Transform Your Tax Refund into a Financial Leap Forward

Ever find yourself with a tax refund and no plan, only to watch it disappear as quickly as it arrived? We've all been there.

This episode is your roadmap to making that refund truly count. As the tax season is upon us, we're taking a hard look at financial strategies that can transform a mundane tax refund into a powerful financial tool.

We walk you through several ideas of what to do with your tax refund such as bolster your emergency savings account to prepare for those inevitable future expenses, put money in retirement savings, or even how to responsibly set aside funds for that dream bass boat.

It's all about intentionality and smart savings goals, with a sprinkle of personal anecdotes to keep things relatable. Tax season needn't be a time of anxiety; it's an opportunity to get ahead and perhaps even find some joy in strategic money planning.

In this episode, we also crack open the playbook on reducing your tax liability if you owe this year instead of getting a refund. We discuss tax deductions and savvy home improvements that come with sweet tax credits and how to amplify your retirement savings. 

No stone is left unturned, from 401(k) matches – that's free money, folks – to the tax benefits of launching a side hustle.

And don't forget those potential state and local tax breaks that might be waiting for you to claim them. Your tax refund can work harder, and we'll show you how.

Sign up for my email newsletter and get a free copy of 10 Questions to Help You Discover Your Spouse's Money Personality.

Transcript

Introduction: 0:01

This is Life, love and Money with Dr Angela K Love, the podcast for couples who want to get a handle on their finances and strengthen their marriage at the same time. We take deep dives into the money challenge's most married couples face and get real about them, plus practical tips on how to ensure a rock-solid future for your money and your marriage Now, dr Angela K Love.

Angela Love: 0:31

Tis the season for tax refunds.

Phil Love: 0:34

Also the season for it being cold. It's still February down here in Texas. I was hoping that we would be fully into spring by now, but apparently the winter bite has come back.

Angela Love: 0:44

Yes, it's very cold today. I shouldn't say very. It's somewhat colder today.

Phil Love: 0:49

Well, there's some folks, obviously in the northern climates, that would laugh at temperatures being in the 40s, but we take it seriously down here when it gets in the 30s and 40s. True.

Angela Love: 1:00

But up north in South Dakota it's dry, you can have lower temperatures that are cold, and it doesn't seem as bad as here in Texas where you have the humidity and you have the cold. It just seems colder.

Phil Love: 1:13

Yes, I think you're right on that, but we're at leap day today when we're recording. We have 15 days left before business returns are due, like LLCs and partnerships and corporations and stuff. That would be March 15th, and then that would be 46 days until personal returns are due.

Angela Love: 1:35

That's right.

Phil Love: 1:35

Unless you file an extension.

Angela Love: 1:37

And if you file an extension, you have until October 15th.

Phil Love: 1:41

October 15th on the personal and September 15th on businesses.

Angela Love: 1:45

That's correct. The only thing about getting a refund at least early in our marriage, we would not really plan what we're going to do with that and we weren't making a lot of money, so we would let things kind of slide, such as if we needed some clothes or we needed to fix something like tires or some sort of maintenance thing. We would get our money and we'd spend it all and it would be gone before we knew it.

Phil Love: 2:08

Yeah, so we were able to save up enough for those refunds to get a nice bass boat.

Angela Love: 2:14

Yeah, nice bass boat that would be fun to go out there and go fishing. One of the things that I thought we would talk about is what to do with your refund. If you're going to be getting one, and that way, if you are intentional with your refund, you're less likely to spend it all and then go. Oh, what did I do with?

Phil Love: 2:30

that Well, you could squirrel it all away in your savings, just put it all there and not do anything with it at all.

Angela Love: 2:36

What we've started doing over the past couple of years. We either put it in our savings or we decide where we're going to spend the money, where we're going to put it, and we decide that ahead of time. So I think planning before you get the refund is a really good idea.

Phil Love: 2:50

Being intentional.

