Boy has my financial juggling gone astray today! We live on limited income from a variety of sources and sometimes we have a timing problem (bills due out this week, money coming coming in next week type of thing). As an accountant I am pretty good at this juggling.
I had it all planned out. We have dividends coming in on Monday which would cover almost all of our bills due out in the next week – except our RV payment and that is due out this week. I knew that later in February we would need to take money out of husband's IRA to cover our car insurance, but had time until same.
Well, the money to cover the RV payment was to come from the monthly client I have and she pays me quarterly when I go and do her books, etc. and I was due for a check in January. I tried to go to her last week, but when I called on Monday she was going to the doctor on Tuesday and did not expect to come into her place of business on Wednesday or Thursday either – maybe Friday she suggested? Friday it actually was suppose to be nice weather here and in Pennsylvania and husband was ready to go to Pennsylvania for the day and I could not disappoint him – who knows when the weather would be right in both places again as it has been so long since they were.
So I said that I would be in this week. I telephoned her on Monday to go yesterday, Tuesday, but she still was not feeling well so today, Wednesday it had to be. In addition to needing to do her bank rec, payroll taxes have to be filed by the end of January so I had to go there now! I was glad that weather stayed nice and no snow or rain.
I planned last night to deal with my problem – I wrote out a deposit slip for her check. I checked where branches of our bank are near her. I checked where a post office was near her. My plan was that when I finished doing her books I would take the check from her, deposit and mail out the RV payment.
When I got there she had a bad month and not only could not pay me, she could not pay her rent either. I did her books. I had her sign her payroll tax forms. I dealt with a couple of problems she had which are not related to what I am suppose to do, but I do things for her – she is in her 80s.
Well, I have my check – but cannot deposit it until she calls and says okay. I need to get that RV check out tomorrow, so we will have to go and take the money out of husband's IRA now and hope that she says I can cash check when the bills that were to be paid later in February with the IRA money come due. Just when I think I have it all taken care of….
I am sure that all of you have had similar problems. The important thing to do is keep track of it all – accurately so that nothing bounces – and if there is that rare occasion that something goes wrong and it does bounce – both the bank and who you paid will look at your records and say “hey, this never happens with you – of course we understand and will waive the fees for the bounced check/late payment”. (Yes, I did mess up badly once a few years ago and the fees were waived by both by the bank for the bounced check and by the company I had paid with the check as our record was so good that they could excuse the one error.)
To help keep my records accurate I use a software program to help me – Quickbooks (Quicken it's non- business alternative is good also). I keep my checkbook by hand and also in the program – and the two of them better agree or I have a problem to look for. The software lets me memorize the payments and when they are do and will remind me when I open it what bills need to be paid and what money should be coming in. It also lets me keep my personal expenses separate from our various businesses and each of them separate from the others. Lets me set up accounts for our tax related expenses and income to keep track of them for the taxes when they filed the following year.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK – Now is the time to get started so that next tax season will easier for you to deal with your income taxes (presuming that you are in the US and need to do so). It is also a good time to start keeping better financial records in general as we all need to do same and it is easier to start with the start of a year than in the middle of it.
Showing posts with label bouncing checks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bouncing checks. Show all posts
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Thursday, July 12, 2018
PAYING BILLS
Well, the smoke smell finally left the house.
It occurred to me in looking at last week’s post that it makes no sense to someone reading it that I have to be home to pay a bill. It was not the writing of the check (yes, I still pay my bills by check) or the need to mail out the bill and payment (yes, I still pay my bills by mail), but the fact that money needed to pay the bill would not be credited to our bank account until today, the 11th. It would go into our savings account and I had to be here to transfer the money needed to pay the bill into our checking account. I like to do this so I know that the money is actually in the checking account and did not for some reason go awry. If something did happen the savings account would be short funds and I would not be able to transfer the money - but at least I would know of the problem and would be able to cover the checks I needed to send out in another way, while I tracked down where the money owed to us was.
We did drive down to Pennsylvania last Saturday and had a very nice day. The weather was sunny and warm - but not the hot weather that had been there during last week and there was no rain. We did lose an hour locally in transit as there was roving road repairs being done - and the GPS did not know that how long the delay was or did not care.
