OMG, I am a moron.

[kijip]

I totally blew it. I got it stuck in my head that I had until 11:59 to go online and make my final 2006 IRA contribution. Well, I did have till 11:59. EASTERN TIME! Your account is not on the west coast, Katie. #)!@)#@#U(! And this means that each of us is *under* the $4000 limit for 2006. For 2007, J is not eligible to make a contribution unless something changes and he gets a job (he is a student), so we can't put it in for him for 2007.

I know in the long term it is not all that big of a deal but it would have been so freaking easy not to make this mistake. And I could have done it anytime. I just put it off until about 25 minutes too late. Aggh. So.not.like.me.

It is the little, petty things that eat at me the most.

And $2000 in 40 years is like over $45,000. Oh well, in 40 year 45,000 might buy a postage stamp or something, LOL.

ETA: Well, once my head cleared I realized that a post mark was just as good. I don't need a computer for everything, something that is easy to forget! Write a check! Use a stamp! What a novel idea! J dropped them off at the midnight post office with the long line of other procrastinators. :P

[o_mom]

Glad you worked it out!

Why is J not eligible? I contribute every year without having a job or any income?

[mommyoftwo]

Glad it worked out for you Katie. Sometimes we forget that the old fashioned way is sometimes the best way. If it makes you feel any better, my DH was one of the procrastinators standing in line at the post office before midnight too.

[juliasmom05]

My understanding is that if you are married, file a joint income tax and your spouse makes at least double the contribution limit, the spouse without the earned income can contribute the maximum amount to their own IRA.

Marci

[kijip]

>My understanding is that if you are married, file a joint
>income tax and your spouse makes at least double the
>contribution limit, the spouse without the earned income can
>contribute the maximum amount to their own IRA.

Interesting. TIA for the information- I will have to look into it. I just had it stuck in my head that in order to contribute, you needed to have earned income equal to or greater than the limit ($4000)

[kijip]

>Glad you worked it out!
>
>Why is J not eligible? I contribute every year without having
>a job or any income?

I guess I will have to re-research! And I promise not to procrastinate until April 15th 2008 or something to find out, LOL. Thanks.

[juliasmom05]

I'm sure you found it all ready, but here are the IRS guidelines for Spousal Roth contributions. As long as you make 8K in earned income, you can contribute 4K into DH's :).

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=134667,00.html

Marci

[kijip]

>Glad it worked out for you Katie. Sometimes we forget that
>the old fashioned way is sometimes the best way. If it makes
>you feel any better, my DH was one of the procrastinators
>standing in line at the post office before midnight too.

If it was your tax return he was mailing at midnight, I guess you are lucky to have used paper. Intuit was maxed out last night on e-filings (at one point getting over 50 a second and so some people's returns were not actually recieved. Another example of why paper can be useful every so often (me, I am refund greedy so our return was filed the first part of February electronically, based purely on the "I want my money" motivation, LOL)

[kijip]

Rock and roll. Thanks!

Off to adjust the auto-payments I set up for 2007...

[o_mom]

We filed pretty early too. In spite of claiming 15 exemptions, they still withheld too much, so I wanted my refund. Additionally, I was too cheap to pay the e-file fee for Turbo Tax.

[KrisM]

Do you know you can tell them a dollar amount to withhold and skip trying to guess the number of exemptions? Just tell your HR that you need $X per check withheld. I estimated our current year taxes last week and DH changed his withholding today.

[o_mom]

Our problem is that DH gets a yearly bonus that is withheld at some ridiculously high rate by law and you can't adjust the witholding on it. We could probably tell them to withhold nothing the rest of the year and still owe very little or get a refund, but we were told that claiming '$0' withholding was a sure way to attract the attention of the IRS.

[kijip]

We had that issue at my husband's job (before he went back to school). His sales commissions checks during the fat part of the year would get a LARGE amount of tax out when we really could have used the actual money to say nothing of waiting a year for the refund (since the absolute biggest check was in January every year) and then we would have the wait and get the freaking refund. We started filing one W-4 in February (begining of small paycheck season) and then another in like September each year before the largest checks rolled in. We still got a refund but he got to keep more of his big commission checks. Only figured that out after 4 years and by then, he was there for only two more holiday seasons.