What To Do With Your “Stimulus” Rebate Check?
Posted by Cap in Personal Finance |
There are three things I can do with my tax rebate check:
- Spend it.
- Save it.
- Invest it.
America’s retailer and the U.S. government wants me to spend it. My parents would probably want me to save it. My future children who’d no doubt be spoil brats like me, will want me to invest it. Being the conformist that I am, I will follow my readers’ advice and buy myself a Wii.
CNN’s current unscientific poll shows that 48% of respondents will pay off their debt, 32% will save it, and only about 20% will immediately stimulate the economy by spending it.
With retailers pulling out all the tricks to get you to spend, including allowing you to cash your tax rebate check at their location, a quick reminder on the sensible things to do shouldn’t hurt.
Three Sensible Ways to Utilize Your Tax Rebate Check:
- If you have outstanding credit card debt, the sound thing to do will be to pay off whatever amount you can with your tax rebate check.
- If you haven’t set up an emergency fund yet, now would be an incredibly good time to do so.
- If you don’t have large interest debt and you have the emergency fund covered, the next logical step would be making the money work for you. Invest the $300, $600, $1,200, or whatever amount Uncle Sam will give you. Throw it into your IRA, give a boost to your target retirement fund; heck, if you really want to be crazy, put it towards your children’s college fund.
P.S. Be alert for advance payment scams and other rebate scams. Avoid the hassles and troubles, deal with the IRS only and you should have little issues.
Related Resources:
- Basic Information on the Stimulus Payments - from the lovely IRS
- Stimulus Rebate Payment Schedule - from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
March 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
We’re putting ours into our savings account until next winter - then we’re using it to pay for our home heating oil & firewood. Hopefully next winter we can turn our thermostat up past 58 degrees.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
My wife and I are going to pay off some credit card debt with ours.
March 20th, 2008 at 7:46 am
I’m going to “help” the economy by spending it on a vacation trip to the Phillippines this summer, not sure which economy I’ll be helping though but at least the airline industry will be thanking me.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Stimulus check? Oh, you must mean the one that I’m paying for, but I don’t get.
Instead of calling it a “stimulus check”, they should call it what it is: “Pandering”.
March 21st, 2008 at 7:15 am
… if you had your tax refund direct deposited into an account while filing electronically, your “pandering” check also gets direct deposited…so there’s no physical check to tempt you with.
I would guess that most people who read your blog electronically file, and electronically deposit any refund owed to speed the process…of course, unless you owe money, then you probably haven’t filed yet :)
That being said, I’m spending my $600 on some high performance fuel injectors, a new fuel pump, and an electric fan kit… all for around 5hp in gains. Gas prices be damned!
March 21st, 2008 at 10:25 am
I’m putting my money (the money that I once gave the govt. and now they’re spending tax dollars so they can give it back to me) in my forex acct. They shoud’ve just given us a tax cut; the check/direct dep. thing is stupid.
Also, this poll is by CNN, aka liberals. The people that most likely vote on the CNN polls are also most likely liberals, so the answers are skewed.
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
Invest That sucker!!!!! Well, how about buy a Wii game and invest the rest?
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’m going to open a bank account - in euros.
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Since I got laid off a week ago, I won’t be spending it. It will stay in the high-interest (ha) checking account it gets deposited to.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:37 am
We will put this money toward our health insurance to cover us during our overseas move this Summer. Not exciting, but important, and it will lead us closer to our goals, so it’s worth it.
Jerry
http://www.leads4insurance.com
March 30th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Glad to see that you are considering getting a Wii. I vote that it’s not crap - but I have just had one for a week.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:34 am
haha actually I was joking.. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a Wii.
April 5th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
We are saving our pandering check (financed by the Chinese), which will be fairly large since we have three kids. Well, I might get my kids a baby sitter and take my wife out to eat! Then dump the $2K into my IRA. :)