Molly's Money | Six Ways to Use Your Bonus or Tax Return

5 Comments

  1. Make sure you have first aid kits in your house, desk, and car, and put together your 72-hour kit (https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit) in case of an emergency! It’s pretty cheap for the amount of peace of mind that you get from knowing your family would be prepared if there was an emergency.

  2. I’m really torn about how to best use our tax refund this year. We have quite a bit of debt. We had a healthy emergency fund that dwindled down to almost nothing when I became ill and couldn’t work for almost a year. It was great at the time and we didn’t have to use credit. And the plan was when I got well and returned to work we’d build up the fund again. Problem was I became ill again just 7 months after returning to woek and had to miss ANOTHER year. That’s where things got crazy because I hadn’t been back long enough to build the fund again. Normally, we’d put my entire pay into savings and live fine off hubby’s income. But that eventually became impossible when hubby also became ill and was unable to work. So after holding off for years we had no choice but to use credit cards. It’s so discouraging going from being almost debt free to almost overwhelmed in debt. Neither of us are completely healthy now but both of us are back to work. Although still earning less because we still have to miss work from time to time. So what’s the best way to do this? We’re thinking putting 60% towards debt and 40% towards savings. We want to pay things down but we’ve also got to get our buffer back up since health is still so iffy. One step we took was to switch our insurance to a health insurance plan with zero copays (same service coverage). I can already see this as a huge money saver. Copays with the other plan were $25 per visit. Therapy 3x a week for each of us was too much ($75 a week each!). So we’d cut down our visits but that’s not going to help us get better. At least now we can keep up with our dr visits without having to choose our health or paying other things. Sorry for the long post but I’d love to know what you think. Thanks! I love these money posts. I dream of the day where we can be debt free again.

  3. When I first read the title I immediately thought, “ooo, a trip to louis vuitton!” Your ideas are obviously much better;) In all seriousness, we put our bonus into savings first then slowly allocate a part of it to college savings for our little one, taxes, and other little things. The best thing, like you said, is to have a plan in place no matter what it is. Thanks for sharing these great tips!

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