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. After two years with a new publisher, I finally got a nice pay bump of 10k. Almost immediately I was able to rally an aggressive pay down of my (considerable) outstanding debt. By my calculations, I should be completely debt-free in four years even if this is the last major pay increase for some time. 

3. I've cut some expenses as well along with this pay increase, (perhaps because things seemed less hopeless? The psychology of this is a little interesting to me), namely, coffee and workday lunches. I no longer purchase coffee to-go, instead, I bring a little jar of ground coffee to work and do a simple pour-over before our morning meeting. I started making enough food on Sunday night to see me through a couple of lunches throughout the week. I still purchase lunch once or twice a week, but I'm saving at least $35 a week prepping a couple of lunches ahead. 

4. THAT SAID. The small changes of not buying coffee (or rarely buying coffee) and packing in lunch is a relatively modest savings of $240 a month compared to the $600/month additional income. Like, obviously I should have not been buying coffee before, but the *real* difference in terms of being able to see progress in saving for retirement and paying down debt was increasing income. 

5. By the end of this month I will have paid off my Upgrade loan, six months ahead of schedule. David Ramsey style I will then start aggressively paying down a credit card (currently with a promotional 0% APR) that should be paid off by early 2027. Will I be done? Sadly no. There's another credit card after that, and another credit card after that, another credit card after that, and then another loan after that, to not even mention the student loan situation, BUT momentum is building. 

*Long story long: in terms of what really pays off: focus on increasing your income. I worked my butt off in 2025 and management took notice. If you're at a company that wouldn't reward for such effort, start interviewing elsewhere.*

A proper debt check-in forthcoming, but in the meantime, file your fucking taxes, and get out and workout. 

xxx