

So now I saw that for one of the days (I went 2 days for the root canal) my responsibility is $86.05.  I'm not sure what the other portion is but I'm wondering will I see my money?  Do I call and say I saw that half of the bill settled?  Do I keep waiting until I see the other half of the bill settled?  Why is the later day settled but not the first day?  

EOB is

Billed $1532

Negotiated $671.51

Paid $774.44

responsibility $86.05

Um okay.  So now what?

As a side note my younger child got braces and I paid $3k this time OOP because she only needs the top braces 1st round.  My older child had upper, lower, and frontal headgear (not normal) and I paid $6k.  I don't know if this is the norm but seriously no I shopped around to 3 people and all were the same price.  Even better is the lack of orthodontia coverage.

Anyway I kept the headgear just in case that tiny piece of equipment was $1500 alone.  They told me to keep it and maybe I could reuse it or my DK might need it.  What can you do?

Last year our insurance paid out $25239 for March to December.  Our portion?  $1081.95.  Not bad.  Our premium for the March to December was $2581.40 for medical and $244.90 for dental.  I don't know what the megacorp paid for the first two months except they paid $5041 DD box 12.  So I don't recall what we paid.

Tomorrow an update on my car insurance and accident.  

Things are going well for us financially and we are looking ahead to the future and the kids.  In a way that matters looking ahead at the future is easy.  It's easy to say wow we are good.  I'm not worried and relaxed and breathe. 

But taking time to smell the roses is harder.  It's the here and now.  Right now looking at ourselves and saying are we really enjoying our money?  Are we really enjoying our time?  That's two really hard questions.

This past year, and it's literally been 1 year, has been a lesson in budgeting I haven't struggled with since 2015-2016 when we went without income and took a sabbatical.  Since then things really relaxed again and we didn't budget.  We didn't really budget from 2010-2015 after we had kids but lived on a "pot" of money.  And all this time we have been really comfortable.  We didn't really want for anything, and honestly we still don't.

But a couple things have changed in this past year and last weekend when we were away DH made a comment to me "I don't want to worry about money period. I want to spend to enjoy the time we have when we have because I think we now have too much money and not enough time."  I fully agree, so much so that I want him to quit working asap.  I want him to realize the kids are growing too fast and all these snippets of time is sliding by.

So we are sort of having a windfall and I might as post it here since I did it on the forum that it's around $320k after taxes.  It's not an inheritance we earned this.  My inclination is to save it all.  But I know my DH doesn't want to. He wants to see a tangible spending of this money for something we want but don't need and aren't being "responsible".  But I am really struggling with that perspective.

I want to save 50% to kids college/brokerage. I struggle with putting it all into 529 because we already have around $40-50k per kid right now and more years to save.  But at the same time the opportunity to dump$75k into each 529 seems tempting.  Then i'd like to save $20k to ibonds this year and next year.  That leaves us with $80k.  Do we spend it?  Do we save it?

I don't know.  And if so how much can we allow ourselves to spend?  I feel our lifestyle is very nice and I would like to not budget but other than that I dont' know I'm ready to get nicer stuff than I have.