Since we had to stay home to transfer money to pay a bill, I thought I would talk about paying bills today. I deal with bills for a living, you probably only deal with yours or maybe yours and your business’s bills. The idea for personal or business bills are basically the same - make sure the amount you were billed is right and pay them - on time.
I admit to probably being older than most of you and grew up with paper bills and paper checks. Therefore I am more comfortable using them than paying bills online. It is not that I am new to computers or a “late adaptor”. I learned to program computers when they were huge mechanical devices. The one I learned to program, in Fortran II, was the size of a good sized office desk (which were also larger back then than they are now) and there was a second device the same size to compile the program. Today the compiler is software, not hardware. Heck, even the keyboard setup to punch the software and/or data into cards was larger than even my desktop computer is today. My problem is that having learned to work with computers so long ago I have learned the concept that no computer is secure (and we did not have the computers connected to the Internet back then). When I am not using a computer it is turned off and unplugged - the exception being that if a laptop needs charging it may be off and charging.
So, I am more comfortable paying my bills by check. I have written abit about this before - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/04/last-October-10-26-16-i-posted-on.html
We don’t like to be in debt. We pay our credit card in full every month.
Well, except one month. When husband was working full time he would receive any unused sick pay when the new company year started in September. (They operated on a school year as they were partly a school.) We would take our vacation in August as I could take time off then and the place he worked would close for 2 weeks in August. So the unused sick pay was rather convenient to cover the charge card bills from vacation. One year the sick pay was delayed a month. Our choice was to take money out of savings and pay the bill in full, or pay part and pay the balance the following month when the money came in. It was one of those odd periods in which the interest rates on debt and the interest rates on savings were about the same. We decided to pay half the bill and then pay the other half, plus any new charges in full, the following month and that is what we did.
We have taken out some loans over the decades. We only do so for large items - house, car, RV. Everyone of them has had every payment made on time - with some of them we have paid them off in less time than originally scheduled by making extra principal payments. (More on this next week.)
Medical insurance and bills - have also been paid in full, although we have been lucky enough to have our medical insurance covered by his employer while husband was working. In addition the largest medical bills we had were when husband had cataract surgeries. We had the sort of insurance that covers more of the bills for “providers” in their plan and less, although still most, of the bills for providers not in their plan. Our doctor was the latter. We paid our share of about $4000 on the two surgeries in full to the doctor.
Oh, a thought here - make sure you know what is covered on your medical insurance - if you can use a provider who is covered it will save you money - expenses might not even be covered if your doctor, pharmacy, etc. is not on their list and you will be stuck for the full cost. In addition make sure that you check your bills for accuracy and if there is a question or problem don’t just accept it. When husband had his first surgery (each eye was done separately) the insurance company rejected the claim. The doctor’s office assure me that it was not my problem, they would have to “eat” the costs. I did not let it go. I telephoned the insurance company and asked what had happened - I had followed all of the rules for an out of the plan doctor, etc. I was told some stupidity that the claim was not submitted in time. Turned out that the doctor’s office had a O for a 0 or a 0 for an O and it was rejected. When it was fixed and they went to resubmit it, they were told that it was too late to do so and there was no record of the original, rejected submission. I called the insurance company again and started, politely complaining. Not much was happening. I told them that my husband decides which policies everyone at work will have (this was true). I suddenly had a phone call from the insurance company that there had been an error - the surgery had been preapproved (which it had been) and therefore was covered. (We were extremely popular at the doctor’s office after that.) So know what has to be done and do it to make sure that your claims are covered - follow up with the doctor’s staff to make sure they do what they need to do and make sure you do what you need to do. If you need to have a referral, have it - and make a photocopy for yourself in case it “gets lost”.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Basically we try to live within our income and waste as little as possible of our money paying interest charges and not paying other fees. We live comfortably but not over the top. We don’t eat at expensive restaurants. We find discounted movie theaters or discounted tickets to same. We drive Chevys not Cadillacs, BMWs or Mercedes Benz. (You do know that Chevy and Cadillacs have “twin cars” don’t you - as do Ford and Lincoln.) We sleep better at night not worrying about huge bills or mounting interest charges.
Other posts will follow on related financial matters including some of the things we have done to “find” money for bills and for savings.
