What will You do with the rebate?
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion: Archive March 2008:
What will You do with the rebate?
If and when we get it???
Yeah Yeah I know we all have heard that it will be sometime May/June.
How many of you are gonna save it for a raining day?
How many will use it to pay bills/play catchup?
How many will just have FUN with it??
Not sure yet what we will do with ours when it comes..Don't like to spend it before we have it in our hands!! We have time to figure it out. I told DSH that I want use it for something we want /or need not just on junk!!!
We will see
Half savings and half to my church. That's what I did last time. But, as a single adult with no dependant children and sufficient income that my only "debt" is my mortgage (I pay my credit card bills in full each month), working, with employer paid health care, I can afford to do that. I know I'm very lucky to be in my position, and that there are millions of people out there not as lucky.
It will go straight to credit debt. The hubby and I are doing the Dave Ramsy Total Money Makeover thing, and that will really help!!!
I am planning on buying a new (to me) car in may/june. So I will probably put 90% of it into that car. But it depends on what happens between now and then.
It will pay for some of my bathroom remodel
That will help pay for my house to be repainted outside... just another thing so we can get it ready to sell as soon as everything is fixed.
A lot of ours depends on what is going on at the time...either debt reduction or home improvements. One more step closer to being debt free.
home improvements here and maybe a little something for the kids we are thinking about new room make overs
If we get anything it will go to debt reduction. I am tired of being in debt so between taxes and if this rebate comes 100% is going towards debt.
It'll go to help fund the 12K in dental work I need to have done. We have everything we need (minus a new-to-me car I'm in the process of buying), not much debt, and the only things we're really saving for are the dental work and a Disney trip next year with the kids and my ex-husband. So much for boosting the economy (besides my oral surgeon!), I am really wondering how economically smart this rebate is!!
Save your receipts!! Hubby had $15,000.00+ in dental work last year.
We were able to write it off!
That's the only thing I'm happy about, I know I can write it off.
I hear you. I am still shocked at how much it all cost!!!
Write if off? I did not know that! I'm having work done next month. Do all dental procedures count? You've got me curious!
It ends up being if you have a high enough amount of out of pocket medical/dental expenses.
Since ours was so high we were able to write a percentage of it off. I think it ended up being $7,000.00.
Ours will go toward a 10th anniversary vacation this year!
The check we get for Emily, will probably help pay for horsecamp. It's the last year she can go, since she turns 16 this year.
Ours will go more to boosting up the IRA. LOL!
You can write off all medical expenses out of pocket. If you go to your local pharmacy they can print out a total of what you spent for each person in your family for 2007 plus you can write off what you pay out of pocket towards your medical insurance for the year. Plus you can write off all of the medical bills for the year also.
Bills, bills, bills and more bills....lol.
Bills or whatever breaks between now and then.
It will pay for our plane tickets to florida. if any is left over, it will help pay for disney tickets!
Tonya, you can only write of medical expenses over a certain amount - it comes on the schedule where you list your mortgage interest deduction, etc. I don't know the specific amount, but I do know there is a floor for taking a medical expense deduction. The exact rules will be in the book/form the IRS sent out at the beginning of the year, and I will look them up tonight.
Ginny, I'm also interested in what that minimum amount is. We've spent so much on medical issues this year.
We'll use it to fund our vacation this year. This will come at a perfect time for us since I get a limited paycheck during summer break.
OK, Schedule A, Itemized Deductions
Line 1 - List all Medical & Dental Expenses (see instructions for what is allowed)
Line 2 - Enter amount from Form 1040 Line 38 (I don't have that form in front of me, but suspect is it either total income or total taxable income)
Line 3 - Multiply Line 2 by 7.5%
Line 4 - Subtract Line 3 from Line 1. If Line 3 is more than line 1, enter "0"
In other words, you can only deduct that portion of your medical expenses which exceeds 7.5% of Line 38 of your 1040. So far I have never made it to that point, but I have good employer paid health insurance.
All of this is on-line at the IRS except, for unknown reasons, the actual 1040 form. The Schedule A & instructions are on line.
They idea of the money is to stimulate the lagging economy, so the government wants us to spend it, not put it on debt reduction, as tempting as that is. Also, we are supposed to spend it on AMERICAN made goods because our trade imbalance is so severe right now. However, TRY to find something American made, other than food, to spend it on!
