If I can chime in without coming across as a braggart, I would like to address that. As I revealed in my Humblebrag thread, I made $113K+ last year; my wife made $108K+ last year; and our apartment rental brought in another $7K+ gross last year. Plus our tax return; plus our stimulus (which was based off the previous year’s return which had less income). We have three children, so our stimulus was pretty hefty even though as a household we were phased out a bit.
If we get even more from the stimulus this round, we will be throwing that money back into the economy as soon as it hits our account. It will be local, and it will be the epitome of the “velocity of money” principle. I am going to have my contractor do a complete bathroom renovation in the apartment; and I am going to do another project to my house. The contractor will both pay his employees as well as have money from the projects himself. He will buy meat off the local butcher shop that helps the farmers; he will buy items his three daughters want/need; and he will go visit some of his favorite locally owned restaurants. His employees will receive less as it will be wages only, but it is guaranteed work during the winter and will augment whatever stimulus money they receive. Those vendors, restaurants, and stores that I and these people will patron will have their owners spend locally as well.
See, no matter how badly the GOP and others have tried to condition the entire country to think, $228K is not “the rich,” and we have bills too. We are also almost guaranteed to spend that money. I could pad my savings or buy stocks, but I really want to get these projects knocked out without having to save up for them or allocate income that could go elsewhere so we do not feel a pinch. I also want to do my part in stimulating the economy.
Update to this thought now that the stimulus is imminent and so are the calculations for who gets what.
As mentioned, we have three children. $1,400 x 3 = $4,200. But, they are prorating what you get for each dependent now as well if you make an adjusted gross income of a certain range.
We purposefully did not file our 2020 taxes yet because our income is so much higher. However, the new limit for Married, Filing Jointly is $160,000. My wife and I had $155,591 on our AGI line (we have an amazing CPA) for 2019.
How impactful (and stupid) was the reducing of the phase out limits for this stimulus? See below.
If we had made $149,999, our check would be $7,000.
At what we reported, $155,591, our check will be $3,087.
If we had made $160,000, our check would be $0.
That is a hell of a wave for $10,000 difference in income for a couple for a year.