It occurred to me in looking at last week’s post that it makes no sense to someone reading it that I have to be home to pay a bill. It was not the writing of the check (yes, I still pay my bills by check) or the need to mail out the bill and payment (yes, I still pay my bills by mail), but the fact that money needed to pay the bill would not be credited to our bank account until today, the 11th. It would go into our savings account and I had to be here to transfer the money needed to pay the bill into our checking account. I like to do this so I know that the money is actually in the checking account and did not for some reason go awry. If something did happen the savings account would be short funds and I would not be able to transfer the money - but at least I would know of the problem and would be able to cover the checks I needed to send out in another way, while I tracked down where the money owed to us was.
We did drive down to Pennsylvania last Saturday and had a very nice day. The weather was sunny and warm - but not the hot weather that had been there during last week and there was no rain. We did lose an hour locally in transit as there was roving road repairs being done - and the GPS did not know that how long the delay was or did not care.
Since we had to stay home to transfer money to pay a bill, I thought I would talk about paying bills today. I deal with bills for a living, you probably only deal with yours or maybe yours and your business’s bills. The idea for personal or business bills are basically the same - make sure the amount you were billed is right and pay them - on time.
I admit to probably being older than most of you and grew up with paper bills and paper checks. Therefore I am more comfortable using them than paying bills online. It is not that I am new to computers or a “late adaptor”. I learned to program computers when they were huge mechanical devices. The one I learned to program, in Fortran II, was the size of a good sized office desk (which were also larger back then than they are now) and there was a second device the same size to compile the program. Today the compiler is software, not hardware. Heck, even the keyboard setup to punch the software and/or data into cards was larger than even my desktop computer is today. My problem is that having learned to work with computers so long ago I have learned the concept that no computer is secure (and we did not have the computers connected to the Internet back then). When I am not using a computer it is turned off and unplugged - the exception being that if a laptop needs charging it may be off and charging.
So, I am more comfortable paying my bills by check. I have written abit about this before - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/04/last-October-10-26-16-i-posted-on.html
We don’t like to be in debt. We pay our credit card in full every month.
Well, except one month. When husband was working full time he would receive any unused sick pay when the new company year started in September. (They operated on a school year as they were partly a school.) We would take our vacation in August as I could take time off then and the place he worked would close for 2 weeks in August. So the unused sick pay was rather convenient to cover the charge card bills from vacation. One year the sick pay was delayed a month. Our choice was to take money out of savings and pay the bill in full, or pay part and pay the balance the following month when the money came in. It was one of those odd periods in which the interest rates on debt and the interest rates on savings were about the same. We decided to pay half the bill and then pay the other half, plus any new charges in full, the following month and that is what we did.
We have taken out some loans over the decades. We only do so for large items - house, car, RV. Everyone of them has had every payment made on time - with some of them we have paid them off in less time than originally scheduled by making extra principal payments. (More on this next week.)
Medical insurance and bills - have also been paid in full, although we have been lucky enough to have our medical insurance covered by his employer while husband was working. In addition the largest medical bills we had were when husband had cataract surgeries. We had the sort of insurance that covers more of the bills for “providers” in their plan and less, although still most, of the bills for providers not in their plan. Our doctor was the latter. We paid our share of about $4000 on the two surgeries in full to the doctor.
Oh, a thought here - make sure you know what is covered on your medical insurance - if you can use a provider who is covered it will save you money - expenses might not even be covered if your doctor, pharmacy, etc. is not on their list and you will be stuck for the full cost. In addition make sure that you check your bills for accuracy and if there is a question or problem don’t just accept it. When husband had his first surgery (each eye was done separately) the insurance company rejected the claim. The doctor’s office assure me that it was not my problem, they would have to “eat” the costs. I did not let it go. I telephoned the insurance company and asked what had happened - I had followed all of the rules for an out of the plan doctor, etc. I was told some stupidity that the claim was not submitted in time. Turned out that the doctor’s office had a O for a 0 or a 0 for an O and it was rejected. When it was fixed and they went to resubmit it, they were told that it was too late to do so and there was no record of the original, rejected submission. I called the insurance company again and started, politely complaining. Not much was happening. I told them that my husband decides which policies everyone at work will have (this was true). I suddenly had a phone call from the insurance company that there had been an error - the surgery had been preapproved (which it had been) and therefore was covered. (We were extremely popular at the doctor’s office after that.) So know what has to be done and do it to make sure that your claims are covered - follow up with the doctor’s staff to make sure they do what they need to do and make sure you do what you need to do. If you need to have a referral, have it - and make a photocopy for yourself in case it “gets lost”.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Basically we try to live within our income and waste as little as possible of our money paying interest charges and not paying other fees. We live comfortably but not over the top. We don’t eat at expensive restaurants. We find discounted movie theaters or discounted tickets to same. We drive Chevys not Cadillacs, BMWs or Mercedes Benz. (You do know that Chevy and Cadillacs have “twin cars” don’t you - as do Ford and Lincoln.) We sleep better at night not worrying about huge bills or mounting interest charges.
