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Congratulations! You’ve got your first major job. Unfortunately, you’ve also got new tax obligations. Welcome to the workforce. You probably want to deal with your taxes as quickly as possible. Most people do, regardless of their age. Unfortunately, if you breeze through tax forms, you might miss potential money-saving strategies like the ones below. 1.
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You’ve been presented with a free trial offer for a product or service that you find interesting. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of it? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warns you to proceed with caution, because some free trial offers can be misleading and cost you significant money in the long run. Legitimate free trials
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How much money will you need to retire? Financial advisors have frequently recommended a $1 million nest egg for a comfortable retirement, but there’s no one-size-fits-all magic number. Have you ever figured out how much money you’ll need? According to our new survey, you haven’t. How much money will you get when you start collecting
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Like most Americans, you probably want to get through your taxes as quickly as possible. However, do not rush through your return so quickly that you simply take the standard deduction and ignore deductions that can bring you a healthy refund. Consider these commonly overlooked tax deductions. For the 2018 tax year, fewer of us
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America’s student loan debt may be approaching a critical point with respect to repayment. According to Student Loan Hero, the total student loan debt has reached $1.48 trillion spread across 44.2 million Americans, and the latest release from the U.S. Department of Education in September of 2017 shows that default rates are climbing. According to
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Given all the data breaches and hacks these days, it’s best to assume that your personal data has already been exposed and is in the hands of criminals – either preparing to sell your data to other criminals or planning to use it themselves. However, there’s more to good identity hygiene than just protecting your
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If you’re a traditional employee, every year you receive a W-2 form from your employer that records your earnings for the year and the amount of taxes withheld from those earnings. IRS 1099 forms are complements to the W-2 form for non-traditional employee relationships. They are generally designed to record sources of income that have
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By Kelly Hartog “…I think it says a lot about the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn’t released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B (billion) market cap.” That was written by Jackson Palmer, the co-creator of Dogecoin, a parody cryptocurrency — named for
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Do you ever feel like you are drowning in debt? Have you ever considered simply not paying your debts? What’s the worst that can happen if you refused to pay them back? Unless you owe that debt to the “unregulated” end of the high-risk loan market, nobody named Vito is going to show up and
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Super Bowl LII (52 to you non-Romans) will take place at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday, February 4. We could have had the Jacksonville Jaguars in their first Super Bowl appearance facing the Minnesota Vikings as the first team to ever play a Super Bowl in their home stadium – but neither team
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The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will bring significant changes to individual taxpayers, but states will also be affected by some of the law’s provisions. The limitation on deductions for state and local taxes has grabbed the most headlines, because by definition, it affects taxpayers in states with high property values and high taxes
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A Million Ways to Retire, 292 Ways to Plan for It America’s strategies for retirement run the gamut, from meticulously planned to none at all. Hopefully, your plan is more detailed than lottery tickets and blind luck – but what’s the best strategy for you? Is there even such a thing as a preferred retirement
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As can be seen from yesterday’s example, an individual desiring $4,000 of monthly net income in retirement can need in excess of a $1,000,000 retirement portfolio to supplement his or her Social Security and pension income. As can be verified by this calculation, there are many factors to determining the retirement “nest egg” that must
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I find when meeting with individuals for the first time that they typically have no idea how much they will need to be able to retire. The typical answer of $1 million is absolutely worthless since everyone has different income requirements and different income sources that must be added into the equation when determining when
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Thanks to large-scale hacks such as the Equifax and Yahoo breaches, identity thieves have no shortage of information to use in their criminal pursuits. Is your information among them? “Identity theft can trash your credit score because there’s the risk that somebody takes your name, your Social Security number, and your solid credit rating, goes
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In the wake of the housing crisis, it became significantly harder to get a jumbo mortgage due to the risk factors involved. Jumbo mortgages have been making a comeback since then, but they now face a different style of threat – disincentives for high-end homeownership created by the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
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Millennial Retirement Idealism How will millennials do in retirement? Very well…or so they think. A recent survey by Aperion Care on millennials and aging found that many millennials have fairly ambitious – and, in some cases, unrealistic – expectations regarding their golden years. Millennials expect to live to age 81 on average – which is
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What sort of structure makes the most sense for your small business – a corporate structure or a sole proprietorship? If neither structure fits you well, perhaps the best choice for you is a Limited Liability Company (LLC) – a structure that represents a middle ground between a regulated corporate structure and a simplified sole
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Did you hear that there are tax changes for 2018? Unless you’ve been in a coma or vacationing in North Korea over the last several months, you probably know that recent sweeping changes were made to the tax laws. However, you may not be sure how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and other tax
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More Savings, More Debt Do you participate in a 401(k) plan at work? If so, were you automatically signed-up by your employer? A new study suggests that if you were auto-enrolled in the plan, you may be accumulating more debt – but that may not necessarily be a problem. Whatever… Just Sign Me Up Policymakers
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Western Union has served as a reliable method for rapidly sending money over long distances since the late 1800s. Once known for telegraphs, it currently offers services to more than 200 countries across the globe. Unfortunately, Western Union is frequently used by scammers, thanks to convenience, speed, and limited means of recovery for fraudulent transactions.
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