Do things seem to hit you hardest right before taxes?

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Each year it never fails, the month leading up to tax returns is always the hardest. Every year thus far we've had serious car troubles just before we expected our taxes back. The bad thing about it is there were times when our cars were so bad off we were actually left without a vehicle at all for awhile until we got the money to replace it. Some years it's more than just the cars too. There always manages to be something big breaking down on us weeks before we're expecting our tax returns, leaving us to wait until we get the returns to do anything about it. I know it could be worse. These things could be happening when we're not expecting any money, then we have to scramble to figure out a way to fix it. But still.. it's a pain because we always have other plans for our tax money. This year we wanted to put most of our tax money towards the house. We need so many repairs. We need a new kitchen floor, drywall in every room, paint, duct work.. the list never ends. We've known we needed a few minor car repairs. I need a new wheel bearing on my van, hubby needs breaks, things like that, nothing major. But then a few days ago hubby scraped the bottom of my van while pulling into the steep driveway, and boom, there goes my muffler! It's dragging and scraping and the car is loud! I wasn't planning on buying a new car, just fixing mine up.. but due to the cost of a new exhaust system as well as everything else that's wrong with my car, it is best to just junk it and get myself a new one. To make matters worse.. yesterday I came home to a freezing cold house! The heat didn't work so great in here in the first place. Only 3 rooms actually get heat, and thankfully 2 of those rooms are kid's bedrooms.. we use space heaters in the other bedrooms, so the only really cold rooms of the house are the dining room (which we're still using as a living room because we haven't cleaned the real living room out.. need a dumpster!) and the kitchen. The bathroom gets some heat from one of the bedrooms. But yesterday, there was cold air blowing out of the vents. Hubby worked on it for awhile, even went and bought a new thermostat, but there's still cold air coming from the vents. So now we need to get a repair guy in to see if we can get it fixed, and pray we don't need a new furnace! Thankfully all of our W-2's are in and I filed our taxes yesterday and we should be getting our money soon.. but this is just money I didn't want to have to spend! Like I said, I'm glad it's happening now as opposed to after all our tax money has been spent.. but still, I'd much rather these sorts of things not happen at all so I can spend the money as I had planned originally!