Women are caring and nurturing creatures, but we can sometimes be taken advantage of. Read on to learn about two ladies who fought their own tax battles and the lessons we can learn from the mistakes they made in filing taxes. Crazy cat lady takes on the IRS Ms. Jan Elizabeth Van Dusen is a [...]
2011 was the year of big storms, and many people made a homeowners insurance claim as a result. We should have known it was going to be a crazy year for weather when a powerful storm hit one third of the nation between January 31, 2011, and February 2, 2011. Then, one of the worst [...]
Preparing for an emergency is an important part of financial planning and of your retirement strategy. One financial or medical emergency can wipe out years of hard work and retirement planning and retirement savings without an emergency fund in place to take care of expenses. Meanwhile, keeping cash savings means that you can access what [...]
At first glance, the terms “travel” and “frugal” might not seem like they belong in the same sentence. If you’re tight with money, how could you possibly justify travel? You should be saving money! In our family, and in many other families, it’s all about setting priorities. My husband and I feel that travel is [...]
It’s bad enough having to face paying a fortune in taxes—there’s no reason to also get stuck paying penalties when filing taxes. Yet many people just don’t review their financial status or withholding during the year—and they end up coming up short over and over again. Although the IRS offers a delicious menu of penalties [...]
I recently read a report suggesting that if you are not saving at least 10 percent of your gross income, then your chances of outliving your nest egg in retirement are great—very great. What does this mean for your retirement strategy? When your employer offers a matching contribution to your retirement fund, you have an [...]
A good friend once told me, “Free is worth the paper it’s written on.” You’ve likely heard all the warnings about how there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Is this equally true when it comes to free tax preparation and tax filing services? Let me give you some good news—there really are some [...]
After 20 years of working with the same clients, it still astonishes me that every year the very same people forget to bring the very same documents to me when they are filing taxes. One of the nice things about working with a tax pro is the organization that he or she can offer you. [...]
This article was written by guest blogger Eva Rosenberg. A couple of months ago, someone wrote to TaxMama®, utterly shocked when he got his W-2. Early in the year, his company had relocated him from his home state to a different state. Somehow, the payroll department never changed his state withholding to his new location. [...]
