Tax Season: An Alternative to TurboTax and Thoughts on Income
I dragged my feet filing this year because I knew there would be a good chance of owing since I had to dip into my IRA to cover some expenses over the summer. (Obviously that's not ideal.) I am especially annoyed by the TurboTax experience... there's supposedly a low-cost or no-cost option, but I have not been successful in locating or using this very-hard-to-find version. After a fair amount of forum crawling, I found several credible-sounding recommendations for FreeTaxUSA. I just finished filing, it took all of 20 minutes, and praise be I'm getting $30 back after the $17 e-filing fee for State. Federal Filing is free, direct deposit of any refund is free, and it honestly was just as good if not better than TurboTax in terms of intuitive interface. You can thank me later . I don't have the time to do a proper check-in today, I need to get to the gym, but I can report that: 1. Debt is higher than last check in . 2. But substantially lower than it was December 2025....