Angela Love: 2:51

Yep being intentional and there's different things you can do with your refund that people haven't probably thought about rather than going out and spending it and splurging all of it on clothes or eating out or going to entertainment places or concerts or something like that. And I'm not saying don't buy some clothes, if you need some clothes, just don't splurge all of it and then not realize where you put it.

Phil Love: 3:12

So what are some ideas you have about where we could spend it other than a bass boat?

Angela Love: 3:17

You really want a bass boat, don't you? Well, I looked this up and anyone can go look it up on the internet and most of the websites suggest the same things. There's things that we've done in the past, such as replace some windows in our house when we needed that, replace tires on a vehicle, but you could build your emergency fund. A lot of folks they create a savings account but not an emergency fund, or they have an emergency fund but they don't have a savings account. And what I mean by the difference of that is emergency fund is for those things that are surprise purchases, surprise expenses, such as a medical bill that you weren't expecting. Maybe you get in a car accident, or you get sick and you've had a harder time getting over the illness and now you've got these medical bills that you need to pay for. Or something breaks down in your house, the water heater goes out, your tires need to be replaced on your vehicle, just all sorts of things that we don't think about. So that's the emergency fund, where you have that in case something like that comes up.

Angela Love: 4:14

But a savings account is where you allocate different things for the future. Part of it might be for retirement, part of it might be for vacation, part of it could be for a future house or a car Just different things. Give the different jobs to your savings account. So much of it goes to this. A certain percentage is going to this job, the other percentage is going to that job and you allocate the money so. That way you're less likely to go into your savings and spend it because you know that it's for different things. So you could put part of your refund into the emergency fund and or your savings account and then give it a job if it's in the savings account.

Phil Love: 4:50

Would you do multiple savings accounts or multiple things, or just do fewer savings accounts, but kind of group the stuff together to where? Okay, the savings account I have is for my bass boat and in addition to that, I'm looking at a new truck eventually. I'm looking at these things.

Angela Love: 5:06

I think that depends on the person. It depends on your personality type and the way that your wired your brain is wired. What is easier for you to keep track of your finance? I know that there's some apps out there that you can use where in one account, but you can have it allocated so that you know how much, what percentage, goes to what, or how much of what's in your savings goes to which item or which category. There's some folks that like to use Excel, others still like to use paper. So I think it's whatever you want to do, but I do know folks that have also had those separate accounts.

Angela Love: 5:38

They've had multiple savings accounts and then they've titled those. So, for example and I'm going to speak to the world of credit unions because that's what I know if you are a member of a credit union, you open up one main account, a member account, you do one login and you have your checking or various accounts in there and you can label those. So you could go in your savings. You could have, let's say, five different savings accounts and you could label those one for vacation, one for vehicle, one for retirement, one for emergencies and that might work for someone who is more systematic and they like to see all the different categories. Another person may say, oh, that's just too much, I don't want to have five or six different accounts. So they may want just one savings account, and then you could keep track of the different categories on paper or Excel or Google Sheets or whatever works for you.

Phil Love: 6:28

Which probably mentioned that some people they have extra money withheld from their paycheck just so they can get that big refund.

Angela Love: 6:35

Right.

Phil Love: 6:36

It's kind of a forced savings thing, but last time I checked, uncle Sam didn't pay you any interest on that.

Angela Love: 6:41

That's true.

Phil Love: 6:42

So if you're constantly getting these massive checks back from the government you know thousands of dollars you may want to go back and see if you can adjust your withholdings to not have as much money withheld so you get to use that money and instead of having Uncle Sam keep it for you, then try to discipline yourself to take that extra money and put it in a savings account or something where you can at least get some interest on it.

Angela Love: 7:06

That's true, that's a great idea. I think the danger with getting the massive refund is that you get that and then you're like, oh, I have all this money. And I sometimes will go out and be like, oh, you know, it's okay if I spend extra, you know I'm here to get a pair of jeans, but it's okay if I get two pairs of pants and maybe a couple of blouses, because, oh, we've got this big refund.

