Don't count your refund before it's cashed
Posted
Mar 12 2008, 11:38 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
This post comes from Abby Freedman, a freelance writer and daughter of Smart Spending blogger Donna Freedman.
Thanks to a few hefty medical bills, my fiancé's tax refund was going to be sizable, too: $2,380. We had big plans for the money.
Note my use of the past tense.
In late January I sent in the forms. (Please don't ask why I didn't e-file. There's no good answer.) A few weeks later I checked the IRS Web site's handy "Where’s my refund?" feature and found that the money would be deposited on Feb. 29.
According to MSN Money's Liz Pulliam Weston, my fiancé was entitled to spend 10% of the refund however his little heart desired. Given that we'd been assured a deposit was imminent, I suggested he take $238 out of the paycheck he'd just received. He did, and spent it on hobby supplies.
If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans
I’ve known the cliché "Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched" for as long as I can remember.
Yet that's exactly what I did here: I assumed everything would go smoothly and the money would be in his account on time.
The refund never showed. Five business days after the alleged deposit was to have occurred, we called the bank, which had no record of it. No kidding.
Then we called the IRS. After reviewing the routing and bank account numbers, we learned that the last digit of his account was missing.
Of course, the IRS is sure we're to blame. And although I swear I triple-checked my work, there's every chance that I did leave off a digit when I wrote the routing number in pen on the printed form. (I know, I know: It's like I was trying to mess things up.)
The money will be ours -- a month from now
We could pay $39 to get a copy of the return, but what would be the point? Proving that the IRS goofed won't speed up the return process.
The real issue is that not only do we not have the $2,380 refund, we are also down the $238 he spent. That money would have gone toward one of our extra credit card payments.
The refund itself would have paid the bulk of our credit card balance, allowing us to start in on the last of the student loans. We probably could have paid off almost half of those before the wedding in May.
Now we have to wait for the IRS to clear this up. We were told it would take four weeks.
Into each budget a little tweak must fall
So what does all this mean? For starters, it means that I feel like an idiot.
It also means our repayment process is slowed down. We were really looking forward to a zero balance on the cards. Not exactly the end of the world, but disheartening nonetheless.
But it was a good reminder for me -- and now for the readers of this post -- that it's never good to count on any money until it's in your hot little hands. Life is filled with unforeseen events.
Lately, ours certainly has been. My fiance's health condition has been flaring up, causing him to miss work. A maid of honor's dress alterations will run an extra $120. Kmart e-mailed me to say that a November purchase (tablecloths for the reception) never went through, so I can expect $74 more on the credit card.
Sometimes I laugh bitterly or hide under my comforter. But mostly I just shrug my shoulders and go tweak the budget. Life goes on, and we're doing our best to learn from it.
And the fact that we can make it through financial difficulties before we even get married? That tells me that we're going to be OK -- even with a delayed refund.
