Money Walks

Tax season is here and I guess everyone could get a little touch up on taxes and its different forms. I didn’t know there were so many of them. Let’s see how many of them you know…

• Capital gains tax - is a tax charged on capital gains, the profit realized on the sale of an asset that was purchased at a lower price. The most common capital gains are realized from the sale of stocks, bonds, precious metals and property.
• Corporation tax - refers to a tax levied by various jurisdictions on the profits made by companies or associations.
• Excises - sometimes called an excise duty, are taxes paid when purchases are made on a specific good, such as gasoline
• Income tax - a tax levied on the financial income of persons, corporations, or other legal entities.
• Inheritance tax - Inheritance tax, estate tax and death duty are the names given to various taxes which arise on the death of an individual
• Poll tax - A poll tax, head tax, or capitation is a tax of a uniform, fixed amount per individual (as opposed to a percentage of income).
• Property tax - Property tax, millage tax is an ad valorem tax that an owner of real estate or other property pays on the value of the property being taxed.
• Retirement tax - Some countries with social security systems, which provide income to retired workers, fund those systems with specific dedicated taxes.
• Sales tax - a state or locality imposed percentage tax at the point of purchase for certain goods and services
• Tariffs - A tariff is a tax on foreign goods upon importation.
• Toll - A toll is a tax or fee charged to travel via a road, bridge, tunnel or other route
• Transfer tax - In a narrow legal sense, a transfer tax is essentially a transaction fee (often relatively small in relation to the value of property) imposed on the transfer of title to property
• Value added tax - is tax on exchanges. It is levied on the value added that results from each exchange
• Wealth (net worth) tax - Because of the broad term “wealth”, property tax, capital transfer taxes (inheritance tax, estate tax, gift tax), endowment tax and capital gains taxes are sometimes referred to as “wealth taxes”.

Here’s a neat graph I pulled from wikipedia that gives the average taxes paid from different parts of the world.

So it’s that time of the year where everyone is gathering all their paper works and getting ready to fill out those tax forms. Almost everyone I know has already filed their taxes, and so I guess that leaves me. Well the reason for that is because I have been pretty busy these last two weeks, and also I’m kinda paranoid that I might not file them correctly if I rush and not get back as much as I could, so I waited. My goal for this week though is to get all my paper work together and get it done this weekend. This past year, I paid a little over $4000.00 in taxes so it looks like I should be getting back around $2,500.

So what is my plan for my tax return this year? Buying new clothes? Adding more DVDs to the collection? Going on a nice trip to Hawaii with the Girlfriend for spring break? Nope, it’s better. Instead, every penny that I get back it’s all going to help pay off my debt on my credit card. So after my tax return gets here, I will be extremely close to being debt free. I can’t wait. That gives more of  a reason to file my taxes asap. So I hope that I will be able to do so this week.

After getting out of debt, I can finally start contributing to my Roth IRA and so much more other fun investment funds.

Hey guys, how was everyone’s weekend? Mines was very busy but it was very productive :). I know that I haven’t been posting as regularly as usual but I hope that will change sometime next week or so. I know this week I’m still going to be busy with school and work so please bare with me.

Okay so here are some of the carnivals for the week. I pulled out 3 articles from each carnival that I liked, enjoy reading.
The Digerati Life hosted the 5th edition of the Carnival of Money Stories

1. Ask uncle Bill presents, Thinking outside box.Golbguru
2. golbguru writes The Story Of My Investment IMotorcycleSharon
3. Sharon shares How I Milk Sacred Cows CashGolbguru

Golbguru hosted the 75th edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction.

1. Paul from ExtremeProspective says Shift Your Thinking to Reduce Debt
2. King of Debt at We’re in debt wrote Breaking Down Your debt
   
3. Bankruptcy Reader gives us Top 10 Reasons Why America is leading the World in Bankruptcy Filing

Trent hosted the 88th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance.

1. CJ from CoinJar posts Woman’s good CoinJaral sense leads to windfall.
2. Stubborn Capitalist brings us 9 fallacies of the poor.
3. Money and values brings Salary negotiations and the gender gap.

Lazy Man and Money hosted the 62nd edition of Festival of Frugality.

1. Ask Mr. Creditcard gives advice on How to get the best car deal.
2. A silver lining tells us that its possible to Reuse old calenders.
3. Debt Consolidation Lowdown writes Children and Money.

Did you know that the average American household with at least one credit card has nearly $9,200 in credit card debt? That’s quite amazing isn’t it? Looking at the number, it is a little hard to believe that the average is so high, but when you realize that our nation is built on credit, it becomes a little more easier to gulp down.

There’s the good and the bad:

When I look at debt, I see it as two kinds of debt. There’s the good debt and the bad debt.

You accumulate good debt when you’re borrowing money for a student loan or for a home. You just have to make sure that you don’t borrow more than you can pay back.

Bad debt is using your credit card to buy things like food, clothes, DVD, etc. This is the easiest way to fall in debt. When you get in the habit of buying things with your credit card, in return you also want to get in the habit of paying it off in full that month.

The general rule is that you don’t want to get in a habit of using your card unless you plan on paying every back that month, this is the fastest way of falling in debt. Here I have gathered 3 general debt management tips.

Debt management tips:

1. Make a budget journal. Most people spend thousand of dollars without too much though as to what they’re buying and that’s why people are surprised at how high they’re credit card is. Get a nice journal and start writing down everything you spend. At the end of the month you’ll know not only how much you spent but also what you bought. This way, you will know what you can cut back on and how much less you want to spend the following month.
2. Pay off your highest-rate debts first. On average, most people have more than one credit card. The key to getting out of debt is to first pay down the balances on credit cards that charge the most interest rate while paying at least the minimum due on all your other debt. Once you finished paying off the highest rate, then start tackling the one next highest.
3. Expect the unexpected. You want to expect the worse can happen at any given time, so start making an emergency account. You want to have enough saved to last you 3 - 6 months of living expenses in case of those emergencies. If you don’t have an emergency fund, a trip to the hospital or damaged car can seriously upset your finances.

If you end up with more debt than you can manage, then you should get some help whether it’s from a professional or someone you know before it’s too late. It may be embarrassing to ask a relative for some help but that’s alot better than ending up with bad credit.

Jimmy from Your Credit Advisor has an article called How to: Make Money with Balance Transfer Arbitrage, check it out. I liked this article because it’s well written and put together. It also provides us with ten rules for balance transfers.

Happy reading : )

Sorry guys, but due to the amount of work I will have to put in this week for school I will not be able to post for the rest of the week.

But in the meantime, check out this cool article I found on msn money, America’s Top 50’s Salaires. A lot of interesting jobs on the list.