Hope You Had A Wonderful 2010 And That You Have A Great 2011! Happy New Year!

December 31, 2010
Happy New Year!

Now the new year is coming on, and with it new challenges, but also the hope of rebirth and fresh starts. So let’s all take that opportunity to make this next year the best one ever!
God bless and Happy new year!

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2011 Home Improvement Tax Credits For Energy Efficient Products: Insulation, Windows, Heaters And More

December 28, 2010
2011 Home Improvement Tax Credit

Congress has passed tax credits for energy efficient home improvements through December 31st of 2011. You can now get credits to upgrade your water heater, windows, doors, hvac system, roofs, and stoves. Click for more details.

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2011 Payroll Tax Holiday Will Mean A Cut Of 2% In Social Security And Medicare Payroll Taxes

December 27, 2010
2011 Payroll Tax Holiday

The tax cut package just passed this past week (Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010) included a new payroll tax break for all taxpayers of 2% for 2011. The current rate is 6.2%, which means we’ll see a rate of 4.2% on wages paid next year. Other tax breaks were discontinued or extended. Read on for further details.

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Merry Christmas To One And All!

December 24, 2010
Merry Christmas

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Thank you for reading my lowly blog this year as we’ve grown from nothing to the point where we’ve got thousands of page views every month. I couldn’t have done it without you all, and I’m so thankful for every one of you in this Christmas [...]

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Starting A Side Business: Making Money From Blogging

December 20, 2010
Making Money From Blogging

From time to time I get questions about blogging from friends and family members.   They know I’ve started a couple of blogs and made them somewhat successful, and they want to  know how they might go about setting up their own successful sites. At this point I usually start talking to them about how much [...]

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2011 Marginal Tax Rates: Will We Keep The Same Rates, Or Will Taxes Go Up?

December 16, 2010
2011 Marginal Tax Rates

The last few months we’ve had quite a bit of uncertainty when it comes to what will happen to our 2011 marginal tax rates. The Congress and President Obama have gone back and forth trying to work out a deal on extending the current tax rates. First there was no consensus on whether they would [...]

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Number Of Underwater Homes Declines, But Foreclosures Are Up

December 14, 2010
Underwater Homes On The Decline

A while back we wrote several posts about how millions of homeowners (more than 11 million of them) were finding themselves in a situation where the values of their homes had dropped, and they found themselves underwater in their homes – with negative equity. In other words, their homes were now worth less than they [...]

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One Casualty Of The Recession: Charities

December 9, 2010
Charity Giving Is Down

Tim Chen is founder and CEO of NerdWallet.com, a website that helps consumers to compare low apr credit card offers.  Tim also educates consumers about credit cards and personal finance at the Christian Science Monitor, Forbes Moneybuilder Blog, and the Huffington Post. At the same time that Americans remain as generous as they can be, public [...]

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President Obama And GOP Reach Deal On Extending Bush Tax Cuts. Will Congressional Democrats Go Along?

December 7, 2010
Bush Tax Cuts Renewed

We’ve been talking for months now about whether or not Congress and President Obama would be renewing the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.  We’ve looked at what the 2011 tax rates would be if they weren’t extended, and talked about what some of the problems of not extending the Bush tax cuts would [...]

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Will The Bush Tax Cuts Be Extended In The Lame Duck Session?

December 3, 2010
Bush Tax Cuts

The end of the year is coming quickly, and if you’re paying attention to the debate about the Bush tax cuts, you may have noticed that nothing has happened yet. There hasn’t been any action on extending the tax cuts for either the higher income earners, or everyone else.  If they aren’t extended, everyone’s taxes [...]

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What Is The Real Unemployment Rate? Is It Really Only 9.8% Or Are Things Worse Than That?

December 2, 2010
What Is The Unemployment Rate?

The past few years have been rough ones, and we have seen our unemployment rates go from 4-5% all the way up to 9.8% as of last month’s unemployment report. As bad as 9.8% sounds, could the situation be even worse that that? Could the actual unemployment rate be even higher? What Is The Actual [...]

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