Popping in to say hello and share a few updates.

I received word from my debt consolidation company that they were able to negotiate settlements on two more of my accounts in the past few days.  This takes me down to 3 that are left to be settled, and a total unsettled balance of just over $14k.  Already way past where I thought the year would end up, and it's only April.  I guess later in the year I'm going to have to switch my tracking mechanism to how much is left to pay vs how much is left to be settled.  I'll probably make that switch at the end of the year because it sounds too annoying to do right now haha.  It's very good news, though.

Yesterday, I glommed on to my mom's tax appointment to see if her tax preparer could help me with my amendment to my 2019 state taxes.  Basically....I moved out of a city that has a city income tax in Sept of that year, to one with no tax.  I changed my withholdings appropriately, so the city tax stopped coming out, but didn't realize I had to file a form with my state taxes that year to reflect the part year resident tax.  Plus, my tax software is a bit too simple for that - so my tax return was prepared as if I had been a resident of the tax free city all year, when in reality, it was only 4 months.  Big refund, yay - or so I thought lol.  Refund never came, and the status on our state tax site just kept saying pending.    Finally I got a notice in the mail that they had recalculated my taxes, and that I owed them a few hundred dollars instead of getting my big refund (booooooo).  I realized then that my taxes didn't inform them that I had moved, and they recalculated based on me living in the city with the tax full year.  Since I stopped having that tax witheld from my paycheck, obviously they thought I owed.  So the truth was somewhere in the middle.  I didn't have enough time to figure out how to fix it, so I paid the few hundred bucks to not incur penalties, figuring it would all factor in at the end.  I eventually downloaded the forms, and spoke to someone at the state tax dept to confirm what I needed to do.  But I was unsure if I was going in the right direction.  Welp, my mom's tax guy pretty much ignored all of the nuance I was trying to explain to him, and left out several critical numbers in the return and on the additional form.  So I got home and realized that he had done them both wrong.  Which is very annoying since I sat there for 3 hours.  But, at least I was able to tackle them myself today, and am 99% confident that I am due an additonal $693.  Which is very nice - it's mostly going to go to savings and education expenses.  Hopefully they agree with my amendment, and the refund is proccessed in a decent timeframe.  

I also got a call the other day to screen me into an in home market research study I had signed up for.  Basically, they come into your home and take pics or videos.  The payment is $595 via virtual Visa.  I've done surveys with this company before so I know they're on the up and up.  Since that's very unexpected and out of the blue, that money is being spent on some more fun things (not all of it).  I'm going to hopefully upgrade my cheap spin bike pedals to clip in pedals, and also buy cycling shoes.  It'll also go towards some education expenses, and my cell phone bill that month (to relieve what's assigned to that paycheck), and help fund a purchase I want to make on Groupon.  Any leftover will be used to purchase an Amazon gift card, since I can always find uses for those.  

Finally (for today), I received my latest bank bonus. It was $200, and I immediately moved it into my education account.  So much funding is going into this account to cover some exams for credit I need to take to supplement my degree.  I'm sure there will be more costs due to the school itself that will not be covered by loans, so just trying to build that buffer for now.  If I end up not needing as much as I am setting aside, then of course finding another use for it won't be an issue