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Accounting
Apr. 9th, 2009 05:45 pmI finally filed my taxes this morning. Due to a lack of information when I arrived in Arizona, when I originally signed my hiring paperwork I did not request to have enough money withheld to cover all of my state income taxes. I usually have a slight extra amount withheld for my federal income taxes, so things generally balance out between them. But collectively, they provide me with no motivation to file early because there's no refund waiting that I could tuck into my savings account sooner rather than later.
I also finally updated my spending records for March, which always puts me in an interesting frame of mind. Some of my friends make fun of me for keeping (more-or-less) meticulous records of my spending habits (I still find my margin of error pretty shocking). I have to smile inwardly whenever that happens, because I know my financial self all too well: if I'm not meticulous, I will simply spend all of the money that I have.
Since I'd like to be able to save up for big purchases, like my upcoming trip to Australia next October, and since I'd like to be able to pay off the money I owe to my parents (and Sallie Mae) for my undergraduate education, I have stuck with the meticulous route. And besides, isn't it kind of convenient and nice to know where your money is going?
Now that my taxes are filed and I know my annual income for 2008 (my personal record-keeping for 2008 got spotty), and now that my financial life has reached some sort of stable-state, my inner statistician is sorely tempted to start analyzing my spending habits.
For example (and this is a really basic thing), I determined that 10% of my income goes to federal and state income taxes. After taxes, 24% of my income went towards housing, 15.6% of it went towards groceries (not including eating out; this is a rough estimate), 5.2% went to utilities (including my cell phone; this is also a very rough estimate), and I managed to sock away 13.9%.
Once I get all of the 2009 numbers, I will have so much more data to play with...heh heh heh...
I also finally updated my spending records for March, which always puts me in an interesting frame of mind. Some of my friends make fun of me for keeping (more-or-less) meticulous records of my spending habits (I still find my margin of error pretty shocking). I have to smile inwardly whenever that happens, because I know my financial self all too well: if I'm not meticulous, I will simply spend all of the money that I have.
Since I'd like to be able to save up for big purchases, like my upcoming trip to Australia next October, and since I'd like to be able to pay off the money I owe to my parents (and Sallie Mae) for my undergraduate education, I have stuck with the meticulous route. And besides, isn't it kind of convenient and nice to know where your money is going?
Now that my taxes are filed and I know my annual income for 2008 (my personal record-keeping for 2008 got spotty), and now that my financial life has reached some sort of stable-state, my inner statistician is sorely tempted to start analyzing my spending habits.
For example (and this is a really basic thing), I determined that 10% of my income goes to federal and state income taxes. After taxes, 24% of my income went towards housing, 15.6% of it went towards groceries (not including eating out; this is a rough estimate), 5.2% went to utilities (including my cell phone; this is also a very rough estimate), and I managed to sock away 13.9%.
Once I get all of the 2009 numbers, I will have so much more data to play with...heh heh heh...
