April has long been the reputation of tax filing season, because, well, April 15 is the deadline.

But I know people who have already done their filing and our appointment is today. Why?

If you are expecting a refund that you want to get as soon as possible, or if you have a student in college who is applying for financial aid, your tax filing season is in February.

And very often in the days between when you have the final numbers and when the refund check arrives, families come up with all kinds of ideas on where they want to spend that money.

If you are getting a refund this year, here’s what I want you to do with it:

Do at least one thing with that money that will help you save money in the long run.

Do you need some ideas?

• Buy a box, binder or packet to keep your grocery coupons organized. Look up my coupon tips on how to do that.
• Get a Sunday newspaper home delivery subscription so you get the coupon packets. You want to get and clip the grocery coupons as soon as possible because some stores run their sales during the week of coupon release. (If you are one of my local readers, we live in an area where three Sunday newspaper markets overlap. Take advantage of that situation.)
• Pick one grocery or drugstore product that is on sale and / or coupon and / or rebate the week that your refund check arrives and buy three to six months worth of supply. (This is called stockpiling).
• Pay off or pay down a credit card, and then next month you put what you were paying to the first bill on top of the regular payment for the next bill you are trying to pay off. (This is called snowflaking).
• Buy a box of CFL light bulbs and install them in the most appropriate light fixtures, keeping the leftover old fashioned bulbs for fixtures where CFL doesn’t work well. (We don’t like how they work for the porch lights, but most of our indoor fixtures are CFL).
• Buy the spray bottles, cleaning rags, dusting rags and other supplies you need to incorporate eco-friendly cleaning techniques into your home. You can still finish up the cleaning chemicals you have on hand while you try out eco-friendly methods and see which ones work for you.
• Buy a slow-cooker, electric griddle, beginner’s cookbook, coffee pot, new set of pots and pans or whatever you need in the kitchen to make it possible to cook more meals at home.
• Buy a box of blank cards and some festive rubber stamps and inks at the craft stores. Then go find your leftover craft paper, stickers and family photos. You now have everything you need to make handmade cards. I made that shift the year I wrote a check at the store for $35 for all the Mother’s Day cards that needed to be sent in our extended family. (Rubber stamps and inks can be expensive, so just buy a couple at a time. The savings is that those supplies are re-usable for many projects.)
• Buy a box of groceries from the bulk food purchase programs. Angel Food Ministries or Great Food For All are the ones available to my local readers. If you are a skeptic, give these programs a try at least once or twice. They work really well in lieu of, or in addition, to coupon tricks at the grocery stores.