Coming up short, rental

So ever since moving to Florida and owning my own home I have had a relatively large tax refund each year thanks to the combination of tax breaks from ownership and my withholding a little more than I need to at my job.  I have always used it as almost a yearly savings/bonus plan to myself as the refund is normally used to fund some improvement or addition to the household.  I don’t think I have ever had a refund less than 4 digits in length.

So I got an email from my accountant yesterday with the news that I was once again going to be receiving a refund this year.  The bad news was it was tiny, roughly 350 bucks.  I did expect my refund to be smaller this year but did not expect it to be that small.  In 2015 I made a little more timing races and via my Google AdSense earnings.  The big culprit in hacking away at my refund was the fact that I cashed in the beneficiary IRA that was left to me from my mom’s estate.  Although that money was well spent, paying for the flooring upgrade we did last year, it came with a tax burden. I feel disappointed but like I said, I really shouldn’t be surprised.  It does mean that some things I was thinking about like a new 75 inch tv will have to be back burnered until the financial tides shift a little bit.

Tomorrow morning Cindy and I will be doing our first tandem work as the Green Machine Timing team.  There is a small race at the high school no more than 3 miles from our house.  It is a first year event so they didn’t want to foot the expense of chip timing the race but they did make arrangements to rent my finish line arch.

It should be a nice low stress couple hours Saturday morning.  Race equipment rental doesn’t command nearly the same dollars as full service race timing but it also carries significantly less time/responsibility investment which is fine with me.