Show Me The Money!!

In case you haven't noticed, it's tax season.  I have been trying really hard to keep up with everyone's blogs, but working 70 yhours a week right now is not the business when it comes to blog reading/writing, as you may have noticed.  I posted one whole blog in January....

Anywhoooooo....

Hubs and I have been talking about all the things we might do with our tax refund this year, so I thought I might jot all of these ideas down and get your opinion.

The original plan:

We have quite a bit of credit card debt left over from the wedding and I need to get the 90,000 mile service done on my car, along with some new tires, so the plan was to get that taken care of and then put the rest toward the credit card debt.

Then...

Some friends of ours have a timeshare in Cabo and it's only $100/night that would be split among 3 couples ($33/night) for 8 days of tropical deliciousness in a 3 bed/3 bath beach front condo.  So we take the money for the car stuff and then the money for Cabo and then put the rest on the credit card.

But then...

I figured, we have been in our house for 2 years and still have nothing but dirt in our tiny backyard and our justification for not doing anything back there has been that we have no money.  How can we justify spending $2,000 on a trip to Cabo and not get the backyard done.  So....since the car service is a must in all of these scenarios, we take out that money and then get some estimates for the backyard and see what we can do back there with what we have and then put the rest on the credit card.  JB suggested maybe we just take a smaller trip for our anniversary to San Deigo for the World Fitness Convention in July.  I loved the idea, but when all was said and done, we would still be spending the same amount on that trip as we would be going to Cabo.  The upside was that next year JB can deduct the trip as a business expense because the expo offers continuing education units for some of his certifications.

We still haven't come to a conclusion on this.  The expo would be $500 for 3 days for him and almost $200 for me to go for one day.  I asked him to think about just picking the day he would most like to attend and then we both go that day.  Two one-day passes for the price of almost one three-day pass.  Luckily we can drive down there and we have friends we could stay with for free, so the only thing we would pay for is gas/food/expo.  Like I said, the jury is still out on this one.

Next up we have....

I am pretty set on the backyard idea and the car is a must.  The SD trip is up in the air, but one thing I know for certain, I really, really, really, really, really, really want an iPad.  For multiple reasons that are almost justifiable, but mostly that lately I have been in such a technology rut.  I love-love-loved my iPhone, but I gave it up because I couldn't get one through work and I couldn't afford the $100 monthly bill anymore.  Now I have a droid for work and I HATE it.  Nothing is easy to do from my phone, especially blogging/twitter/FB (plus it's a work phone, so I probably shouldn't be doing all of that from there anyway, LOL).  I know this sounds really trivial and I am almost embarrassed to be writing this for all of you to read (especially Sean), but it's so true.  So, I think when the iPad 3 comes out, I will just get a wireless-only 2, since they will be cheaper then.  We'll see. 

Then today...



Minus the DVDs and Treadmill

 I started thinking about our unfinished room upstairs that is attached to the loft and used as attic space right now.  We don't have much stuff to store so we could probably cut the storage space to only a quarter of the room, throw up some sheet rock/texture and throw down some rubber flooring, and turn that bad boy into a workout room.  Lucklily I am married to a personal trainer who knows how to design amazing workouts without any major equipment.  We would need some sandbags, kettle bells, a mounted TRX (or something similar) and a few other items and we would be good to go.  The room already has an AC register, so we don't have to worry about figuring out how to control the climate in there, and I know some pretty handy people who could help make this happen fairly easily.  This one is a definite possibility.

So, what do you think?  Which option would you go with?  Are you getting a refund this year?  Any big plans?  Wanna play 20 questions?