Terrifying Taxes!

In keeping with Michal's previous post regarding finances, I thought I would chronicle my recent experience with... (insert ominous music here...)

Filing TAXES!!

Up until I got married (this past summer), I was a dependent on my parent's tax returns.

This is because I :

1. Am a little spoiled.
2. Am a little privileged. 
3. Am a little sheltered. 
4. Have awesome parents who helped me out maybe a little too much...
5. Got married pretty young (22 - right out of college).

So this made filing taxes seem:

1. terrifying.
2. daunting.
3. WORLD ENDING.

(Yes, I have a flair for the dramatic.)

Anyways, 

I had off work today for MY BIRTHDAY!!! Just kidding, it was technically for President's Day, but my birthday was yesterday, so I'm counting this as my birthday present from my employer.

Husband had a break in classes/lessons/rehearsals after lunch today so he came home and we had a feast of left-over Pad Thai (from early birthday dinner) and Bar-B-Q (from real birthday dinner) and it was delicious. 

Then the discussion began of what to do with our free afternoon:

Me: What do you want to do?

Him: I dunno, what do you want to do.

Me: I dunno! (this is where I start thinking of the vultures in the Jungle Book)

Him: Why don't we get our taxes out of the way?

Well... Let me tell you, I have been pushing this to the back of my mind and pretending it didn't exist ever since I got my W-2s in the mail. But I knew it had to be done, and I knew I wanted husband's help because he's done it before, and I knew I wouldn't ever want to do after a long day at work, or want to spend any precious weekend time on it... so I agreed to spend part of my BIRTHDAY DAY OFF (okay... President's Day) doing taxes. 

We decided to file jointly. BECAUSE WE CAN!! (Yay for being married!)

Four W-2s, a few other forms, two phone calls to my dad, one to my mom, one interruption from our upstairs neighbor, two hours and a few tears later... We're DONE! 

It was a little stressful, and a little confusing (mostly because we've only been married since July and my name changed half way through the year) but since we're pretty poor, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been... and we're getting a nice return! YAY!

Afterwards, we rewarded ourselves with left-over birthday tiramisu. 

And it was delicious. 

And it almost made doing taxes bearable.