this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

It's tax time, and as soon as we received all of our necessary documents The Tall One sat down to work on our taxes.  We itemize our deductions, because that works for us, and when he got to medical expenses, he called me over to help.  I pulled out all of our medical related receipts and started adding.  TTO was impressed that I already had everything separated into the necessary sub-categories.  Last year, I realized that would be a simple enough thing to do and it would make it easier when tax time rolled around again.  What I failed to do, however, was actually keep all the receipts.  We knew there wasn't a receipt for everything, but we only wanted to report the expenses that we had a receipt for, you know, in case of an audit.  Turns out we couldn't account for enough to take any deduction in that area.  Bummer. 

Later that night, TTO informed that we were a measly $3 short.  Three dollars!  If I would have known that I would have looked harder for stray receipts!  But it's in the past now and there's not a whole lot we can do.  Sure, we could file an amended return, but that would be more trouble than it's worth, especially since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find a stray receipt.  Too many just got lost before I had a chance to file them away.

Moral of the story?  Keep those receipts, you never know if it will amount to enough to take a tax deduction!
photo by x_jamesmorris