Terri Cullen at WSJ shared her tax preparation experience. Very informative! Especially for:

1. Sharing that TurboTax's cool feature of comparing income and itemized deductions against other U.S. households.

2. Terri finally revealed her income (although that of 11 years ago) and her tax due for the year. Not too bad for full disclosure as a personal finance blogger (yes, Terri is a blogger to some extent, although she gets paid and many people paid -- indirectly -- to read her blog.)

3. Good example of educating kids about money! I will soon need it.

One of TurboTax's cool functions is a feature that compares our income and itemized deductions against other U.S. households with similar adjusted gross incomes. Besides satisfying the voyeur in me, this is a good way to see whether we're keeping up with the Joneses in terms of how many deductions we're taking -- if people like us are taking more, we could be missing out on some valuable tax breaks. Another tool suggests deductions we may have missed, such as Gerry's job-search costs. (Those didn't amount to much, but every bit helps.)

In all, we owed $36,133 in federal taxes in 2005 -- roughly the equivalent of my starting salary here at the Online Journal 11 years ago. That's up from $26,360 a year earlier. We'll be getting a refund of $1,034, but that's about what we'll owe New Jersey to settle our state-tax bill. (We're also due a small refund from New York.)

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I began using Quicken's money-management software this year, which should do away with the need to make up a list next year. But we've decided to continue the tradition of sitting down at the kitchen table -- the ritual will keep the lines of communication open and provide an example for Gerald. When I was his age, I watched my mom fill out our tax forms and write out checks to the government, so I understood the concept of taxes.