Annoying Taxes

This is my third year of doing taxes on my own. We have to file federal, Wisconsin, and Minnesota since we live in Wisconsin but David works in Minnesota. It's actually quite a hassle but manageable. It's also easier with only one income, therefore only one W-2. There are some extra forms involved and we will always owe Wisconsin money but oh well.

We always do our taxes on paper first to make check over everything and make sure it comes out right. Then, we file online and see that our numbers of refunds (or what we owe) match. In addition, we have David's parents check over everything since they have far more experience than we do and really helped us out a lot our first year of taxes.

Our taxes have been done for two weeks now but only on paper. Last night, we decided to officially file (online). I picked a company that does the federal for free, since you always have to file that first. It cost us money to file our states' so I picked a different website for those. However, you can't file state without filing federal with the same company. After deciding it would be an awful idea to file federal twice, we decided to mail in the state taxes for both states. What a pain! Next year, I will hopefully remember to look up a company that does state for free since everyone seems to do federal for free. Then we won't hit this snag in the road.

Because they are going out in the mail today, we actually aren't all that late in filing but normally we get them out sooner than this. This is our first year with a dependent (our daughter) so we are getting over $5,000 back! We are trying to decide if we should save it for a vacation/something fun or if we should replace our much-needed-to-be-updated furnace. This would only be about half the cost of the furnace but of course, any amount helps.

I wonder what most people do if they get a big refund back. According to all the sales this time of year, people expect you to buy furniture or mattresses but I wonder how many people actually do. What do you do with your refund?