Finance

TurboTax 2012 Review and Giveaway

In this TurboTax 2012 review, I will discuss what TurboTax has to offer and the features of different versions : Free, Deluxe, Premier and Home & Business. TurboTax doesn’t need any introduction. It is the best selling tax software program, comes in both offline (CD or download) and online versions. I have used it regularly for [...]

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Tax planning for 2012 : What changed, what stayed the same and what you should be aware of?

This post mostly deals with 2012 tax deductions, changes and exemptions for planning purposes, which means most of the changes described here will be effective for the 2012 tax year, for which you will file the return on April 15, 2013. The 2011 tax guide (a complete 2011 tax guide in pdf) will be released [...]

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Stay at home or to work : What is the financial & professional price?

Some of our friends are pregnant or have just had a baby. So the conversation of staying at home or going back to work after maternity leave comes up fairly often. When I expressed my interest to stay at home for a couple of years after we start our own family to one of the [...]

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Knowledge is power and its free too!

A compilation of best free online courses, classes, lectures, podcasts and more Knowledge is power, but we need not spend much to get knowledge. There are lot of universities and websites that make their courses/lectures available for everyone to use for free. These top ranked universities and websites bring together amazing professors, thought provoking topics, tons [...]

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What do a fly in the urinal, chocolate elephants and photocopiers have in common? Goals! – Part 2

Every year starts full of hope about lofty dreams and plans for the future. By February, only ~60% of us have the same enthusiasm, by mid year more than half of us will give up. According to a survey done by the Operations Research Corporations, 24% (one in four people) NEVER succeed and have failed [...]

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What do a fly in the urinal, chocolate elephants and photocopiers have in common? Goals! – Part 1

Another article about goals??? Oh no, not again! That is probably how readers who read multiple blogs feel There must be about 1985 blog posts about goals (ok. I totally made that number up, but it feels that way). Everywhere you go in the blogosphere, people are talking about getting SMART. But bear with me, [...]

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Do your commitments match your convictions?

This will be my last article for the year. I am writing this while relaxing with family and I hope you are too. During these last few days, all of us are looking back at 2011 and planning/scheming for 2012. We plan most parts of our life, our career, finances, retirement, kid’s education, etc. We [...]

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Scrooge vs Santa : Gift giving is a huge waste of money!

If there is a division of the Government that wasted $82 billion an year, how would you feel? If there is a company that wasted $82 billion and 2.8 billion hrs. annually won’t you think the company should close its shutters? But there is one “department” that wastes this much and we willingly encourage that [...]

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Do a financial self appraisal

I just submitted my self-appraisal at work. Even though it is one among the least favorite parts of my job, I can see how a self-appraisal helps me set some aside to think about what I excelled at over the previous 12 months and what improvements need to be made over next year. It makes [...]

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