I recently wrote about Roth IRA contribution limits for 2012, which are unchanged from 2011. Today I want to talk about the current income limits for contributing to a Roth IRA. Here goes:
Married Filing Jointly: Contributions phase out from $173k-$183k
Single or Head of Household: Contributions phase out from $110k-$125k
Married Filing Separately, Living Apart: Contributions phase [...]

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Believe it or not, it’s already time to start thinking about filing your 2011 income tax return. In the coming weeks, you should be receiving your W-2 form(s), a variety of 1099 forms, etc. And if you pay estimated taxes, your 4th quarter payment is due next week (on January 17th).
So… With that in mind, [...]

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With just a few days left before the New Year, I thought I’d put together a quick post on IRA contribution limits for 2012. As a reminder, contribution limits have been indexed to inflation since 2008, and can increase in $500 increments (as necessary). As you can see from the table below, however, nothing has [...]

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As a followup to my recent article about paying sales tax for online purchases, I wanted to highlight an interesting article from last summer that a reader named Heather pointed out in the comments section.
In short, Arizona has added a dedicated line to their state tax returns for taxpayers to reporting unpaid use taxes. This [...]

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One of the reasons that many people love to shop online is that they can often get away without paying sales taxes. The reason for this is that companies without a physical presence (nexus) in a state aren’t typically required to collect sales tax.
This isn’t to say that you’re not supposed to pay tax on [...]

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According to a blurb on CNN/Money, the IRS is sitting on a little more than 99k undelivered tax refund checks totaling $153M. The checks in question, worth an average of $1547 each, were returned to the IRS due to mailing address errors. As big as these numbers appear, these checks correspond to just 0.01% of [...]

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Do you find that $20 bill in your pocket evaporating faster than ever, and your paychecks taking you shorter and shorter distances? It’s no hallucination. There’s a shift going on. It’s a shift helping ensure the comfortable middle-class lifestyles our parents enjoyed become as obsolete as an eight-track tape player.
Costs once borne by better-heeled folks [...]

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On Friday, I talked about using your 401(k) to pay off your mortgage. Then, over the weekend, a reader wrote in to ask about a different scenario – a family member lending you the money to pay off your mortgage. Robert asked:
Is a $100k personal loan from a family member to pay off a mortgage [...]

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Earlier this week, I ran across an article about a new piece of legislation being promoted by two Georgia Congressmen who want to allow people to pull money out of their retirement accounts to pay down their mortgages.
Dubbed the Hardship Outlays to Protect Mortgage Equity (HOME) Act of 2011, the legislation would allow homeowners to [...]

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In what’s sure to be a bit of welcome news, the Social Security Administration has announced that Social Security recipients will receive a 3.6% increase in payments, effective this coming January. This is the first such increase in benefits since 2009, when there was a 5.8% increase. The lack of increases over the past two [...]

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