Guess what? If you’re single and your adjusted gross income (AGI) is $25k or less ($50k for married couples), then you’re entitled to a credit of 10-50% on up to $2,000 in contributions to qualified retirement savings plans. Eligible plans include 401(k) and 403(b) plans as well as traditional and Roth IRAs. This credit comes in addition to the tax deduction that you get for making the contributions (except on the Roth, for which contributions aren’t tax deductible). Free money in return for saving for your retirement is a fantastic deal — if you qualify, you should definitely try to take advantage of it. For more information on figuring your credit, which goes on line 51 of Form 1040, see IRS Form 8880.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about taking advantage of 0% balance transfer credit card offers. When it comes to getting rid of credit card debt, the utility of these balance transfer offers is pretty obvious — simply tranfer balances from higher-rate cards to a 0% credit card and save a ton on interest while you pay off your debt.

Simple enough. But what if you don’t have any high-interest credit card debt? Can you still take advantage of these offers? As many of you already know, the answer is a resounding YES.

What follows is an outline of the steps involved in accessing the funds from a 0% balance transfer and using them for personal profit (so-called credit card arbitrage) or savings (e.g., saving on your HELOC), as the case may be. At the very end, I’ve also included a list of some of the best balance transfer credit cards for playing these sorts of games. [more]

This past year we donated a ton of stuff to Goodwill. For starters, we moved. On top of that, we’re done having kids, and they’re growing fast. Thus, we had lots of stuff to clear before, during, and after the move. Right after our moving sale, I hauled several loads of stuff to the Goodwill donation center, including tons of kids clothing, a decent amount of adult clothing, toys, random housewares, etc. We also made another donation run right at the end of the year (just in time to claim it on our 2006 taxes). [more]

I noted the other day that I was waffling about how to handle our tax prep this year… Do it myself again, or hire a pro? Well, I ended up deciding to split the difference this year, and do it both ways.

Over the weekend, I fired up Turbo Tax and hunkered down to figure things out on my own. With that done, my next job is getting them figured by a pro. While it’s not the most efficient approach, it’s almost certain to be the most instructive. Once I’ve had a chance to make a direct comparison between the two, I’ll have a much better feel for whether or not I should continue tackling our taxes going forward.

As it turns out, this is a particularly tough year tax-wise, as our income was split between two different states, and we had to deal with moving expenses, deductions relating to two different houses, and our first year of substantial self-employment income. Thus, I’d welcome the opportunity to have a second set of eyes look things over.

With that said, lets get to Money Poll #25… [more]

Here are some of my favorite FiveCentNickel (subscribe) posts from one year ago this past week:

» Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps

» HSBC Account Opening Process Complete

» Five Red Flags That Might Trigger an IRS Audit

» Online Bank Contact and Routing Information

And this is what was happening over at Raising4Boys (subscribe) over the same period:

» Otitis Media, Ear Tubes, and a Wet Brain

» On Sinus Infections and Asking the Right Questions

» Diaper Rash Treatments

I was just digging through my stats and thought I’d give a shout out to the sites that have referred the most visitors to FiveCentNickel over the past four weeks. Note that I’ve trimmed this down to just weblogs, so things like search engines (which are a huge contributor to traffic here) and the NY Times mention won’t knock anyone out of the running. What follows is a list of the top 10 weblog referrers over the past four weeks:

1. The Consumerist
2. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
3. FreeMoneyFinance
4. NCN Blog
5. The Simple Dollar
6. MyMoneyBlog
7. ProBargainHunter
8. AllFinancialMatters
9. 2million
10. MightBargainHunter

Honorable mention: ConsumerismCommentary, who finished just out of the running.

Other notables: The MoneyBlogNetwork (most likely due to the forums) and PFBlogs.org — the former actually ranked right between NCN Blog and the The Simple Dollar, whereas the latter landed just behind ConsumerismCommentary.

Thanks to everyone for their support! And if you didn’t make the list, there’s still hope… I’ll try to remember to do this once a month.

Hmmm… This is interesting. Remember the telephone tax credit that I wrote about the other day? Well, it seems that people have been abusing it and asking for way too much money back. According to IRS commissioner Mark Everson:

“While the vast majority of taxpayers are claiming the telephone tax refund correctly, we are seeing some clear abuse involving overstated refund requests. People requesting an inflated amount will likely see their refund frozen, may have their entire tax return audited and even face criminal prosecution where warranted.”

Ouch! Based on a sample of refunds that were filed during January, the IRS says that some taxpayers have requested a refund of the entire amount of their phone bills, as opposed to just the 3% tax to which they’re entitled. Others have requested thousands of dollars, which translates into total phone bills of over $100k — in some cases, this is more than their total income. Talk about sending up a red flag!

[Source: IRS.gov]

Here’s a quick look at some of the articles that caught my eye over the past week… [more]

• Australia Screws in Compact Fluorescent Lights Nationwide
  “Trumpeting it as a ‘world first,’ the Australian government is mandating a nationwide phase out of inefficient, old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent bulbs by 2010.”
  (tags: energy)
• MP3 Patents In Upheaval After Verdict
  “Microsoft was ordered by a federal jury yesterday to pay $1.52 billion in a patent dispute over the MP3 format, the technology at the heart of the digital music boom.”
  (tags: mp3 music legal)

FiveCentNickel participated in three carnivals this week. Here they are along with my posts that were included in each.

The Carnival of Personal Finance included “Always (Always!) Double-Check Your Medical Bills.”

The Best of Me Symphony included “How to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft.” Also included was “How to Take Responsibility When You’re Four” from raising4boys.com.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction included “Dave Ramsey is Good at Psychology.”