Oh, dudes, the beauty of unemployment. Since I went over 3 months without a job last summer (and since I hired an accountant to do my taxes this year) I am getting back about $2500 on my federal and (for the first time!) state income taxes.
Woot!
What are my plans for the moolah, you ask? Well, here’s the breakdown:
- Cut, color, highlight, and some fancy new hair product (plus tip): $315.54. And may I add, I feel human again. Thank gawd – my last cut and color was in August, when I started my new job, and not only was the color growing out absolutely grotesquely, all my gray was showing. Ewww. Now not only is my hair shiny, pretty, and full of life, it’s all blown out straight for our anniversary dinner tomorrow night. Hooray!
- Replenishing my stock of previous fancy hair product: $150. My hair’s curly and needs a LOT of TLC out here in the desert. This will buy me my favorite conditioner ($68 for 8 ounces, Kerastase rocks!) but also some of the leave-in conditioner that I like, the Warren Tricomi hair gum, and my favorite “curls rock!” spray.
- Monster payment to my credit card: $850 (thus bringing my total credit card debt under $6K – I’ve wiped out over 2/3 of it in just under a year since starting my new job). Again, hooray!
- Gambling/cab/alcohol/assorted having-fun money for Vegas Memorial Weekend Trip Sextacular: $600. We already pre-paid for our plane ticket, hotel, show, and all-venue club pass, so this is pretty much just incidentals.
- And this leaves me just under $600 for the purchase of new office-appropriate attire. I learned upon getting a job where I must wear such garb everyday but Friday (when an ASU t-shirt earns me the right to wear jeans) that I don’t have a heck of a lot of it, and I’m sick to death of everything that I own. I have as many pairs of dress pants as there are workdays in the week, and let me tell you, this is not a recipe for girly-happiness. There’s an outlet mall and a SteinMart near my cute new place, so the goal is 2 pairs of dress pants (1 brown, 1 navy blue), 5 shirts that are both office- and going-out-for-drinks appropriate, 1 pair of new walking sandals, 1 pair of cute/comfy shoes for officewear, and however many accessories I can squeeze out of that much money. Since I’m shopping at clearance/discount-friendly places, I am pretty confident I can stay within this budget (if I stay at $50 per item then I should be able to get everything on the list and some cute accessories, too).
Part of me feels like I should save some of it, but
- I got word last week that my contract for next year is renewed and no furlough next year, so I’m feeling secure in my job and will soon have a +10% jump in my paycheck (perhaps they gave us furlough so that we would feel like we were getting raises at the end of the FY even though we’re actually not), and
- I have $4500 in savings right now and while I’d rather have at least 3 months of expenses in the bank rather than two and a quarter…I’m thinking that is enough for most non-job-loss type emergencies.
Unfortunately, the awesome tax bracket I ended up in as a result of my unemployment is (hopefully) a one-time thing, although I suspect that this year’s furlough will lead me to get something next year, even if it’s not two and a half grand. However, I have promised the BF that I will play craps in Vegas and, if craps is kind to me, I will give blackjack another try (I gave that up after I lost $60 in a minute and a half…at least slot machines tease it out of you over the course of a few hours). If Vegas overall is kind to me, then I will probably make another monster credit card payment when I get back…we’ll have to see.
How did your taxes go?
If this post made you insanely jealous of Honey’s unemployment despite the fact that at the time she had a near-complete hysterical meltdown on a daily basis and made her BF’s life miserable…you might also enjoy:
