Help! I fell off the fiscal cliff

[Alacrity]

Wifie's paycheck is now $1,000 less a month.

I just refinanced our mortgage to get our payments down $950 a month. Figuring that we could at last have a home budget that works.
*^&%$^$#@!

[HouseofWool]

Yikes. I am dreading this summer when there is a good chance of the ex's child support payment dropping by $500/mo. Good luck to you.

[migirl]

DH's paycheck is also $1000 a month less, it sucks.

[spotty_dog]

Just due to FICA or also increased withholding?

[PrincessFiona]

We dread January for this reason too. We are also anticipating falling off the cliff ... my 10 year old van is paid off, but has become a money pit. It looks like she might be heading for the junk yard and we were foolish enough to not set aside money each month to help us afford another vehicle. That will mean car payments. There's just no room in our budget come January....it will get better once you hit the max for FICA.....

Silver lining? At least you had refinanced the mortgage?

Kris

[migirl]

Ours is mainly due to FICA.

[ides]

We are about $200 less a month now. Not too bad at the moment. I figured our taxes and we were getting a refund but then we got the document with dhs bonus and I haven't had the desire to redo them. Sigh.

[v-girl]

We are down $200 too.

[Thirteen]

$660 per mo.
*splat*


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[ladymoreta]

Ugh, about $1000 here, too. At least we're still transitioning, so we're living way under our budget, but it means we're saving and paying down our debt more slowly.

[spotty_dog]

Is that the difference between December 2012 and January 2013, or between last January and this January? Ouch!!

I guess being paid on 1099 has its perks. We pay our quarterly estimated tax based on 110% of last year's tax, so tax code changes don't really hit us until the following year. And paychecks can vary by $5000 or more so we don't have a budget based on a predictable cash flow. >.<

[ladymoreta]

That was the difference between 12/2012 and 01/2013 for us. We do W-2, so I'm hoping it's right.

[Alacrity]

FICA was less than 3%. There is the Obama Care tax (which they said was 100% paid for)

[spotty_dog]

FICA was less than 3%. There is the Obama Care tax (which they said was 100% paid for)

FICA was 2%. Additional Medicare tax only kicks in after $200K of income, and only in the pay period where your employer has paid you at least $200K YTD. If you're there after just 7 weeks, I'm hard-pressed to pity you. (The other additional Medicare tax is only on investment income and wouldn't have hit your payroll.)

However, like Kris alluded to, there's a cap on Social Security tax. Once you've hit $113K of gross payroll, you don't have to pay that one any more. So if you were paying 0% SS in December and that jumped to 6.2% in January, that would definitely sting. Silver lining is it goes away again at some point.

[ladymoreta]

Ah, maybe that's what happened with us. I also wonder if we have some health insurance changes? I don't have DH's pay stub; I was just looking at the deposit amounts. We definitely don't make anywhere near *that* much!