Angela Love: 7:28

And that's the tendency with getting those big refunds, is that you all of a sudden you tend to overspend, you tend to splurge too much, and it's harder to be disciplined I think, at least for me and, like I said, it all has to do with your personality and how you're wired and how you view life and if that's going to be difficult for you or not.

Phil Love: 7:48

That's why a bass boat's probably okay, but a bass yacht is not a good idea.

Angela Love: 7:52

Is that even a thing? A bass yacht?

Phil Love: 7:54

I don't know, it just be a really bigger bass boat.

Angela Love: 7:56

You know just okay, you're really hung up on this, this bass boat.

Phil Love: 8:01

Are we?

Angela Love: 8:01

looking at bass boats in the future. Is that when I'm Subscribe?

Phil Love: 8:05

I don't know but what I do know is it's getting really close to crappie season out here and that is some of the finest freshwater eating fish and we definitely want to see if we can take advantage of that.

Angela Love: 8:17

Sure, sure, absolutely. So. Other ideas for your refund could be paying down high interest debt. The typical advice when someone says which should I pay off?

Angela Love: 8:29

The higher balanced credit card or the higher interest credit card and I don't have the typical answer for that, a lot of folks will say oh, you want to pay off that higher interest. I actually advise to look at your monthly plan, monthly budget, and if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you have a credit card bill with a high payment requirement because some credit cards they require 1% of your monthly payment, so of your monthly balance, to be your monthly payment. Others require 3% of your monthly balance to be your monthly payment so I actually recommend that if you're struggling from month to month because you have a high credit card payment, monthly payment and it's causing you to continue using that credit card as a source of cash to be able to live, then pay down that credit card with a big payment so that the payment will reduce, so that you have more disposable income during the month and you're less likely to use that credit card as a source of cash for your living expenses.

Phil Love: 9:31

That's a really good idea, I think, because and you're right it's not a one size fits all thing. Plus, the other thing I think you ought to look at is the debt you're looking at paying down. Is there any tax benefit to it? Like, for instance, if you have a farm and let's say you have a loan on your tractor, the interest on that tractor loan is an expense or it reduces your taxable income. So if you were to focus on that getting rid of that, as opposed to something that is a personal then it's one of those things. You need to kind of weigh that thing too.

Angela Love: 10:02

Sure, sure the thing with paying down a higher interest on a credit card. If it's a lower payment and it would help you to pay off the higher payment card, then you may want to do that so that you have more income to net income, disposable income, to do your living expenses, as I mentioned.

Phil Love: 10:19

That makes sense, a lot of sense.

Angela Love: 10:22

So what you can do with part of your refund is you can invest it, have it work for you, make some money off of that. You could also use part of the refund to do an improvement on your house, to increase the equity or increase the value of it.

Phil Love: 10:34

And something to look at there is there's quite a few improvements that you can do to your house that actually give you tax credits.

Phil Love: 10:41

Such as Well and first off, a tax credit is different than a deduction. What a deduction does is it takes my adjusted gross income. Say, for instance, if you had a $1,000 deduction and you had a adjusted gross income of $100,000, now your adjusted gross income is $99,000. But if you had a $1,000 tax credit, it goes all the way down to the bottom line that if I owed $1,000 in taxes and I have a $1,000 tax credit, I owed nothing in taxes. So it's really important to kind of look up and see what options you may have with the federal government. Or, if you are unlucky enough to live in most of the states in this country which have income tax, what impacts the income tax there. But a good example of some tax credit items is there's a lot of energy efficient things you can do to your house, such as installing energy efficient windows, solar power, if you want water heaters that have certain energy standards, and stuff may qualify doors, insulation.

Phil Love: 11:45

Exterior doors Exterior doors, yeah, insulation A lot of those things have tax credits on the federal level and may have it on the state level too. Say, for instance, if you did windows and your window comes out to $200 a window but you can get a tax credit $50 per window, then, essence, you've got $150 that you're spending on each window. Now remember that tax credit is going to come in the next year, so you get your refund this year for your taxes in 23, then you spend it in 24 and then that tax credit would impact the taxes you would owe at the end of 24.