Other posts will follow on related financial matters including some of the things we have done to “find” money for bills and for savings.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
BOUNCING CHECKS?
I am an accountant - since I was 12. A few years ago I found the columnar book I used when I was in college to keep track of the cash I spent while in college. (Never a boring thing - I found out which was the first Broadway show husband and I saw together as we each paid for ourselves - something which greatly upset my mom - and I had my ticket purchase recorded in the book, what a nice memory from such a dreary thing). And yes, I used to always have cash I spent which did not make it into the book - adjustments the end of every week. I keep our records on Quickbooks so everything is accounted for and my arithmetic is doublechecked by the computer. We pay every bill in full - every month. No part payments on credit cards. I am sooo careful!
This has been a busy tax season for me - not exactly so much from the actual tax return preparation but on a personal level lots of things have gone wrong and we were busy trying to do things. I spent last weekend through Monday night finishing up our personal return and our business return. We mailed out our personal return Monday at the post office and picked up the mail in our post office box and then returned home so I could finish the business return.
In the mail at the box was a letter from our bank to my husband. I almost set it aside as I figured it was something about his IRA account. I am so glad that I did not. I opened the envelope and glanced in just to check what it was ----- A BOUNCED CHECK NOTICE??? How could that be? Impossible!
We normally deposit money we receive in our savings account and then once a week I transfer money to our checking account to cover the upcoming bills plus a cushion for anything which might arise during the week.
However, we had needed a lot of money in our checking account all at once and it had to come from husband’s IRA. We had a huge credit card bill due to my new eyeglasses, husband’s teeth, and regular expenses, plus our real estate tax was due and so on. That money had to go directly into our checking account and it did - or so I thought.
As I started pulling out papers in the office to see what could have happened - Did we forget to make the deposit? Did the bank make a mistake? I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. In addition to this check certainly more checks must have also bounced - with a fee of $34 per check this could cost us real money - plus it was the large credit card payment - there would be interest and fees there also as well as on the other end of whatever else had bounced. My head was swimming. I kept hoping it was a bank error as then there would be no bank fees from then and apology letters to where the checks had bounced and reimbursement for the costs resulting from same (or so I hoped). I found the deposit slip and found it is was my error - out of force of habit I had deposited the check to our savings account!!!
I sat down to call the bank - I could barely see the phone pad to dial and could not see the deposit. Husband offered “Do you want to go to the bank to deal with this?” I looked at the clock - only 3:30 - we went to the bank.
One of the higher level tellers who knows me said hello and came over and asked how they could help. I managed to get out that I had deposited the money in the wrong account. He nicely told me that all I would need to do is transfer the money from one account to the other. I sort of sputtered out that no, I needed to see one of the platform (desk) people as checks were bouncing.
Luckily the person we spoke with was a woman I had worked with before for other more normal matters. She also tried to calm me down. She pulled up our account - two other checks had come through before a later transfer I had made into the checking - and they had both been paid despite the lack of money in the account as they were small amounts - but of course they each had a $34 charge. Finding this out I felt a bit better - I had envisioned maybe 10 checks bouncing and the work that would be needed to be done, as well as the expense, as well as needing to transfer money to cover the cost of the fees on the checks.
She transferred the money to our checking account for us. She then checked and since we have not had any other bounced checks or such in the last 2 years (on her records - maybe 35 years for us and then the checks bounced because my pay check bounced) she could reverse up to 3 fees for us - just the number of fees we had. Oh, I was feeling a bit better. We thanked her and headed home.
