The average tax refund this year is up 4% from 2005 to $2,423 per person. Since January 1st of last year, we started giving the government an interest free loan of $10 billion dollars. What are we doing?

What if we had stopped withholding so much of our paychecks and put the money toward ourselves? We’d get to keep the accruing interest. The government wouldn’t have fast access to $1 million to fund a water-free urinal conservation initiative or $13 million to help fund the World Toilet Summit. Or some of the other wasteful government spending (called pork) in 2005 that totaled $29 billion.

Yes, even without your overpaying of taxes throughout the year, our government would have made some silly decisions. Nonetheless, why are we giving them excessive amounts of our cash to experiment with? Every dollar (or $2,423) counts on the investment path to wealth.