So your electronic fairy godmother (or if you still prefer snail-mail, Mr. Postman) finally got around to delivering that big, fat tax refund check you’ve been waiting for. Woo-hoo! You’re not alone, there’s a lot of woo-hooing going on these days. As proof, here’s some tax time trivia for you—according to Bankrate.com, last year (tax year 2008) over 96,000,000 taxpayers saw a refund from Uncle Sam worth an average of $2,683. That was up from 2007’s $2,371. Of the 131.5 million tax returns filed, over 73% received returns. Four out of five people say they expect a return this year.

Get your receipts lined up. Rip open the W-2s. Sharpen those pencils and make sure you have plenty of erasers. It’s tax time, the season for crunching numbers and squeezing blood from a turnip. It’s a chore not many of us relish unless we expect a big return (and if you do, for shame, you’re giving the government an interest-free loan, but more about that at another time).

It’s not that we don’t receive breaks from Uncle Sam. Last year, nearly 46 million citizens itemized their taxes via the 1040 form and claimed nearly $1 trillion in deductions. Those using standard deductions claimed half a trillion dollars. Yet when you take us as individuals, who doesn’t want to pay as few taxes as possible, whether it involves getting a bigger return or owing less?

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Ben Franklin

That Ben Franklin, he was as good with the financial advice as he was with all the Founding Father business. No wonder his face wound up on our $100 bill. And yes, as Ben said, every penny you save may as well be a penny earned. But you have to save it to earn it!

Yes, saving money should always be an important part of your financial life. We’ve already touched on saving in a more generic sense when we talked about choices for a healthy financial New Year. Well, let’s explore a few more specific ways to save. This time we’ll look at ways to save money on things you do or use every day. There’s nothing tricky or difficult about any of these options. The only thing you’ll need is a good dose of “stick-to-it-ness.” Let’s get started...

Ahhh, the festive free-for-all of the holiday season has come and gone. We did our best to control our intake of sugar plums (whatever the heck they are) and outtake of holiday spending, but our best efforts sometimes come up short.

Well, that’s what New Years resolutions are for, right? It’s your chance at a fresh start. So what’s it gonna be? Lose weight? Exercise more? Stop smoking? As you sit in front of a blank personal improvement list masquerading as New Years resolutions, be sure you include a line or two about improving your financial health.

The Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA) will take effect January 1, 2010, and with it comes changes that could affect how you deal with any IRAs you may have.

As you likely know, there are two types of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), Traditional and Roth. Here’s a short breakdown of each:

The last time you were at your parents’ home, you discovered unpaid bills. They had forgotten to pay their gas bill for the past two months. You called the gas company and explained the situation, and then wrote out a check for the amount due, so everything turned out all right. But what if you hadn’t noticed the unpaid bills, and it was the middle of winter? Your parents’ heating could have been shut off.

Uncle Sam just sent you a big, fat tax refund. Woo-hoo! It’s time to celebrate! Maybe a new home theatre is in your future. Or a tropical vacation. Not so fast. If you usually receive a big, fat tax refund, it simply means Uncle Sam is enjoying a big, fat, interest-free loan, courtesy of the Bank of You.