January 26th, 2012 
Vijaianand 
With the advancement of smart phones, there are many apps which emerged to take advantage of the technology to provide consumers with tools that made their life easier as well bit app oriented. One of the new entry to the pool is Clover, a Payment service from phone. The phone payment service has been around for a while and used in Europe, Africa and South Asian countries but not caught up in USA a lot. It looks like clover is trying to get into unplugged market and seriously marketing to get new customers to try out. For that reason, they have introduced promo to give $5 Amazon card for any new signup through referrals.
To simply put, Clover is a person-to-person payment system for use between phone numbers. They don’t charge fees for personal user but business accounts gets charged some minimal fee. They support both iphone and Android phones with nice and smooth interface. Sign-up via this invite or through any registered user, you’ll receive a $5 bonus of $5 Amazon GC + $1 credit to the account The referrer also gets $5 too.
Usually you don’t even need a credit card or bank account to start, just a phone number to get the credit but due to high demand they are putting people to waiting list. If you want to get the $5 bonus, I recommend you to add a gift card or prepaid credit card to the account by upgrading to Gold membership and you will immediately receive the code. Referral is limited so hurry up and sign up. If you signed up, don’t hesitate to share your referral link here so others can use your link as well. Thanks to my favorite money blogger at mymoneyblog.com who brought this to my attention.
Here is the referral link again. Don’t lose this free money.
Clover – Pay by Phone Payment service – Signup Bonus
Young Adults – The Beaten Generation
Picture speaks better than thousand words. That’s the reason I been wanting and searching for the digital copy of this image in money magazine website for couple of days. You would think they would publish the digital version but not really or atleast I couldn’t able to find after searching for 2 days now. Anyway, here is the scanned version for you all to look and take a holistic viewpoint.
One of the largest group of audience affected by the recession were Young Adults particularly college grads. Many grads are extending their college days just to avoid jumping into the unemployment pool now. They are hoping things will get better eventually and days will come when we will be able to find jobs quickly. But that sunny days are still long way to go.
Many grads leave their college with the heavy debt burden and lives with their parents until they find a decent job. Their trouble cycle starts right after they exit their college. They need to start making student loan payments. So they need to find a job to support them and pay loan as well. They couldn’t find decent job in this economy, so settle for low income which leaves small amount after loan payment. This is the situation for the last few years.
Many analyst predict it has a greater impact with cascade effect on to our society. As the grads settle for lower income, it takes many more years for them to reach the income respective to their skill set. Until that point many cannot even think about marriage. So it increase late marriage numbers which will eventually screws the new birth numbers in our society. That’s already started to happen and graphics above clearly depicts the impact so far. If this trend continues, it will impact the proportion of older and young adult numbers in our country sometime soon which will larger effect on our economy. This is the case with china which is fighting against large older population. As you can see, no one worries about that macro economics part right now because we have bigger and more important fishes to fry especially how to get over this crisis and make our living.
Understandably it’s tough to see the long term impact while we are struggling currently with lots of issues. But now and then we have to stop and take time to look and make changes if we can for the benefit of our kids/future generation. That’s my take.
Tax year 2012 – Important Inflation adjustments
Happy New year to everyone.. I hope this year bring a reasonable amount growth and prosperous to our country and everyone’s life as well.
Let me start this year with blog on the update about IRS inflation adjusts on various tax items. Usually every year the Internal Revenue Service adjusts for inflation tax brackets, tables, exemptions, thresholds and other items. In recent years these annual adjustments have been minimal because inflation has been very low. This pattern holds true for 2012. Here are the major adjustments for 2012:
- The value of each personal and dependent exemption, available to most taxpayers, is $3,800, up $100 from 2011.
- The new standard deduction is $11,900 for married couples filing a joint return, up $300; $5,950 for singles and married individuals filing separately, up $150; and $8,700 for heads of household, up $200. Nearly two out of three taxpayers take the standard deduction rather than itemizing deductions, such as mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes.
- Tax-bracket thresholds increase for each filing status. For a married couple filing a joint return, for example, the taxable-income threshold separating the 15 percent bracket from the 25 percent bracket is $70,700, up from $69,000 in 2011.
- For an estate of any decedent dying during calendar year 2012, the basic exclusion from estate tax amount is $5.12 million, up from $5 million for calendar year 2011. Also, if the executor chooses to use the special use valuation method for qualified real property, the aggregate decrease in the value of the property resulting from the choice cannot exceed $1.04 million, up from $1.02 million for 2011.
- The annual exclusion for gifts remains at $13,000.
- The amount unearned income of minor children that is not subject to the so-called “kiddie tax” remains at $950.
- The annual limit for Section 179 expensing, which businesses can use to deduct the cost of new business equipment in a single year, has been reduced to $139,000 (down $361,000 from 2011). The $139,000 limitation is reduced (but not below zero) by the amount the cost of Section 179 property placed in service during the 2012 taxable year exceeds $560,000.
- 401(k)/403(b)/457 contribution limit: $17,000 (up $500 from 2011).
- The income limit for full Roth IRA contributions for 2012 is $110,000 for singles and $173,000 for joint filers (up $3,000 for singles and up $4,000 for joint filers from 2011).
- The monthly tax-free parking benefit employers can provide their employees for 2012 rises to $240, up $10 from the limit in 2011.
For more detail listing on other items, please visit IRS.org