I don't see where it is going to help much. It is a bandaid and is temporary. I doubt that we'd be getting it if it weren't an election year.
I am going to buy a new car in the next year or so, so I may put it in the bank to earn interest and then use it toward the car. We are Ford people, but I will have to choose a model made in America. I like the Ford Fusion, but even that is made in Mexico.
It just passed the House, so don't count your chickens until it gets past the Senate - it's not a done deal from what I've read.
You're right, Kay. It is the Senate where the hang-up lies, and no one from the Senate was involved in the negotiations between Bush and Pelosi's people (which was probably a mistake).
I guess I don't understand how it is supposed to help either. Even if people used it to buy actually things that might help, wouldn't that only help for the short term? Seems to be there could be a better way of doing things that would help for a longer period of time! But what do I know. LOL
I agree, Vicki. One of the proposals some members of Congress made was to send money to the states for infrastructure repair - roads, bridges, etc. - which would provide jobs and would produce long-term improvements that all citizens of a region need. I do think, however, given the present climate, that extending unemployment comp would be a good idea. And, paying more attention to the price of groceries than I have in years, I think increasing the amount of food stamp assistance, especially to the elderly, would be a good idea.
But in the long run, what will help is training more people for jobs that produce products that we can sell to other countries. And, of course, at the same time, other countries are trying to sell goods to us.
I think another thing that would help everyone would be to cut taxes on gasoline!
Ginny - Speaking of the price of groceries...have you bought cereal or cookies lately? Even our local pizza place went way up on their prices. I heard that there is a wheat shortage due to the fact that we are selling so much wheat overseas. Or is it another contrived "shortage" to justify raising prices?
My son follows this more closely than I do, Hol, but he blames it on ethanol. More farmers are growing corn because of ethanol, and the price of corn has risen drastically because of ethanol (I remember reading an article a few months ago about the increase in the price of tacos in Mexico, Central and South America, which works a severe hardship on low income workers there, because low income in those countries is a LOT lower than here). And, because more farmers are growing corn for ethanol, there is less land being planted in wheat, so the price of wheat has risen (farmers and brokers don't care about where the wheat goes when they sell it, just about getting the highest price they can get). And, because less corn is available for traditional markets, meat growers are turning to wheat for the grain they need, making less available for bread and cereal manufactures and making the price higher.
Interestingly, I've been hearing (on NPR and other places) that there is a grass which could be used to make ethanol less expensively than corn. One of the costs of ethanol is the cost of converting the corn, grass, or whatever to ethanol, and this grass converts more easily/cheaply. But right now corn to ethanol is what the government is supporting in a significant way.
As for cutting taxes on gasoline (Vicki's question), I have somewhat mixed feelings. The average price of gas has risen from $1.60/$1.70 in 2004 to its present range ($3.06 to $3.16 in my area this week). And I really resent that. On the other hand, because the price of gas is so high, people are being more careful about how much they use, i.e., driving less, buying more fuel-efficient cars, etc., so we're using less gas on the average.
Oil is a finite quantity. There is only so much oil on this planet, and we've used up a lot of it in our cars, and in plastics. (Some countries and some areas in the US are beginning to ban plastic bags, and some supermarkets are going to stop using them, because they're bad for the ecology. Which is good in another way, because less oil will be used for the manufacture of plastic bags.)
The U.S. has a love affair with cars. Which makes sense, because it is a really big country and Mr. Ford, by making cars cheap and therefore readily available to the average Joe/Jane, made it possible for more people to travel to more places. (Cars are one of the major reasons we have suburbs, instead of building higher and more densely in cities.) This country used to subsidize trains in a big way, but now we subsidize cars and trucks (government pays for the roads we drive, and without those roads we wouldn't drive so much and so far) and airplanes (airports, air traffic controllers, etc.) instead of trains. Trucks and planes use a lot more gas to move a pound of goods from point A to point B than trains use, but it isn't as convenient or as fast to move things by train - until the cost ratio (cost of gas) makes it more economical. (Which is another reason the cost of groceries has risen - the cost of transporting the goods.)
