That's good to know! I may give it a try next year just for fun. Worst case I just continue with TurboTax.

To answer about their revenue stream: The IRS free file program is a government program that partners with companies to provide free filing options. They also have services they charge for like audit protection but those are optional and just a " do you want this" at the end

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

I would just put everything into a HYSA, not a CD at the moment.

The mistake you are making is tracking your credit score regularly.

Behave responsibly with credit and the score will follow. Don't worry about it - it doesn't matter much.

I don't know all the tax laws by far (which have their own logic--or lack thereof), but I understand accounting. Wouldn't one have to have deducted medical expenses at some point in order for them to be taxable when forgiven?

My accountant actually files my taxes. I owed $300 one year and got a refund of $1200 the next

[removed]

$75k after the standard deduction for Married Filing Joint, is taxable income of $48k. That's like...$5k federal only. BUT if it's $75k of self-employment income and no deductions, then it could easily hit $16k. Toss in state, then you could hit $20k.

Sure! Just a heads-up - I don't day-trade and most of my taxable gains were from reinvested dividends from ETF's (and some FAANG exits) so my 1099 was incredibly simple, realistically it would've taken me 10 minutes to fill them out myself, I just wanted to see how well the import function would work.

In the big scheme of things, $700 is a very low credit limit. With good enough credit (and the discipline to not spend money just because you can), it's not unreasonable to have multiple cards each with limits in the $10k - $30k range.

With that in mind, the advice of "put your spending on a card" and "keep your credit utilization low" isn't as contradictory as it seems. You can get a few cards, build up $75k - $100k in available credit, and easily put a month's spending on them without pushing your utilization above 5%.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing and I use Schwab do that is good to know!

Depends on your 1099 and how well your brokerage formats that data. Seems like FreeTaxUSA uses some proprietary backend to soup through your 1099 forms. The "auto-import" function can be spotty but should work fine for 99% of W-2's.

Schwab's 1099 import worked fine for me, YMMV.

No penalty CD just got lowered to 4.35%

$700 is a really low credit limit. For context, I (35m, also excellent credit) opened a card a few months ago and got a $23,000 limit out the gate.

You’re seeing this impact because of how low your limit it. Once you get it to $10k and higher you won’t be scraping it on every purchase.

Go to your local bank branch and ask them for a credit limit increase. You might have to sit down with someone for a few minutes and “apply” for it and verify all your information. If you’re approved they will increase the limit to the request amount.

I just did this last week. Asked for a $600 increase and I was approved. I’ve had this card for over 5 years and I’ve had a couple missed payments over the years.

> Would that really add up to 25k or even 20k though?

By itself, no.

But the 25k would be the subsidy repayment, plus income tax on 75k income, plus self employment tax on OP's 11k income.

All that added together could easily be 25k.

Yeah my mistake, I deleted it. It is October if you are in most of California though.

You can ask them to raise the limit on the credit card you have. But also, you really don't need to be worrying about this.

Do they auto pull in investment data of all my trades? Bc that is the biggest doozy and benefit for me to use other services I'm already familiar with doing that.

If so, I'm switching to this next year. I'm so tired of paying to do my own taxes, but I'm not rich enough for a CPA.

You can typically call the bank and put in a request for a higher credit limit. Some banks will let you do this online. You shouldn't have to get a new card.

If you can afford to pay cash, why use your card for everything? Just put Netflix on it and it in autopay and just the rest cash. It will keep your credit utilization low, keep your credit active (and increase age of credit), and show you don't miss payments.

Your credit score is but your credit card. Credit cards don't organize you for anything but skipping payments. If it was too to then, they'd want you to max out an your cards, get more cards with them, and carry a balance so those blood suckers could profit off your debt.

You can file federal for free but you pay for state filings. There are also upgrades you can get like access to live help and audit support.