My phone buzzed on my lunch break yesterday while I was eating saltines in the back room of the pharmacy. I almost ignored it. Then I saw the word "deposit" and sat up straight. Our federal tax refund had landed: $2,860.
I texted Tyler a screenshot. He texted back a thumbs-up and "tires?" That's my husband. Four words would be a speech.
We'd already talked about this refund for weeks, so there wasn't much deciding left to do. Last night, before we'd even picked where to eat, I moved the money where it was going. Here's the whole thing.
- House fund: $2,400
- Four new tires for my CR-V, installed: $380
- One good dinner out: $80, tip included
$2,400 plus $380 plus $80 is $2,860. Every dollar has a job, and none of them are sitting in checking waiting to get spent on something I won't remember by April.
The $2,400
The house fund had $4,500.37 in it before the refund. That's the $4,200 we started the year with, plus the $150 left in checking at the end of January and again at the end of February, plus 37 cents of interest. After the refund, it's $6,900.37.
That one transfer moved us further than the whole first two months of the year put together. It's also more than half of what we started 2025 with, which is a little humbling when you think about how hard we worked for that first $4,200. Our goal is $25,000 by the end of next year, and as of this morning we're more than a quarter of the way there.
I know a refund isn't free money. It just means more came out of our paychecks all year than we actually owed. Some people say you should adjust your withholding and take that money in your paycheck instead. Maybe that's right for some households. For us, a once-a-year lump is easy to point at one goal, and money that never shows up in checking is money I never have to talk myself out of spending. If you're wondering what's right for you, ask someone who does taxes for a living. I'm only telling you what we do.
The $460 we let ourselves spend
We decided back in January that we'd keep a small slice of the refund. Not because we earned a treat, exactly, but because I know us. If every windfall disappears into savings with nothing to show for it, we'll start resenting the plan by summer.
The tires weren't a treat at all. At the end of February, Tyler did the penny test on the CR-V. You stick a penny in the tread upside down, and if you can see all of Lincoln's head, the tread is too thin. We could see Lincoln's whole head and part of his collar. With spring rain and gravel roads out to my parents' place, that wasn't something to put off.
He called around and found four tires at the Walmart in town for $85 each, so $340, plus $40 for mounting, balancing and getting rid of the old ones. That's $380. Without the refund, that money would have come out of our monthly budget in a month we're already stretching, so paying for it now actually protects the house fund.
The other $80 was dinner. Tyler and I drove to a steakhouse in Moberly last night, ordered two steaks and split one piece of pie, and nobody looked at a phone for the whole meal. I'm not going to pretend that was a smart financial move. It was a nice night, and it made the other $2,400 feel like a choice we made together instead of a rule we had to follow.
Why not the credit card?
Somebody is going to ask this, so I'll answer it. We have $2,140 on a credit card. Yes, the refund could have wiped it out.
We talked about it. Our plan is to pay that card off from our regular monthly money over the next ten weeks, starting Monday. I'll write about how that goes. With a balance shrinking over ten weeks, we figure the interest will cost us somewhere around $50 total. It also means that after this month, there won't be anything left in checking at the end of April or May for the house fund. The card gets all of it until it's gone.
We chose that. The balance built up from our own everyday habits, a little at a time. Paying it off out of our monthly budget means we have to actually change those habits, and if the refund bailed us out instead, I'm not sure we would. I know plenty of people would have done it the other way, and they'd have a good argument. This was ours.
So that's where $2,860 went. Most of it is sitting in the house fund. Some of it is under my CR-V. And a little of it was a really good steak.
