My CFO on the Go!

Rob, over at Home Business Blogger has a great post on “Get Your Children in Debt to Keep Them Out of It”. In his post he points out the importance of parents teaching their kids about debt at an early age. Today you can’t depend on the schools or anyone else to teach your kids how to handle money, it is up to the parents. But it seems many are not doing a very good job.

According to MSNBC many students are leaving college with over $10,000 in consumer debt (not including student loans), and credit scores so low that it will limit their ability to buy a home, or even rent a car. Many are putting the blame on the credit card companies for providing credit cards to students with little or no income. Some are suggesting that Congress should step in and provide oversight. I disagree. It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their children about debt, and it is the responsiblity of the adult student to manage their debt properly.

So parents, do your children a favor, and get them in debt while they are young, and before it will affect their credit score!

  Just a quick note, I finally have a favicon for me site…and an animated one at that. (Take a look up in the address bar if you don’t know what I am talking about!)

If you want a favicon, you can create one for free at chami.com.

If you are going to do your taxes yourself, (and I can think of a lot of reasons why you should not!) why pay for tax preparation software? There are a number of online sites that will allow you to prepare and efile your federal tax return for free…if you meet certain criteria.

Side note:If you don’t qualify for free tax preparation, and you don’t want to pay me to do your taxes, at least click on the link below to receive both Turbo Tax and Quicken for as little as $30! This offer is good until April 15.

Buy Quicken and TurboTax Bundle & Save up to $25 + Free Shipping!

Now back to doing it for free.

If your gross income for 2007 is under $54,000, you may qualify to have your taxes filed for free with a number of different online tax preparation websites. If you need a state tax return done, most of the sites will include state tax preparation for a small fee. All sites include free e-file.

I will highlight a few of them here, but you can see the whole list at the IRS website. It is important to note, I am not providing links to the companies, because to get the best free file deal you need to access them through the IRS website. Going directly to the company website may cost you money!

A few of the big name companies are there, including Turbo Tax, Liberty Tax Service, and H&R Block’s Tax Cut. Names familiar to professional tax preparers include Tax Act and Tax Slayer, and FileYourTaxes.com.

In addition to free filing of your federal return, Liberty Tax Service offers state return filing for $9.95 each. If you don’t qualify for the free file, the federal return is also just $9.95

Turbo Tax is a little more restrictive, with free Federal Tax Preparation for only those with incomes below $30,000 or Active Duty military. They do offer free state filing for some states. If your state is one they don’t do for free, the cost is $9.95. They have a variety of options for those that don’t qualify for free filing starting at $14.95.

The H&R Block free tax site offers interview only service. To include a state return is $29.95.

In some of the lesser known companies there are some good deals. Online taxes has state returns for just $7.95. If you don’t qualify for the free file Federal taxes are also just $7.95. They also offer free telephone support.

Tax$imple is also a good deal with $7.95 state returns and if you don’t qualify for the free file the federal return is just $9.95.

Why are companies offering free filing? In addition to being listed on the IRS website, they are hopeing to sell you “value added services”. Often the free filing versions are very stripped down models of their paid filing products. They hope that once they get you started on your tax return you might decide to pay for some extra services.

Research the companies carefully to choose the firm that is best for you. Note that some companies may have slowdowns during high traffic times, particularly in early February and April. Don’t wait until the last minute to file your return. Chances are good that all these sites will have heavy loads on April 15. You don’t want to be in the middle of preparing your taxes when their servers go down! Make sure to make a copy of your tax return, and keep a backup on your computer.

Would you like to have your tax returns double checked? If you prepared your returns yourself, or even if you had them prepared for you, get a second opinion. I will review your tax return for errors, and offer tax saving advice for future returns starting at just $29.95. Your information is completely confidential and will never be used for any purpose other than the services you have requested. For tax return review just email your contact information and your tax return as a PDF attachment to: taxreview@mycfoonthego.com . I will get back to you with an exact price for review plus information on how to send payment within 2 business days. Satisfaction guaranteed. For more information on Kathleen please click the About Kathleen tab at the top of the page.

I found something interesting on the web today.  JargonFish is a widget that allows you to highlight certain key words in your posts. You can choose which keywords will be highlighted, and how many will be highlighted on a page.  When visitor clicks on the highlighted word, a JargonFish window opens that will have additional content of interest to your visitor. It does create a whole new level of interactivity with your readers.

One of the things I  like about JargonFish is that you can choose the content. It can be another page on your site, or even one of your other sites. I believe  it could even be an affiliate  search window!  I can see some interesting opportunities here for some cross promotion!

JargonFish is very customizable. You can choose specific keywords to highlight and how they will appear. You can choose to show your logo instead of the JargonFish logo, and you can change the color scheme to match your website.

JargonFish can also be a source of revenue.   You can allow banner ads to show on your JargonFish pages. The revenues from the ads are split between you and JargonFish.  For more information on JargonFish, or to sign up Click Here.

I want to spend a moment and encourage all of you to take a moment and check out my forum. In the forum we talk about all things relating to money and business.

Here are some examples of the discussions going on.

Yuppy wrote a wonderful post on those quick tax loans.

…Want your money today? If approved for the Instant Refund Anticipation Loan (IRAL), you can get your $200 tax refund check today for only $77.23! (This includes a $20 check processing fee, and a $27.28 finance charge at 481% APR.) Oh, did I forget to mention that you will also have to pay a $29.95 Refund Account Fee? …

Click here to read Yuppy’s post.

Phidippides had an interesting experience with Google Adsense.

A warning if you are trying to gain money by putting ads on your web site. I had Google Adsense on a few of my sites, one of which was really popular at a particular point in time. I had gained a decent amount of money that Google should have paid out. When it came time to pay, though, I got a letter from Google claiming that I had somehow violated the terms of service. I appealed that decision but they maintained that I had broken some rule. All the money that I had earned in my account? Poof!

Click here to read Phidippides’ post.

I am also going to start a board just for Entrecard discussion. There does seem to be a lot to talk about, and if I really like your post, I might just buy you a beer!

Click here to enter the forum.