Make Your Tax Return Dollars Work For You! Walmart Family Mobile PLUS Plan #DataAndAMovie

This Walmart Family Mobile PLUS Plan shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser, Walmart Family Mobile. All opinions are mine alone. #DataAndAMovie #CollectiveBias

It’s that time of year again. I’m afraid to say it…it’s TAX TIME. I’m not going to ask if you’ve done your taxes yet. I just feel that would be going a bit too far.

I actually generally enjoy doing my taxes. When I’m done I feel like I’ve accomplished something great.

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years that make taxes infinitely easier:

1. Have a special savings account where you deposit a set percentage of each paycheck. If you’re self-employed, an independent contractor (which actually falls under the self-employment category), or if there is a chance you’ll have to pay taxes this is very important to do . This will prevent your checking account from taking a big hit at tax time–I’ve seen it happen to people, and it isn’t pretty.
2. Keep track of your business expenses. Make sure you know what you can claim as expenses on your taxes according to how you file (self-employed, W-2, etc.). Keep track of receipts and expenditures throughout the year for easier filing at tax time.
3. Decide beforehand (with your spouse) how you’ll spend your tax return. We generally put our tax return to paying off a debt (in the past: student loans, The Husband’s car). Now that we are debt free, aside from our new mortgage, the biggest chunk of our return will go to our savings. A small portion will go to smart purchases of things we need (like the phone I’m talking about below!).

My phone is long overdue for an upgrade. For the past several months I’ve been talking with The Husband about switching to a month to month plan like the Walmart Family Mobile PLUS Plan.

The Walmart Family Mobile PLUS Plan features Unlimited Talk, Text, & Data which includes up to 10GB (!!!) of 4G LTE data PLUS a FREE movie on VUDU ($7 bonus value) every month (per line on your account) for $49.88!

HELLO! Sign me up!

I pay more than that right now with less data and no free movie on my current service. Instead of crying tears of envy of all those Walmart Family Mobile PLUS customers, I went to Walmart and bought myself a snazzy new phone.

I’m all about a quality camera on my smartphone so I went with the HTC Desire 626s. At $129 it is a solid low-priced smartphone with a good 8 MP camera. I’m so impressed with the color quality in the pictures (especially on a camera at this price point)!

Disclaimer: All prices for phones and plans included in this post are accurate as of the date of posting; however, these prices are subject to change. Please refer to http://cbi.as/2n6q6 or your local Walmart for current pricing.

Unless you’re a current Walmart Family Mobile customer you’ll need to purchase the $25.00 starter kit. There were two starter kits–one with a standard SIM card and one with a Nano SIM card. I was a little confused about which one I needed for the HTC Desire 626s. The awesome associate that helped me out (I need to learn his name, because this isn’t the first time he’s helped me out at Walmart) let me know I needed the nano SIM Starter Kit for the HTC Desire 626s.

Setup and activation was really simple. It took me about 15 minutes from start to finish. It would have been quicker, but I pressed the back button at one point in my sign up on the Walmart Family Mobile website and it made me start over. Lesson: don’t use the back button. LOL.

Now that I’ve invested in a new phone on the Walmart Family Mobile PLUS plan I’ll be saving money each month! PLUS, I get a free movie on VUDU each month that we can watch on our Xbox One (you can also watch VUDU movies on Smart TV, ROKU®, Chromecast®, VUDU Spark™, tablet, or other compatible devices). That’s another $7 SAVED that The Husband and I would have spent on one of our couch dates.

That’s what I call making your money work for you! Thank you tax return!

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