6 Things You Can Do All Year Long to Save Money on Your Tax Bill How tedious it must be to spend all your time thinking about taxes. Don’t you wish that you could just push it to the back of your mind and deal with it at the end of the year? Actually, that’s [...]
Underwater with your mortgage? You’re not alone Are you underwater with your mortgage? You’re not alone. According to the latest figures from CoreLogic, 10.8 million, or 22.5 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages were in negative equity at the end of the third quarter of 2010, down from 11 million and 23 percent in [...]
Do Undocumented Workers File Tax Returns? The mention of undocumented workers always generates an emotional reaction. However, the IRS has a pretty cool, straightforward attitude toward the subject. As far as the IRS is concerned, there are only two kinds of aliens: resident aliens and nonresident aliens. Either way, if you earn income in the [...]
DIY Projects to Add Value to Your Home When home values are soaring, it’s easy to find home-improvement projects that will add value to your home’s bottom line. But when home values aren’t moving all that much, you have to be much more thoughtful about which home-improvement projects will add the most value for the [...]
Avoid the Scam of Mortgage Credit Insurance A question I hear quite often from clients is “What insurance can I buy to protect my mortgage if anything happens to me?” In this time of economic uncertainty, high unemployment, and foreclosures, I love having such smart clients who want to protect their assets. If you’ve asked [...]
Tax Issues for Parents: Coordinate with Your Kids A woman I know told me she tried to efile her tax return, only to have it rejected. Someone had already filed a tax return using her daughter’s Social Security number. No, it wasn’t an ex. Nor was it identity theft. It was nothing bad. Her sixteen-year-old [...]
5 Mistakes My Customers Make with Their Insurance Mistakes happen. The benefit of mistakes is the ability to learn from them. It may be cliché, but the fastest way to save money on your insurance is to stop making the mistakes I see so many of our clients making. Insurance Mistake #1: Reducing or Removing [...]
Payroll Withholding Tax: Reevaluating Withholding for 2011 January dawns all fresh and clean. All our financial errors, oversights, and misjudgments from last year can be swept away (though we may still have to pay for our ills…), and we get to start this year with a clean slate. What’s the best way to start off [...]
Do you have a wish list of home-improvement projects? Have you thought about what you’ll be able to afford to do this year and how much it will cost? Over at my house, I’ve been making my list of home improvements and checking it twice. As we end the year, I thought I’d share a [...]
How to Sell Your Home in 2011 In last week’s post, I talked about some of the challenges facing today’s home sellers, including record-high foreclosures, extremely high levels of unemployment, reduced income for many Americans, and the now-trashed credit profiles of millions of prospective home buyers. These challenges are daunting. What can sellers do? There [...]
