Upgrading anything in your PC with your tax return?

[Nine Tailed Fox]

Feels like I already have everything I need so might just end up saving it..

[Reytime]

Patiently waiting for Comet Lake and RTX 3000 series.

[Nine Tailed Fox]

6 minutes ago, Zaphryx said:

This may be a rather personal question, but how big is your average tax return? I work a ton, and only ever get maybe $25 at most in my return.

only work 40hrs week and got around $600 last time

[RonnieOP]

 

1 hour ago, Zaphryx said:

This may be a rather personal question, but how big is your average tax return? I work a ton, and only ever get maybe $25 at most in my return.

Dont worry. I end up paying them every year lol. I hate tax season. 

[AngryBeaver]

I'm getting back like 14k which means I need to take more exemptions. Not a fan of giving the government a interest free loan. I mean that is 700 more each pay check if I do it right.

[Zusafek]

I'm getting back 21k. The money is already spoken for though. It's paying for my family vacation, a complete kitchen renovation on my new house, and the remainder is being invested. 

[dizmo]

Nope. It'll go towards a car/mods. 

Since CyberPunk got delayed I don't have to build a new rig until September. 

6 hours ago, Nine Tailed Fox said:

only work 40hrs week and got around $600 last time

Lowish wage I'm guessing? 

6 hours ago, Zaphryx said:

Wow, holy moly. I work upwards of 80 hours

Either you own your own business, or you work more than you live. 

[Reytime]

Waiting on that 3080 ti.. patiently.

[Andreas Lilja]

I'm buying a 2080Ti for the Canadian Revenue Agency.

[Antistatic12]

23 minutes ago, Reytime said:

Waiting on that 3080 ti.. patiently.

yep, I'm also waiting for the 3080ti, lets hope the rumours are true about the 3xxx series.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 hours ago, Zaphryx said:

This may be a rather personal question, but how big is your average tax return? I work a ton, and only ever get maybe $25 at most in my return.

That's actually a good thing. If you get a tax return, you gave the government an interest free loan.

[divito]

I barely get a return these days; thus I will be upgrading nothing.

[TetraSky]

8 hours ago, Zaphryx said:

Wow, holy moly. I work upwards of 80 hours

40hrs/week is pretty standard for the vast majority of people. In fact, how are you not dead at 80 hrs? 

Heck, assuming you work 5 days a week, at 80 hours, you've literally only got 8 hours per work day to do everything else that isn't work. This include eating, showering, shitting, sleeping, any sort of hobby, etc...

 

 

As for OP, I'm not even sure I'll get my tax return this year.(should be close to 3k if I calculated things right) I've recently(last week) noticed that I fucked up when I got my new job last year and inverted two numbers for my SIN. I've tried getting it fixed, but won't know until tax season starts proper.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

From what I've heard (from Dave Ramsey, probably from others), it's not good to get a huge tax refund, cause it's like loaning money to the government interest free.

 

I'd rather take home a bit more of my pay (when/if I can find a job - currently studying for Network+ and a few other certs), and maybe have a refund of like 25¢ or $5, or even owe $1 or $10 or something like that.

 

As for PC upgrades, I don't have anything planned for right now.  It'd be nice to get a decent 4K monitor for my desktop and a bigger SATA SSD for my laptop (have 3x 1TB (one's NVMe) + a 250GB in it now) but I kinda need to lay low on my >$20 purchases for a while.

 

 

I prefer to do my upgrades whenever I want to, or at least when there's a good sale, like Black Friday, and not be limited to like April 16 or something like that.  Also, I would really like to be able to upgrade my computer ONE PART AT A TIME, and not have to upgrade or uninstall / reinstall several things just to replace one part, like I will have to do when the time comes to upgrade my desktop's i7-4790K CPU (waiting for DDR5, or maybe DDR6 if there isn't a big enough price/performance jump in CPUs by the time DDR5 is released on AM5).

[Andreas Lilja]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

40hrs/week is pretty standard for the vast majority of people. In fact, how are you not dead at 80 hrs? 

Heck, assuming you work 5 days a week, at 80 hours, you've literally only got 8 hours per work day to do everything else that isn't work. This include eating, showering, shitting, sleeping, any sort of hobby, etc...

Welcome to late stage capitalism, where you can brag about not having a life.

[EldritchMoose]

7 hours ago, TetraSky said:

40hrs/week is pretty standard for the vast majority of people. In fact, how are you not dead at 80 hrs? 