Angela Love: 12:21

You know I'd like to say here too that if you decided to replace something, such as windows, person comes out. We have windows that need to be replaced and we had three different beds. Some were basically the price of replacing all the windows in our house was you could buy a nice home.

Phil Love: 12:38

It was stupid high.

Angela Love: 12:39

It was stupid high. So obviously that was an outlier. We just said no, we can't, we're not going to do that. But we also realized that it was going to be quite a chunk of money to replace all our windows. Our whole house seems to be windows. We have very little wall space because we have so many windows. But we both prefer that because you can see outside and we'd like to be able to see outside and see nature. We live on a big farm, or big farm to us, and so we just we enjoy seeing the outdoors.

Angela Love: 13:06

But you don't have to go and buy all those windows all at once. You don't have to do all of them. We're doing it in phases. So we did. We're doing it in three phases. We did phase one.

Angela Love: 13:16

We saved up money to do phase one.

Angela Love: 13:18

We replaced the windows that were the worst, that were giving us the most problems, and then we're saving up the money and when we get it, get enough for phase two, we'll go ahead and do phase two of the windows and then we'll save up money again to do phase three.

Angela Love: 13:31

This is why it's good to have a savings account that has jobs, because you can go put the money in there and go okay, a certain percentage or a certain dollar amount is being saved and it's going to go towards these windows and when we get the window for the next phase and we'll call up our window guy, which we told him what we were doing, so he knows and he was all for it and we'll let him know. Okay, we're ready for the next phase of windows and we already outlined which windows we're doing in each phase. So that gives us a goal to get that done. And by the time that we're done with all those windows, not only will we have windows that work properly and those sort of thing, it'll also help with the energy efficiency of the house. And in our state, in Texas, we happen to have a tax credit for windows. Now I don't know if they're going to continue that in the future, but we have taken advantage of that, or we took advantage of that last year, that's federal tax credit.

Angela Love: 14:23

Oh, it's a federal.

Phil Love: 14:24

Okay, we don't have any income tax in taxes.

Angela Love: 14:27

That's right.

Phil Love: 14:27

It's a federal tax credit, okay, but the reason for spreading it out to on the tax credit is tax credits usually have a ceiling for a type of top dollar amount that you can get. Say, for instance, if you your max, you could spend as $5,000 to get the highest tax credit for the windows. Then if you're going to, if you're okay with doing it over several years, then you could break that up and get the max tax credit for multiple years for that particular project.

Angela Love: 14:53

Right, and that's also why we decided to do that. One was we didn't want to pay the big chunk of money and two, we wanted to spread out the tax benefit, the tax credit benefit, over several years. There's some folks that are like, well, I'm not even getting a refund. I don't know if this conversation is applicable, but we're going to talk about that what to do if you're owed taxes.

Phil Love: 15:13

Write a check.

Angela Love: 15:15

Write a check. We need to share what folks can do to either lessen their tax liability so they owe less, or, hopefully they won't owe They'll be getting money back. How can they go about making payments Like, do they have to pay it all up front? They don't. They can make payments right.

Phil Love: 15:31

It is possible and what you would do. I'd go to the IRS website and they do have a payment plan that you could request from the IRS, which would include kind of an installment agreement.

Angela Love: 15:43

Is there a penalty or are you paying more? Like, is there interest tapped onto that?

Phil Love: 15:47

Yeah, they'll probably charge you interest and fees and stuff like that that you have. I mean, that's one thing you could do. You may look at that and weigh the possibility. Is it better for me to get a personal loan or a loan on something just to pay them off and pay the credit union or the bank the interest?

Angela Love: 16:05

I guess you'd have to look at the interest and penalties from the IRS versus the interest that you're paying back on the personal loan with the financial institution.

