Taxes – done – check! Next up, tax-related despair…

Yup, $30 later and our taxes are now officially DONE. I have been whining (in my head only) and putting it off and dreading every step – round up the papers, paying the fee to pay online, ie not have to get off my bottom to file taxes (with the bonus of getting a refund usually within 2 weeks). Still. From the start of paper-gathering to the final acknowledgement that the government has received our returns: maybe two hours. Probably a bit less.

Next up, tuition payment, aka begging at the schools’ doorsteps.

Oh, and also re-begging for our free City of Toronto “welcome policy” status, which expires in August now.

Begging, begging, always begging.

I figured out a couple of weeks ago that of the two paycheques Ted brings home a month, we eat one and pay bills with the other.

Any money I receive (Child Tax Benefit, Canada Pension Plan (= big kids’ orphan benefit), plus Universal Child Care), adds up to about a third paycheque. No idea where that one goes. Tuition, insurance, gas and transportation (ie all those pretty TTC student tickets), probably gobble pretty much all of that.

Rent, you ask? Mortgage? Yup. No idea where that’s supposed to come from. Sometimes I feel like such a spoiled JAP (that’s Jewish American Princess where I come from, just to be utterly clear) because my father bought me a house.

Then I look around and realize it’s not a very good house, more of a hovel, the kind of mould-ridden hovel that makes us all sick… and so my integrity is intact, even if we have zero padding in case any kind of emergency – or another car accident – should ever strike. Chas v’shalom.

But at least our taxes are done, which means our Child Tax Benefit payments will hopefully continue, if not in time for July (eek – my fault, or Pesach’s fault for coming before tax time this year) then at least for the rest of the year.

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