bullet dodged. almost.

it was more a glancing blow, I guess. no REAL harm, but it'll sting a little bit.

my W-2 showed up in the mail yesterday. so I did our taxes today, as that was the final piece of the puzzle... miyuki got hers last week, and we had all of our other stuff already done.

last year, we ended up owing over $1100 in taxes. that sucked ass and our savings took a sizable hit from it. it's the whole concept of us both making a decent salary, but not owning a home or having any children (the IRS frowns on using cats as tax deductions). we both reduced our deductions from 1 (as in each of us) to zero, and bumped up our retirement a little bit. it wasn't enough to get us in the black.

despite the fact that we put about $9k into tax-deferred retirement plans and I had nearly $1800 in deductible student loan interest, we still owe money. but at least this time we only owe 10% of what we owed last year, so that's easy enough to swallow.

the plan for 2008? I've already had EXTRA taxes taken out of my cheque. we're going to max out our retirement contributions, from 10 to 15% (which we should have been doing all along). between paying extra tax and reducing our taxable income, I'm hoping we might actually get a little bit back next year, instead of owing.

and for 2009, we should be in the drivers seat for taking on a mortgage. all our finances should fall into place, the debt will be gone and we can afford to take on the extra expense. and seeing as mortgage interest is deductible, we'll be sitting on a HUGE refund from that point on. those first few years of mortgage payments are basically nothing BUT interest payments... and hey, unlike children, a mortgage actually builds equity instead of robbing it... the timing is looking good, too. dubya's little recession should be pulling out of its nosedive with a (hopefully) democratic president in office, so the market will have bottomed out and some of those condo or house prices in seattle will have fallen back to earth a it into a more reasonable range.

it's good to have a plan. it's even better to have that plan fall into a timeframe that seems reasonable, as opposed to "in ten years, blah blah blah..." we're right around the corner. woot.