If You Got A Tax Refund…Read This Now!

I don't want to be a buzz kill, but if you're getting a nice big, fat tax return this year...that may not be such a good thing. Now before you scoff and move along to the next thing on the internet...hear me out.

When you get a big refund, it's usually because you had too much money withheld from your paycheck throughout the year. You may want to take a look at your W-4...or have someone else look at it that's knowledgeable about that sort of thing.

Now I know what you're thinking...because I think the same thing every year. You'll use that money to pay off some leftover bills from Christmas, or pay off the credit card, or use it for a great vacation. Well, again, that might not be the best way to do it.

Say you got a refund of $1,200, according to Bankrate.com, that means you overpaid Uncle Sam by $50 a payday. If you took that $50 and invested it for 30 years...you'd end up with $36,000. But thanks to compound interest, you'd actually end up with a lot more. Bankrate says if your IRA made 6% last year, you'd actually end up with over $100,000 in that same time.

Now that's a lot of money.