Foreign auto manufacturers have been producing cars that are more fuel-efficient than most U.S. manufactured cars for years, and U.S. auto manufacturers have been fighting increasing fuel-efficiency standards for decades. It is only because of the high price of gas and some recognition of the finite quantity of oil that Congress has finally been able to pass a bill requiring U.S. manufacturers to improve the fuel efficiency of the cars they sell by - what is it, 2009 or 2012? And most people who follow politics believe that it was pressure from the U.S. auto manufacturers that caused the EPA to deny California's request for a waiver so that California could impose even stricter fuel efficiency standards on cars sold in that state. (California is suing, and the EPA legal experts believe California will win - and said so before the EPA announced it was denying California's legal request for the waiver. California's right to request a waiver is written into the law that governs this kind of situation.) It's not that U.S. manufacturers can't make more fuel efficient cars - they just have a lot of reasons why they don't want to.
States are starting to pass laws requiring trucks to stop running their engines at truck stops. Presently many truckers run their engines if they are overnighting at a truck stop, to provide heat in the truck cabin and for other reasons - which uses fuel (oil) while the truck isn't moving.
Overall, the price of oil has caused us - the U.S. as a whole - to be more concerned about using oil-based fuels more efficiently. We could have been doing it for a couple of decades, at least, but we haven't. The motivator has been the cost.
So, I'm not sure I want taxes on gasoline cut (and don't forget, those taxes are what pays for roads - maintenance, improvement, and building of roads). I know that the high cost of gasoline works a severe hardship on many working families, and I hope we can find a way to deal with that (maybe income-based rebates). But on the whole, as much as I resent paying $3.09 a gallon (which is what I paid last week when I filled up), on the whole, I approve of the changes that have come and are coming because of the high price of gas. Maybe our government will start thinking about increasing subsidies to trains (to make the cost of transporting goods less expensive) instead of trying to cut the subsidies (there has been a strong movement from the Administration to cut Amtrak subsidies every year for the past several years, and Amtrak serves major commuting traffic in the Northeast).
I understand what your saying, but I feel the cost of gas effects way more than how we drive. I feel the cost of gas has also increased the cost of just about everything we purchase too. Grocery stores have to pay more to get product to the store so they raise prices etc etc etc. I feel the cost of everything would/could go down if gas was cheaper. I feel that would be a longer shot in the arm for the economy than a "rebate" check.
Wow, Ginny, we actually have gas in WI that is cheaper than somewhere else? Ours is currently $2.99! It had recently been over $3, too.
DH wishes there were more diesel cars available, since you get pretty good fuel economy. We can get about 40 miles to the gallon, with our VW Passat TDI. He often whines that there are diesel cars available in Europe, that aren't available in this country.
On KYW this morning: gas prices
Some excerpts:
Experts are predicting pump prices, which jumped by almost a dollar a gallon in each of the last two springs in many parts of the United States, will spike again this year as refiners and gas stations switch from winter- to summer-blended fuels.
The increases, starting as early as February in southern California, could push the average national price to a record $3.50 a gallon or more by June.
...
And the reason for the spring price shocks? Analysts say it's linked to a shortage of alkylate, a little-known and expensive gasoline additive that some in the industry are calling "liquid gold." It has become a must-have ingredient since refiners stopped using MTBE two years ago when the potentially cancer-causing additive was found to be seeping into ground water.
Comment:
Read the whole article - it is interesting and informative as to more reasons for high (and higher) prices for gas.
I found a gas station in NH that was 2.96 and it was full serve. Cheaper than the self serves in MA.
HAHA!!! I beat you, Colette! I Filled up this morning in Saugus for 2.87!!! Of course, how long it will stay that way is completely different!
Where in Saugus?
Where in Saugus?
This is from CBS news.......could be interesting. I hope the language is totally clear before anything gets passed and signed.
(The Politico) Congressional leaders are taking extra measures to make sure the economic stimulus bill has clear language to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving tax rebate checks.
The House-passed bill has a line that makes undocumented aliens ineligible for the tax rebates, which could be $600 for individuals and $1,200 for households under the bill the House passed Tuesday. But potentially hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants currently use individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) instead of Social Security numbers to file income tax returns, and because they are taxpayers, they could receive tax rebates. House aides say use of ITINs for tax returns by illegal immigrants may constitute tax fraud, but the IRS does not check legal status on tax returns.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday morning issued a statement affirming that undocumented immigrants are not eligible for tax rebates and say they will try to further clarify this intent before the bill is sent to President Bush.
