Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Blame the Accountant

Yesterday I landed on the Community Chest square of life. Let me explain.

The (Beancounting) Queen is an accountant. She trusts me (wrongly) with all things enginerding, and I trust her on all things accounting. So the Queen did my taxes, and I got a little refund back. Nothing too much, but this was my first year of paying a full mortgage so I wasn't quite sure how big of a rebate check Uncle Sam owed me. It turns out that my employer made a boo boo on my W2's, and that I SHOULD BE GETTING ANOTHER $3,400 DOLLARS. Booyah!

Of course now that money is coming in I think for 5 seconds about how this can help me pay off debt, and 5 hours about all the cool stuff I can do with this money. While the bathroom upstairs requires some major love, I'm thinking maybe the backyard could be redone too? It is currently a 34'x13' slab of concrete, just waiting to be turned into a zen garden paradise. It just doesn't know it yet. I'm going to meet with some concrete guys to go over my fancy pants plan, and see how much they want to gouge me for. :)

While dreaming of a back yard I'm also hunting for houses with yards - I just can't give up on the idea of moving to a place with a pretty green yard. We have a conundrum of whether it's smarter to buy a house with a yard, or throw money at what I've got. Since we have to redo the upstairs bathroom before selling anyways, we potentially have time to redo the yard. It's just a matter of figuring out if this is worth throwing money and time at.

You know the hardest part about redoing a house? Knowing when to stop. Apparently I haven't learned yet.

    ++

Also, this last weekend the Queen had a meltdown. After saying things like, "we'll never finish" and "I'm glad we didn't get the cottage" she pulled herself back together and got to work. She later rescinded both comments. Things get a bit overwhelming at times, but we're slowly making progress... I was proud of her for getting back in the saddle quickly.

7 comments:

v2da2dl said...

The Queen of Cool-Headed Collectedness!

Atta girl!

Momnipotent said...

Awesome Queen for finding that $3400 error. Whoa, that's a bad mistake for them to make!

I've seen a Queen meltdown, about 15 years ago. It's not pretty, but she does come around.

We're anxious to see the "Hungarian" shelves and tile. More pics would be in order. (Any pics of the meltdown?)

Corey said...

val - It was a site to be seen. I used the infamous turtle maneuver. This maneuver entails hiding in my shell until the danger of her mood swing is over until poking my head out again. :)

potent - I was glad she found the error, but I think she should have found it on the first go around. I'm thinking about suing for compensation.

Also, there are no publishable pics from the meltdown. I tried to get some pics in paparazzi style, but she kept jabbing at me as I tried to press the shutter button. I'll do a better job next time of documenting the ordeal.

Anonymous said...

You didn't mention anything about how you gave me your tax info the afternoon of April 15. . .

Shouldn't you be stirring up dust at the rowhouse, as opposed to stirring up other things on your blog :)

Anonymous said...

p.s. you're cute

Anonymous said...

Exactly how does one determine that their employer may have made an error? I feel very foolish now because that is something that I've never questioned. Kudos to beancountingqueen for catching that one! We now need pointers too.

Anonymous said...

(About not knowing when to stop) Tell me! I'm currently looking for some acrage on which to personally construct my own house one day... but as soon as I make that purchase renovations on this house will dry up.

And who knows... I've probably done too much already to get my money back!