Image via Wikipedia As the cliché goes, there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. But, they’re intertwined. When you go to the great beyond, the government generally wants its cut, which is just under half the size of your estate, provided it reaches a certain size. Yep: The government can be your [...]

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Image by lumaxart via Flickr DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? * “I’m tired of managing property and dealing with tenants.” * “I’ve got tenants/family members that don’t pay me enough, but I just don’t have the heart to raise their rent or kick them out.” * “I refuse to pay all those capital gains [...]

Filed under: 1031 Starker Exchange, Listing Presentation, Money-Saving, Mortgage, Real Estate Market, Selling, Tax Issues, VRN | No Comments »

… What if you just let the 5 reasons to buy and the 5 reasons to wait cancel each other out, and buy for lifestyle? You a Housing bull? No thanks. Call me a lifestyle bull. A lifestyle bull in a now confidence sapped china shop. Maybe buy because that house you grew up admiring [...]

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Image via Wikipedia Shun investments promising high rates of return — more return means more risk of losing your money. Instead, stash your cash in a savings account, money market mutual fund, self-directed IRA or certificates of deposit. Dear Liz: I am 27 and make a great salary and commission for my age. I recently [...]

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Image via Wikipedia There’s a lot of free stuff out there. Erin Burt of Kiplinger.com — one of our favorite personal-finance websites — has compiled quite the list of free items being offered this year. As is the way with any list of freebies, some items are more worthwhile than others; some are hidden gems, [...]

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The post in which we wrote last month about a possible tax credit for pets received quite a number of comments — some for and some against the idea. Whether the proposed law has a chance on Capitol Hill or not has yet to be seen. However, the amount of responses we got from the [...]

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How about Congress and the Administration, using part of the $787B Stimulus money, negotiate consumer debt down with credit card banks by paying them pennies on the dollar with our tax dollars instead of giving banks money to lower our credit limits, raise our rates and penalize us? Save credit revolvers which are most Americans [...]

Filed under: Credit Cards, Economy | 1 Comment »

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced plans to expand a program that closely monitors how much income taxpayers report versus how much they pay on their mortgage. The IRS expects the expansion to take place by 2011:
After prompting from an IRS auditor, the agency will study whether it should make greater use of data [...]

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