Phil Love: 16:12

Yep, you'd have that. That would be something that you would want to kind of weigh. As you're looking at all this, I think that you probably need to maybe do some adjustments. So if you had a big whopping tax bill this year that you owed, then if you expect that your finances are going to be the same for the next year for your income and so on and so forth, you may want to have a little more money held out of your paycheck. Or if you have a business and you expect that to be similar, you may increase the amount of your quarterly estimated tax payments you're making, so you don't have the same issue at the end of tax year for 24 as you do this year, sure.

Angela Love: 16:49

Now, we are not CPAs. This is not formal tax advice. Everybody's situation is different, so if you wanted more concrete information on what to do, you need to reach out to a CPA or a tax accountant or tax attorney. Because everyone's situation is different. So you would want to talk it out with the person who knows all about your finances or could look into your finances to give you the best advice. Yeah, this is just general information, not telling anyone to go do a specific thing, just different ideas.

Phil Love: 17:19

You're exactly right on that, and you probably really don't want to be under the thumb of the federal government, obviously.

Angela Love: 17:26

Now there's things that you can do to lower your tax liability and this is something that the listeners can do more research into it, talk to their CPA or tax attorney and one is to contribute more to your retirement account or your health savings or your flexible spending account. There's a misconception with this right and you do better at explaining this where we often think, if I go ahead and I'm going to contribute $100 a month to my retirement account, that means I'm going to have $100 less on my net income, and that's not the case. Why is that?

Phil Love: 18:00

Because if that money comes out of your retirement, it's coming out prior to them figuring out taxes. So if that $100 is extra, is coming out prior to the tax, then the number that the taxes calculate on is $100 less. So maybe that $100 comes out to once you figure the tax. Say, if you're in a 15% tax bracket, that'd be $15 extra tax. So instead of that impact dropping your check by $100, now it's going to drop by $85.

Angela Love: 18:30

Right, and that's also true for health savings and flexible spending accounts, where the money is taken out before taxes.

Phil Love: 18:38

Yeah, now we should quantify that, because the health savings account is the only way to qualify for that. From what I know, is you got to have a high deductible health plan with your employer.

Angela Love: 18:50

Okay.

Phil Love: 18:50

Now the beauty of a health savings account is that money can be used any time. It doesn't have to be used in a certain year for medical expenses. So you could save this up and have it grow and invest money because you have different companies that have it and they allow you different investment plans and then use that years down the road. The flexible spending account is different because there you have a limited time that you can use that money, use it or lose it.

Phil Love: 19:16

Yep, that's right. You have a limited time you could use it and usually it's going to be in that calendar year. You have the flexible spending account and up, I think, to the end of March or mid-April the following year for expenses that you had in the prior year for the flexible spending account. There's also a dependent care account or the flexible spending account could be used for dependent care. So if you have like daycare stuff you're spending for your kids so you can go to work, or medical expenses for the kids, you can do that. But there again it's a snooze or lose type thing. If you don't use it and you're snoozing, you lose it, but the contributing to your retirement there are limits based upon.

Angela Love: 19:59

There's also, is it the Roth IRA that actually comes out after taxes?

Phil Love: 20:04

Yeah, if you did a Roth IRA and the IRA stuff is different than contributing to your retirement account. Right your retirement accounts. There are limits on contributing to your retirement accounts that you have based upon your age.

Angela Love: 20:17

But with some companies you can choose to contribute to a Roth IRA. You just need to understand that that money comes out after your taxes, not before.

Phil Love: 20:25

Yeah, now the Roth IRA. Though when you take the money out later on down the road, there's no tax on that.

Angela Love: 20:33

Right, but for the purposes of what we're talking about, if you would like to do a Roth IRA through your company's retirement offering that money is going to come out of after your taxes, so it would be dollar for dollar.

Phil Love: 20:44

It'll come out after your taxes, but it's not going to lower your tax liability.

Angela Love: 20:49

Right.

Phil Love: 20:49

Yeah, now, a regular IRA would.

