Matt and I filed our taxes yesterday - we have only slightly procrastinated on that one! We actually went through the whole process twice because Matt used an online program to do the entering and the first program we used indicated we owed the state of Nebraska about $600! YIKES!! It also said that we would get money back from the federal government - but not enough to cover what we owe. So, we decided to start over using TurboTax and after we got everything entered we ended up getting money back from the federal governement and the state of Nebraska and only owe Missouri a little bit.

Moral of the story - use TurboTax if you plan to do your taxes yourself :)

All of the money is going into savings which is exciting - in my single life I was rarely able to be able to afford to put money into savings. Just my monthly expenses kept me living almost month-to-month. But now that Matt and I are married and sharing many of those expenses we have been able to really save some money and getting some extra perks like a tax return (yes, I realize it would be better if we didn't pay our the money in the first place, but a refund is better than owing) really help in that whole process. We would like to be able to purchase a house sometime in the near future and eventually we will need to replace one or both of our vehicles - Matt's first, likely. We have both discovered that it is easier to save money when you have money saved. It is very important to me to live with financial security. I don't buy into the idea of saving so much money that you aren't able to do the things that you want to do now, but I do want to feel secure in knowing that if something happened to either Matt or I - we would be okay financially. We aren't quite there yet, but we are definitely on our way :)

All of this talk of taxes and finances makes me feel like a grown-up - yikes!