I neglected to mention that I completed our taxes a few weeks ago and got our refund lickety-split. I'll not talk about the fact that our federal tax burden is down around 1% this year; I talked enough about that last year. A friend of mine reminded me that I'm still paying lots of money to Social Security and Medicare, though, so I shouldn't feel too unburdened...

If you haven't done your taxes yet, be sure to do and submit them online, for free! Just go to http://www.irs.gov/, click “Free File”, “Start Now!”, and then click on your favorite provider. Mine was TurboTax – they've been doing online taxes for years now, and it's free for everyone through the IRS link, even if you itemize. That's how I did my taxes this year, and it worked out wonderfully.