Phil Love: 20:52

And a lot of times you can reduce your tax liability by contributing to a regular IRA. Usually a good idea if you have somebody preparing your taxes for you or you're doing a program like TurboTax is usually they should be able to go in and give you an estimation that, hey, if I were to contribute $2,000 to a regular IRA, what would happen to my tax refund or the tax bill that I owe? And then that money, if it's a self-directed IRA, you could choose where you want to put it. You could invest it with a savings account or a CD, or you could go invest it with a you know, open up a brokerage account if you wanted to have money market with a brokerage or stocks or whatever you want on that. Now, when you take money out later on down the road, that money is taxable at that time. But the thought process is hey, I'm taking money out of this down the road and I don't have the same amount of income I had when I put in, so I'm at a lower tax basis.

Angela Love: 21:50

Now the best place to find out what's going on with your company is to talk to your HR department, find out what the different retirement offerings are. Do they do health savings accounts? Do they do flexible, if you don't know, and to go talk to them. They get very excited if you say that you want to invest some money or contribute money into the retirement program or use some of their programs. Now they can't give you any advice. They can't tell you what to do because that's not their area of expertise. But they can tell you how it functions, when the money would come out, if it comes out before or after taxes, how it all works.

Angela Love: 22:25

Now, another area to help lower your tax liability is with the retirement plan. A lot of people leave money on the table with that because a lot of companies do matching up to a certain amount. If you're not taking advantage of it, that's free money. If they're saying, well, match what you contribute up to 6%, you should go for that. Or up to 4%, you should do that because that's free money from your company if they're matching.

Phil Love: 22:51

Sure you would be amazed how little of an impact that has on you in terms of your net pay. By taking 6% out of that.

Angela Love: 23:00

Right, because you're taking that out before taxes.

Phil Love: 23:03

And it's just lowering your taxes.

Angela Love: 23:05

Right.

Phil Love: 23:05

Yeah, and not only is it lowering your taxes that you have for your income tax, but it's lowering other taxes that you have, because you've got social security tax and Medicare tax and you got state income tax Again, if you're unlucky enough to live in most of the states in this country which have income tax. Fortunately we live in the free state of Texas, which is not Right Now.

Angela Love: 23:26

another way that you can reduce your tax liability possibly is to start a side gig, start a business.

Phil Love: 23:33

Yeah.

Angela Love: 23:33

Because there's a lot of deductions that you can take. You can do home office deductions If you travel a lot for your job. You have to drive. There's some rules with that. So you want to look into all these things. But you might be able to deduct mileage. You might be able to deduct a portion of your utilities. It just depends on what the business is and what you're doing.

Phil Love: 23:54

Well, the home office deduction usually that's used to be a thing that really flags possibilities for audits. So that's kind of a double-edged sword on that. What I'd say on the business side is first off, do you have a hobby that you really like that you could make money at? Say, for instance, if you're a woodworker and you like doing that, well, when you're a woodworker you're going to spend money on wood and screws and glue and tools and stuff like that. But now, if I can take that and I can sell some of my items that I would have, then those expenses that I had for some of those expenses that I was already spending on anyway, now they become a business expense which is going to reduce the income I receive from the woodworking business but also receives your overall income.

Phil Love: 24:43

We have a farm. We can sell eggs and honey, and then we also have some pigs we can sell and we've got cows we can sell. But it takes feed to feed the animals and stuff like that. And the goal is to try to take everyday expenses that you would have and to turn them into something that's deductible. So we go into town to buy feed the feed's deductible, but we were going there anyway, maybe do another errand. Now we've got all that mileage going in and coming back.

Phil Love: 25:14

That would be kind of the goal. Is there a way I could take some of my daily expenses that I already have and could they be used business-wise in a way to make some profit? And if your business flourishes to the point that you've got more income than all these expenses, then you probably you're doing great. Maybe you just have to make some estimated tax payments that you normally wouldn't make. But I think all of us, if we chose between having a bunch of deductions to lower our taxes or to have another $100,000 of income and paying tax on it, would probably choose the latter.

Angela Love: 25:54

That's a good point. Another thing you can do to lower your tax liability is to take advantage of some of the deductions itemized deductions. One of those would be to make contributions or donations to charitable organizations such as your church, and you can itemize those and lower your tax liability.

