My most productive week…maybe ever

This week seemed to go by pretty quick for me.  With lots of work to be done at the office it makes the days go by quickly.  I’ve got a nice little routing going.  Training in the morning, work all day, head home, eat something quick and get to bed as soon as I can, and then REPEAT.  It’s a nice way to make the dreary winter months go by.

Moving along, this week turned out to be just an overall really productive week.  I started the week off by doing something that I have been putting of for quite a while.  As most of you know, I am a CPA to pay the bills…so this means I do have a little financial savvy..I’d rank my knowledge just above a 6th graders, but still I know what a debit and credit are..most of the time 🙂 haha.  Ever since I entered the work force I have wanted to open a Roth IRA so I could start putting some money away and hopefully retire before I turn 90. So I finally just forced myself to go onto the web and open an account up.  I guess I always sort of thought it would be a little difficult to set one up.  You know determine what I want to invest in, actually open the account, set up electronic transfers, etc..It turns out that it is amazingly easy.  I think it took me all of 10 minutes to create an account on Vanguard.com, choose my investment, and set up my electronic bank transfer.  The toughest step toward retirement planning is behind me now.  All I have to do going forward it make sure I throw some money in to the account to help it keep growing.  Who nows maybe I will be a millionaire someday! haha!

The next thing I did this week was something that I have never done before.  I actually am quite embarrassed about this, but I will share it with you all anyways.  As I mentioned before I am a CPA (Certified Public Accountant), I currently spend most of my time working in the personal taxation field of the industry.  Here’s the funny part…I HAVE NEVER DONE MY TAXES BEFORE!  Basically over the past few years (this year included) my return consists of

1. A W-2,

2. two 1099-DIVs

and thats pretty much it folks.  An infant child (the one from those e-trade commercials) could easily do my tax return.  However, since it has historically just been done by my Dad’s accountant I never really thought about it to much since he was able to just give the accountant my few tax documents and the guy would just crank it out real quickly.  In the broad scheme it was more of a favor to my dad since the real money the accountant was making was for doing my mom and dad’s returns since they are self-employed real estate owners (this usually makes tax returns a bit more difficult).  None the less at the beginning of last week I had still not completed my own tax return.  With the new year starting and my initiative to “Just Do my Damn Job, Everyday!” I figured I would sit down and crank out my personal tax return (Its a 1040A for you accountants out there, nice and easy when you have no real income and are claiming the standard deduction, which means I will get my refund quicker too!)  Just like when I set up my Roth IRA the whole process was ridiculously fast.  I seared irs.gov’s website to a government sponsored tax return site (you can use the IRS’s free file system too)  and I found a tax return website called http://www.taxslayer.com.  They have a sponsorship deal with Dale Earnhardt Jr and he is pictured on their homepage…this sealed the deal for me, I knew I had to do my taxes with them! Hahaha..just kidding.  The beauty about taxslayer.com is that its completely free to e-file your returns if you in the military or like me below a certain income level and below the age 25.  I qualified!  So in about 20 minutes I filled out my return and submitted it.  Now all I have to do is wait to collect my refund..hopefully the government does wait to long!

So there you go!  I began a retirement savings account and did my own tax return, what a good week!  I also knocked out some pretty solid training which included a long run yesterday that went very well.  I was able to run outside and it made all the difference in the world.  I had been on the treadmill for about 2 weeks in a row (including my long run) because of the weather..so getting outside even though it was cold was a great thing!  And get this while I am closing in on about 20 minutes to go in my run I see three chica’s turn the corner and start running on the road I am on, me being behind them.  The first thing I notice is that they all have reflective gear (it was early in the AM dawn was just breaking and like me they had been running since it was dark) and I was like damn I need to get some of that reflective gear because there were a lot of cars that went by me in the morning that I bet didn’t see me..(note to self, by a reflective vest or something).  Anyways, I also notice that one of them is a redhead.  Let me fill you in here.  The day before I was talking to a former co-worker about this group that she runs with on Saturday mornings called the Oven Door Runners.  I asked if she was going to run since I was thinking about going.  Since the guys that I swim with who usually run with the ODR’s were all out of town I wanted to see if she would be there so if I came I would have someone to talk with and you know ease the awkwardness of not knowing anyone.  It turns out that she wasn’t going to be able to go and instead she was going to run with some friends.  So ok I chalked that one up as a no-go to ODR’s this week and I went on my merry way Saturday morning.  By the way my friend has red hair.  So fast forward to Saturday morning at around 7:40 am.  I’ve been out running for about an hour or so and am just beginning my tempo part of the run when the 3 female’s pop out in front of me.  At first glance I’m like “no way thats her..there are prolly hundreds of people running this morning all over town”.  Literally there usually are with the Fleet Feet groups and everyone else.  I felt like yelling out to see if it was her but then I thought that a weird little dude with white spandex, a fuel belt, and a blue hat might scare them off.  So instead I cruised up behind them and sure enough it was my friend Karen.  Totally unplanned, totally unscripted.  We both had no idea where each was running that day or when for that matter.  Just goes to show you that cool things happen when you exercise!

Oh yeah…I just did the dishes and am in the process of doing my laundry…2 weeks overdue, GROSS!