What to Do with your Tax Refund? Get a Passport!

Tax Day is over, and that means we can all breathe a sigh of relief and start impatiently waiting for our refunds to arrive. This year, the average refund is around $2985.

What are you going to do with your post-tax windfall? We suggest getting a passport, of course. Here are 5 reasons why:

Ireland

Is a tour of the Emerald Isle on your life list? Get a passport, grab your refund and go! For the next 5 days, LivingSocial has an awesome deal available on their Escapes tab: for $1,349 you get a round trip ticket departing from Boston, New York or Chicago, six nights in five-star hotels and a rental car.

Or, if you’d like to build your own itinerary, Aer Lingus has summer flights on sale for less than $900 round trip. Sláinte!

Costa Rica

If the rainforest is more your speed, get in touch with your inner treehugger in Costa Rica. Right now, you can hit up Groupon for a voucher that will get you three nights this spring or summer for $435 for two adults and two small children at the Lost Iguana resort, near Arenal Volcano. For $580 you can stay for four nights instead of three.

Or, leave in May to see Arenal Volcano, Monteverde Cloud Forest and San Jose for as low as $777 per person through Latin Destinations.

The Bahamas

The Bahamas is a spectacular choice for a summer trip that will leave you refreshed (and perhaps with some money left over to spare!) CheapCaribbean.com has a package that includes air to and from Fort Lauderdale along with four nights at the Sheraton all-inclusive resort in Nassau starting at $449 per person if you can travel before the end of May.

Jamaica

If you really need to relax, LivingSocial and Groupon both have great Jamaican deals right now, too. With LivingSocial, you get a four night stay for two for $349 at the Sea Splash resort in Negril. Meanwhile, with Groupon you can get a five or seven night stay for two in cottage on the beach in Negril.

Finally, at CheapCaribbean.com, you can catch a last-minute deal that gives you 4 nights at the Riu Negril resort for $639 per person including air from Fort Lauderdale. Kids stay and eat free, so this is a great choice for families.

Aruba

Finally, if an all-inclusive resort on the sandy shores of Aruba’s Druif Beach sounds appealing, CheapCaribbean.com can get you four nights at the Tamarijn resort for $1,239 including air. However, this rate is only available for the month of May.

Several of these deals are last-minute, so you’ll need to get a passport fast to take advantage of them. Standard passport processing takes at least six weeks. Even if you pay the $60 expedite fee, you’re still looking at three week’s processing time. Faster passport processing is available at the country’s 24 regional passport agencies, but you’ll have to have an appointment and take additional time off work to be there during operating hours.

Not up to wrestling with another hefty batch of paperwork? RushMyPassport can walk you through the passport application process, step-by-step. We make it easy to get a passport, while reducing the chance of common errors that can trip you up and cause delays. Then, we hand-deliver your paperwork to the State Department for processing in as little as 24 hours.

Photo credits: Some rights reserved by juergen49, Some rights reserved by DoctorWho, Some rights reserved by runkalicious