Phil Love: 26:11

Possibly, but remember your itemized deductions need to exceed the standard deduction pretty high, because standard deduction now, I think is like for married couples like $24,000 or something like that. But there's a whole bunch of different things that fall in this category Interest you pay on your house, property taxes, state income taxes, charitable contributions, expenses you pay to get your taxes done.

Angela Love: 26:34

One other way that you might be able to save some money is to look into your state and state and local tax breaks. Sometimes they have some different tax breaks that you might not be aware of. If you're using a program such as Turbo Tax or you go to H&R Block and they do the taxes for you, they'll let you know of those, such as taxes Maybe there's a credit for if you're renting a place. Another thing is H&R Block will do your taxes the simple taxes. They'll do it for free. So some states will do your taxes for you, such as the Department of Revenue.

Angela Love: 27:08

I know in mid-Missouri I don't know if they still do this, but when we live there, if you went in and you were doing 1040EZ and you were doing your state taxes, I don't know that they would help you with the federal side, but they would definitely help you with a state tax return and they would do that for free. So you could look at that to get your taxes done. Now if you have more complicated taxes, then you may want to look at getting a program such as Turbo Tax. That'll walk you through it and then we do the audit defense to just make sure, and that does cost more, but we have had to use that in the past, so that's also an option or go to a tax professional.

Phil Love: 27:43

If you have real complex taxes, it doesn't hurt to hire a professional to do those taxes for you if it's out of your league.

Angela Love: 27:51

Now, if you want to help yourself on cost with a tax professional, a CPA, tax attorney, that sort of thing typically it's a CPA you want to have everything in order, have all of your receipts that would be applicable for your taxes, especially if you have a small business or a side gig of some sort. You want to have everything in order. That makes it easier for them and if you're using a program like Quicken, you can download your file onto a jump drive and give it to them or email them that. However, they want you to get that to them and if you have everything organized, they're spending less time. Therefore, your costs are going to be a little bit less. If you have to give them piecemeal things and give them a little bit at a time where they have to do a lot of digging and they're having to wait and it's very disorganized, then that's more of their time doing your taxes and it's going to probably cost you more to have them do your taxes.

Phil Love: 28:47

The shoebox of receipts.

Angela Love: 28:48

Yes, don't give them a shoebox of receipts.

Phil Love: 28:51

Which that could be kind of scary.

Angela Love: 28:53

Or the big folder of receipts. Have it organized. You can have them paper-clipped, put in different files for categories or whatnot. If you have it printed out, that helps out a great deal. So make it easy on your CPA. They'll also get your taxes done faster. The more organized it is and the cleaner it is, the happier they're going to be and the quicker that they can get through doing your taxes for you.

Phil Love: 29:16

Well, and if you have good records throughout the year, it gives you better information that you could make decisions on financially.

Angela Love: 29:24

Right. If you don't have good records, you may be missing out on some deductions or some benefits that could help you with your taxes as well, because you don't remember, you didn't track it, you didn't write it down. Your account may ask you for the information, but if you can't go locate it, then that makes it hard for them to be able to get that benefit for you, so it doesn't hurt when you're getting your taxes done this year to start planning for the next year. Absolutely Well, that's all I have.

Phil Love: 29:51

Sounds good. That's a lot for the folks to listen to. Sure, we want to thank you all for listening to the Life, love and Money podcast. Hopefully we got you a few little tips today that are going to help you during tax time what to do if you get a refund, what to do if you owe money and maybe some ways to help reduce your taxes in the future.

Angela Love: 30:11

Absolutely. We appreciate you listening to the Life, love, and Money podcast. One way that you can support us is by signing up for the monthly newsletter on angelaqlovecom. That's angelaqalelovecom. When you sign up for the newsletter, you will receive a free 10 questions to help you discover your spouse's money personality. Head on over to my website, angelaqlovecom, and sign up for the free newsletter and get your free 10 questions to help you discover your spouse's money personality. Thank you again for listening to the Life, love and Money podcast.