Updates on AOR, Taxes, and Debts

I have been more than pleasantly surprised at how well my AOR went. At final tally, the totals look like this:
Citibank - $27,000 for me, $22,000 for my wife
Chase - $35,000 for me, $35,000 for my wife, $40,000 for my father (thanks Dad!)
Bank of America - $40,000 for me, $60,000 for my wife

Above money, except for my Chase's $35,000 which ends in July, is all at 0% for 12 months. That's a total of $260,000! I never would have expected it, especially since I only paid off the last of my previous AOR a couple months ago. I figured my credit score would have to recover for awhile, but I grew impatient and some attractive offers presented themselves.

I've already purchased a CD at Countrywide for 6 months at 4.75%, which will earn $2375 when it matures in August. I have $25,000 in a 6% Rewards Checking account at Northern Federal Credit Union in Watertown. I have the rest earning 4.5% in an online savings account at Countrywide, but with rates falling fast, I am shopping for another 6-9 month CD approaching 5%. I don't know if I'll find anything.

I completed my taxes a couple weeks ago, and our refund this year will be $7,500. A little less than last year and a little less than we thought for a couple reasons: first, our interest income was $8800 and, combined with our increased salary, just made a larger refund difficult. Another issue was a $200 credit I thought we qualified for (energy efficient windows) and it turns out we didn't because we took the credit in '06. One thing that did help us was what we paid in child care since September. We plan on putting $4000 to our Summer Savings goal, $3000 to our year's debt, and $500 into my Roth. For the next few months, I've decided to put any interest income directly into our Roths as well with the hopes of maxing out our contributions for 2007.

The month starts well...

February, my only 3-paycheck month this year, has begun and already it feels good. If only every month had 3 paychecks...? Or that I made significantly more money?

Anyway, our finances had been eased a little from the numerous times in January we didn't send our kids to the nanny. Those days added up because after our first payday on 2/1 we had a good amount of money left over, something that doesn't happen often. We immediately put it to Summer Savings (up to $700) and our CC debt account (up to $1200). With 5 months left to go before the summer, we've saved 10% of our goal. And with around $10,000 being our year long goal ending on 12/31/08, $1200 is a great first month start.

Our tax return is done for the most part. I've been told to expect around an $8000 refund this year, and I will post when I know for certain and how we will earmark that money. With that post, I'll go into some of the issues surrounding our return this year.

I've also had a chance to put $250 towards each of our Roths, pushing our totals for 2007 up to around $2000 each with two and a half months to go to keep funding.