December 29th, 2011 
Vijaianand 
It’s hard to believe that 2011 is already drawing to a close. It has been a great year with unexpected turns and bounces and surprises and made it interesting. For me, it started out with a surprise of passing my Certified Financial Planner(CFP) exam. I am happy to be part of 50% hard working and lucky people to passed in USA. I also got my Realtor license in March and started helping as a Realtor. I was able to work with many first time buyers on their dream home and veteran investors to find a good deal on their investment properties. I enjoyed every moment of it. Overall, it has been good year and it’s going to end with a great note. I achieved most of my goals for this year especially my Realtor goal, closing atleast 10 deals this year. I am really happy about it and hope to continue this stride next year as well.
With that good note, I like to say “Thank you” to everyone who encouraged and helped to achieve my goals. I extend my warmest wishes for a safe, joyful and prosperous 2012.
As many of you know, I am a strong believer of Good Thoughts attract good things. I also put lessons learned from The Secret Book into practical use. It helps me to think positive about future. I hope 2012 will make some positive impacts to everyone. I also encourage you to Check out the secret.tv intro (20mins) which talks lot of Law of Attraction and how you can also think positive about your future.
Wishing you & yours a Happy New Year!
Happy New year 2012 – Send off and Celebrate
Charitable Giving is Good for you & for your Taxes – Tax deductible contributions
I am a big proponent of Charitable giving. I raise funds at this time of year to sponsor and support few kids education back home in India. I always like to follow the proverb, that what you give from one hand shouldn’t be known to the other. But at the same time, its not always easy to do that. You sometimes have to push yourself to give and as well take advantage of that giving. As author says in the “The Secret” book, give more to get more. I know it might seem like selfish but some people need that push to start giving. Giving is all about you and your inner feeling but when it comes to money it also become a tax matter. As CFP passed, I studied lot about how to take advantage of giving and taking tax deductions to avoid tax all at the same time.
Whom to give and get tax deductible?
This is the time for giving. If you haven’t started giving, its never too late. There are lots of charity organization like Sheltering Arms, Red Cross and many local organization like food banks who are willing to accept your contribution. But in order to get tax deductible, you better follow the IRS rules.
However, only contributions to “qualified organizations” are deductible. You can ask any organization whether it is a qualified organization, and most will be able to tell you. They should have an IRS letter saying so — you can ask for a copy. You can also check the lists of most qualified organizations from IRS publication. You can also visit the website http://www.guidestar.org, which lists 1.5 million qualified charities and contains in-depth financial information about them as well.
How much is deductible?
It all depends on what type of giving. Whether it is cash, real property or non-real property like stocks and bonds. There is limit for each type and there is also overall limits on how much you can deduct each year as a charitable deduction. Specific limits vary according to whether you give cash or property, but the overall limit is that your charitable contributions cannot exceed 50 percent of your adjusted gross income for the year. Any contributions you make over this amount may be carried forward to the following year and deducted then. You can keep carrying forward any remaining amount for up to five years.
How to Report to IRS?
Depending on the type of property, you need to keep proper documents to support your giving and claim in the tax return for that year. Otherwise you could end up losing legitimate charitable deductions if you’re audited. You need to have a canceled check, account statement, receipt or other record for cash donations under $250, and an acknowledgment from the charity for donations over $250. For other property types, you need additional forms to be filled and authorized by the charity organization. Visit IRS.gov to get more information.
In conclusion, whether you like it or not you have an option to take advantage of your givings to charity. Some people make it a Tax advantage strategy to give to charity every year and claim it as deductions but some just give and never bother to take advantage. Whatever it’s your style, just don’t forget to give, giving always gets you more.
Specials Deals and Holiday Offers – Update
Buy 3 Subway $10 Giftcard and 3 $25 value Restaurant.com gift card for only $35.90
Restaurant.com has special which was going on for the past few days. They claim it has $105 value for $36 buck, saving $70 bucks. But the truth, you can buy Restaurant.com gift cards for $4 each so its only $6 saving for 3 cards and subway cards are paid for the same value. It is not whole lot of saving but something is better than nothing right.
Free $20 for Signing up New American Express Serve Account
American express has come up with paypal type of money transfer service called Serve and they are trying to market it with freebie. When you sign to their open an account, they will credit you with $10 bonus. You gotta to enter your last 4 digit of SSN and they will also ask you to send a proof like copy of DL, bank statement to verify it. If you want to give them to receive free $10 go ahead.
Also they created a trivia game to attract people called Playmoneymover.com where they are giving away another $10 for playing the game which is not really tough. If you even miss a chance to get it right, you have another chance to try again and again. I only got it at the 3rd try and hope to see the $10 in my serve account. I plan to withdraw these free $20 as soon as they are in my account by connecting my bank account. Let see how it plays out.
Thanks to mymoneyblog.com for the free bucks info.