I walked into work this morning to find a nice surprise, last year's W2 waiting for me. It usually comes with the second check of the month on the 20th. Since I do TurboTaxOnline I imediately went there and started my tax return. I can't do much yet since I'm still waiting on two W2's and some interest information but I can at least see if I was close when I increased my withholdings.

That's one of the nice things about doing TTO, after you enter in your W2 it tells you right away how much you overpaid or how much you owe. Usually I overpay by $600 and then it gets adjusted later by jobs I do at a lower taxed rate and student loan interest. This year....I overpaid by only $60! So I don't owe, well not yet anyway. I think my part time jobs will probably bring it down to zero or make it so I owe but then my student loan interest will rescue me. Since I'll be working my part time job the whole year instead of only a couple of months in '07 I'm going to wait until June to adjust my withholdings. Last year I did it in April.

I haven't gotten a copy of my credit report in a while, I just keep forgetting about it. So yesterday I went to annual credit report .com and requested just one of the three available reports. I'd read in someone else's blog that you can actually get three free reports each year if you just request one from one of the reporting agencies each quarter. I got Experian last night, I'll get Trans Union in May, and EquiFax in September. And I set up reminders in Google Calendar to remind me to do that when it comes around.

There were a couple of things to dispute on my Experian report but nothing major. There's nothing negative on it but it showed that my brother was my spouse. I think that's cuz we had a few joint cards/loans in the past. That's been taken off. There was one address too that was incorrect, actually two that I disputed but after I filed the second I realized that it was a PO box that I had ages ago but it was at a non Post Office location which is what threw me off when I looked it up. Ah well, it'll just return that it is correct after all. I really like that I could do everything online and get responses back via email instead of having to wait for things to process via snail mail.

The other thing I liked about viewing my Experian report is it told me when things would go off of my record. I'm annoyed that some things that really have been paid off for a long time and should be gone, show some sort of status at a later date so it won't be off for even longer. But Meier and Frank is off of there so that's cool.

I also got a statement from Bank of America with a credit balance of a nickle. I paid off my MBNA line of credit way back in July of '05. I requested whatever I overpaid about three months later and received that check. Why do I now have a credit balance of a nickle? Don't know but I'll take it. I also spoke to a representative to close the account. I don't need it open anymore, the interest rate is like 27.99% and it's not a credit card or anything.

Citi misses me. I haven't used my only CC card with a balance since...October. So they sent me something stating 'what can we do so you'll use your card again?' I called hoping to get a lower APR but instead just got a lower interest on new purchases for 6 months. I'm not planning on using it but it's nice to know that it'd only be 1.99% from now til June 11th. Later today I plan on calling on both my Citi cards to request that they lower the APR. It's been six months since I did that last.

I love tax time. I just want to get them done so I can get whatever I'm getting back, as little as it may be, and laugh at everyone who waits til April 15th. Ok maybe not laugh but...I'd rather have my money now than wait.