What Free Gifts?

Everyone gets such a great feeling from getting a gift, especially since it is usually something unexpected, something we wouldn't get for ourselves, and it shows the feelings of the giver.  It also feels great to give gifts to others, but we have to beware that the act of gift giving may not always be free.  Yes, I am talking about a gift tax.

The Excel Macro

So I thought I'd share a very useful tool we could all use to improve productivity if you ever work with excel.  A lot of people who use Excel don't use the programming side, and you do need some programming experience to get adept at it.  However, there are some useful tools you can use even if you aren't a programmer.  If you plan to never touch excel, then you can feel free to stop reading here.  But I think these techniques can be really helpful if you ever need to sort or make sense of a lot of data.  This is probably most useful if you are in some kind of corporate role and need to organize excel data.

Tax Strategies

Now you should know whether or not you should file your own tax forms, but before learning about the forms themselves, it may be good to learn a little bit about tax strategies to minimize your bill to Uncle Sam and maximize how much in cash you take home from your hard work.  There is a way you should approach your taxes so as to maximize the cash that reaches your pocket and it is good to learn these early so that they can work to your advantage for they ears to come.  I also go over some of the basics in an earlier post on taxes.

Should You File?

So tax season is approaching for all those who have to file for year 2011.  Deadline for filing your federal tax return this year falls on April 17th (fun fact: tax day is usually the 15th but this year it's two days later since the 15th falls on a Sunday followed by a holiday celebrated in the District of Columbia).  Many of us college students probably don't deal with our own tax return yet.  If you don't work part-time or had a paid internship over the summer, you probably don't have income to report.  For others of us, we still fall under the category of dependent and just let our parents file our taxes under their return.  However, after we graduate and step out into the real world, it is essential to know how to file your tax forms so that the IRS doesn't have to hunt you down.

Membership Programs and Mailing Lists

There are always two sides to the budget equation: revenues and expenses.  If you want more spending power, you have to look toward increasing the revenue side of the equation, meaning you have to either get a raise at your job (or get a job if you don't have one) or find alternate sources of income.  This is generally pretty difficult considering you have no direct control over how much you can move this bar.  However, increasing your revenues will often lead to a bigger change in your budget than penny-pinching your expenses, which is often much easier to do.  This post is going to look at a couple benefits you can get by finding some discounts right under your nose to help with the expense side.