Heck, assuming you work 5 days a week, at 80 hours, you've literally only got 8 hours per work day to do everything else that isn't work. This include eating, showering, shitting, sleeping, any sort of hobby, etc...

Not to mention your commute, which can easily add another 8-10 unpaid hours to your "work week."

[RasmusDC]

58 minutes ago, EldritchMoose said:

Not to mention your commute, which can easily add another 8-10 unpaid hours to your "work week."

37 hours std work weeks here, and proven (in engineering creative jobs) that you get nothing more from investing 80 hours in a work week, you just loose momentum.. well i do have weeks where i have 50+ hours because of deadlines, or issues, but that fits with the 8 hours of private time 8 hours of sleep 8 hours of work philosphy, it is still just work.  

 

regarding the tax return, yes it is a loan for the goverment, but i do understand why it is a nice "surprise" savings you have avail. are tempting to use, i remember my wife used to "calculate" for a tax return, simply to ensure it was never the opposite, we got between 4k Dollars - 8k in return each year (20-50.000 dkkr) today it is more like 4-8.000dkkr just to keep it simple..

 

my bonus programme is a big slump of my salery, so if i don´t have a "security blanket" i will get to pay a lot back in return.. and i have no debt, so it is not money that could save me interest.

[tatte]

We used to receive our returns right before Christmas, but the maniacs have now spread them all over the year. I received mine sometime around autumn, so it lacked the magical feel and just mixed in with boring everyday money. So no poorly justified impulse buys with the return this year. Cries in adult Christmas

[AngryBeaver]

11 hours ago, RasmusDC said:

37 hours std work weeks here, and proven (in engineering creative jobs) that you get nothing more from investing 80 hours in a work week, you just loose momentum.. well i do have weeks where i have 50+ hours because of deadlines, or issues, but that fits with the 8 hours of private time 8 hours of sleep 8 hours of work philosphy, it is still just work.  

 

regarding the tax return, yes it is a loan for the goverment, but i do understand why it is a nice "surprise" savings you have avail. are tempting to use, i remember my wife used to "calculate" for a tax return, simply to ensure it was never the opposite, we got between 4k Dollars - 8k in return each year (20-50.000 dkkr) today it is more like 4-8.000dkkr just to keep it simple..

 

my bonus programme is a big slump of my salery, so if i don´t have a "security blanket" i will get to pay a lot back in return.. and i have no debt, so it is not money that could save me interest.

Cybersecurity here on salary. A typical week for me is about 35-38 hrs (3 x 12s) with the occasional 45+ if something goes to hell at the wrong time. I will say though a 4 day weekend every week is awesome... and taking a long vacation is super easy too. Not sure how I am going to burn my 32 PTO days. I would need to average 1.625 days off each pay period to hit it. 

 

Anyways back on point. I know people like that lump sum return, but I feel it is always better to get more per check. That means that money could be earning you interest or be invested.

 

Then again I also get a pretty nice yearly bonus that is 7.5%-12% of my annual salary based on performance. The major downside to that though is it is hard to plan for when it comes to next year's taxes. I mean this year I might bet a 20k bonus and next year only 15k. The government takes a flat 40% of that bonus which is normally too much so next year I might get back 50% of what they took... which can be 2-4k difference I would have to try and account for.

[BuckGup]

Saving it. I don't know why people feel like they HAVE to spend it 

[BuckGup]

12 hours ago, EldritchMoose said:

Not to mention your commute, which can easily add another 8-10 unpaid hours to your "work week."

That's why you own a company and commute time is billed to the client. Same with groceries as business expenses. Then with your tax write offs you buy a new car each year

[CloakedOnyx]

GPU for sure. I have a GTX 1660 Ti. (1950Mhz boost clock and 6GBs of memory) Its not bad for a budget card but I want something more powerful like an RTX 2080 Ti.

[Stu_Bear]

Save it to buy 2 new PS5 consoles...one for me and one for my son...nothing in the PC world sounds better than a PS5 as far as I know  

[steelo]

On 1/29/2020 at 11:32 AM, Zaphryx said:

This may be a rather personal question, but how big is your average tax return? I work a ton, and only ever get maybe $25 at most in my return.

My wife and I both work full time and we earn around ~90k a year. We usually see ~$3,500...the trick is to claim '0' or find a balance where they take some out and you get some back. 

[Zando_]

I wooooould get something, but my brother has been having a hard time with getting decent work lately (he pays part of the rent) and I hadn't accounted for that so I'm behind on some stuff, returns will go to paying that off.