I Failed

As the "accountant" in the family I took my job very seriously this year, mainly in relation to our tax withholdings. I used the tax calculator on the IRS website this past summer and tried to figure out how much we should pay. My goal was to follow the advice of accountants and financial people; specifically, those individuals who say you shouldn't overpay your taxes. Your refund, or even your tax bill, should be within $500. Fortunately, we didn't end up with a large bill, but we are getting a refund that's over $500, by a lot. I won't share the amount here (for all of creation to read), but it's enough to say that for us it's a big refund, but some of you would consider it a small refund. It's nice to know we can pay off a credit card, but it would have been nicer to have that extra money with every paycheck, rather than a lump sum that the government has been earning interest on (not that it seems to help them much). There was nothing extraordinary about our circumstances to mess up my calculations; we didn't have a baby or adopt four kids from a foreign country. It was just disappointing (in a good way) that my calculations were so off. I guess I will have to work on my skills and try again this year to work on getting a small refund.