“The legislation that we authored, and which passed the House yesterday with overwhelming bipartisan support, would not allow any taxpayer funds to be distributed to illegal immigrants," Pelosi and Boehner said in a joint statement. "In fact, the bill includes language similar to the provisions included in the 2001 and 2003 tax relief bills to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving any benefits."
“We will take legislative action to clarify and underscore this prohibition so we can expedite the rebates to millions of eligible Americans.”
The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday strengthened the eligibility requirements, saying only people using Social Security numbers and not ITINs will be eligible for the rebates. The Politico reported the controversy here yesterday.
Route One... where the Hilltop is!!!! The station was right near there!
Thanks!
There is a type of algae, actually, that can do the same thing as corn and on a much smaller scale.
Corn used for ethanol will be a thing of the past before it's ever popular.
According to this morning's NYTimes, here is what is in the bill that is going to the President (and it is reported that he will sign it):
"The plan will provide tax rebates of up to $600 for individuals and up to $1,200 for couples filing jointly, with an additional payment for families of $300 a child, and a minimum payment of $300 for individuals who pay less than that in income taxes.
Payments will be reduced for individuals with adjusted gross incomes above $75,000 and couples with incomes above $150,000, with the wealthiest taxpayers receiving nothing.
...
The Senate, voting 81 to 16, slightly expanded the House plan to include payments for some 20 million Social Security recipients and 250,000 disabled veterans who would not have qualified because they do not earn income. The final measure also specifies that illegal immigrant workers not receive payments.
The House swiftly approved those changes by a vote of 380 to 34 and sent the bill to the White House, where Mr. Bush had already said he would sign it.
...
The rebates and the business incentives, including a doubling to $250,000 from $125,000 in the amount of expenses businesses can immediately write off, are intended to jolt the slowing economy with new spending.
The package will cost roughly $168 billion over two years compared with $161 billion for the original House plan. About $152 billion would be injected into the economy this year.
Many economists say government action is needed to forestall or shorten a recession, but some questioned whether the plan would work quickly enough because rebate checks would not go out for 12 more weeks.
...
In a nod to the housing problems, the stimulus plan will increase the limits on home loans that can be purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored finance companies, and on loans that can be insured by the Federal Housing administration. The one-year increases will make it easier to refinance loans or obtain new mortgages in expensive markets. The new limits will vary based on local conditions.
rebate plan
So, what about Sarah? Do we get money for her, now that she's 18? She hasn't had a job yet, so she wouldn't be getting one herself. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I don't know, but my guess if you can take her as a dependant, you'll get $300 for her. The rules for dependants, as I recall, have to do with whether you support them, how much money they earn, and their age. I would guess she qualifies as a dependant on all counts.
I played my piano, for the first time, in a LONG time! It sounds hideous! I think a small piece of my incentive check is going to pay for the piano tuner! It's been a while, since he's been to my house!
Oh yeah. We don't get money for Sarah, since we can't claim her for the child tax credit anymore, since she's over 17. We can claim Emily, for 2 more years. This was confirmed by our tax man, this past Saturday.
Remember that 37" LCD TV? lol
LOL!
Can't fine the e mail now, but a co-worker sent em a e mail saying that they are going by the last two digits in your social and according to mines last two digits, I should get my rebate around Sept. 28 If this is the case then mines will be going towards Christmas 08. As a matter of fact I think I will go to IRS web site andn take a look and see if I can find this.
Q. When will I receive my stimulus payment?
A. The Treasury Department will start sending out payments in early May.
Economic Stimulus Payments
I couldn't find anything about matching your rebate's arrival with the last two digits of your SSN.
Thanks Dawn, Me either, and the email that the girl sent me has been deleted form my trash. I'm just going to wait and not think about it, because my grandmother always when you look for money you know thats coming the longer it will take to come, you know like watching a boilng pot.
Ours will be going towards our landscaping. That is one HUGE negative about building a new home. Once you are in the house, you have to deal with a yard FULL of dirt.
I hope the rebate comes sooner rather than later. If we don't get it until fall, then our yard will already be done. Then I guess it will go into savings.
Dawn
I finally found the email can I send it to you or can i post it here?
d-klein at charter dot net
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