We don’t live Paycheck to Paycheck except for this time of the year.  I got my checking account balance, and it’s dropped below $3,000… YIKES!!!

What happened???

Year end and new Year expenses puts us in bit of a financial bind every year.  Oh, we have the money in the stock market if we need it, but I hate to cash out stocks to pay for domestic expenses…

The Year end problem is Christmas and 2 December birthdays in my family.  And we have 2 cousins with birthdays at the beginning of January.  This hits us a bit hard, but then there is the new Year expense of car insurance and we the fact that we pre-pay our cable bill.  So the credit card bills for Dec and Jan are usually over an extra $1,000 each!

This is why I’m always excited to do my taxes, I claim zero allowances!  So we get a decent chunk of tax money back, and usually my work bonus hits shortly after.  I may have to do my kids taxes this year too, for something called “Kiddie Tax”.

How can I prevent this?

The best way to prevent this would be to:

• Pay off the house (Feb!!!)
• Change my tax allowances so I get more during the year.
• Change the way my insurance bill is billed to me.
• Purchase Christmas and December Birthday gifts earlier in the year.

If all goes well, this should be the last year of Year end tightness that we experience.