I then telephoned the credit card company. I explained to the employee what had happened. I think she could hear the panic in my voice as she was very reassuring. She, of course, saw on our record what had happened and asked if I wanted her to debit our checking account to pay the bill. I thanked her and said that I was going to ask if she could do that. It was done and the payment was made. I was very lucky. I mail the payments at least a week before payment is due. This payment was due on the day this was happening. I checked with her and this counted as paid in full, on time - no interest due! I asked her what the bounced check fee was - $25. I was about to ask if she could waive it, when she said that she was going to check to see if she could. Again, since we pay in full every month with no prior problems or fees, she was able to waive the fee. I thanked her. (I was going to fill in the survey that was suppose to follow and compliment her profusely, but it never came on the line and I hung up.)
I started to breathe normally again.
Then I remembered that we had also received a letter from our RV insurance company asking again for the premium payment - per the transaction listing from the bank this was one of the checks paid without funds. Panic started again. Was this just a question of the second bill and our payment crossing in the mail or had it actually bounced. I telephoned the insurance company and it was just a case of paperwork crossing in the mail - thank goodness. The ability to breathe returned to me again.
I looked husband in the eye over the desks and told him that he could yell at me all he wanted to about this - “tomorrow” - I could not deal with it that day as we still had the business return to finish and send out the next day. He is not a yeller, but sometimes out of frustration yells, and I could see this being one of those times. He calmly said that he was not going to yell, but thinks it would be a good idea for him to check things as we go along and that I should do the same for him as he is forgetting things and getting confused. I told him this was fine with me as I keep trying to get him more involved in our money management (we are the opposite of the normal “husband deals with the money and the wife has no idea about it”) and it would be fine with me.
The corporation return went out on Tuesday on time. Finished - except for all the catching up.
Important to note is the fact that I was able to get all the fees waives as it was a one time occurrence. My hard work at keeping all our bills paid timely and in full paid off again in this situation. It was obvious that it was some sort of one time unusual problem and not us bouncing checks at random.
The fact that it was dealt with immediately also helped as there was no time for additional charges to occur - if I had called the credit card company the next day, my payment would be late and I would either be asking for the interest payment to also be waived or paying the interest - on our largest credit card bill in years.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
It should be obvious after the above that my thought is that it is very important to make payments on time and in full - or at least the entire amount of the minimum amount due or more. When one has a good record with the various companies one does business with (and yes, your personal finances are doing business with the various companies you deal with) it is recognized when help is needed.
In addition, hopefully you have all filed your income tax returns if you are in the U.S. or at the very least have filed an extension. Start working to make next year’s return easier to do. At the very least set up a folder or large envelope and drop bills which will be deductible next year into it. Drop income items into it also. Put a large X or * next to expenses paid by check or credit card payments which pay same if they are tax deductible. A program such as Quickbooks or Quicken or a simpler program can be a big help if you use it. A spread sheet that you make up in Excel or similar can also help. I personally do not keep anything in “the cloud” and want my data here in the house, but if that is what you prefer that can help you also. (“The cloud” is actually just someone else’s hard drive and since it on the Internet it can be, and most of them have been, hacked.)
This has been a busy tax season for me - not exactly so much from the actual tax return preparation but on a personal level lots of things have gone wrong and we were busy trying to do things. I spent last weekend through Monday night finishing up our personal return and our business return. We mailed out our personal return Monday at the post office and picked up the mail in our post office box and then returned home so I could finish the business return.
In the mail at the box was a letter from our bank to my husband. I almost set it aside as I figured it was something about his IRA account. I am so glad that I did not. I opened the envelope and glanced in just to check what it was ----- A BOUNCED CHECK NOTICE??? How could that be? Impossible!
We normally deposit money we receive in our savings account and then once a week I transfer money to our checking account to cover the upcoming bills plus a cushion for anything which might arise during the week.
However, we had needed a lot of money in our checking account all at once and it had to come from husband’s IRA. We had a huge credit card bill due to my new eyeglasses, husband’s teeth, and regular expenses, plus our real estate tax was due and so on. That money had to go directly into our checking account and it did - or so I thought.
As I started pulling out papers in the office to see what could have happened - Did we forget to make the deposit? Did the bank make a mistake? I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. In addition to this check certainly more checks must have also bounced - with a fee of $34 per check this could cost us real money - plus it was the large credit card payment - there would be interest and fees there also as well as on the other end of whatever else had bounced. My head was swimming. I kept hoping it was a bank error as then there would be no bank fees from then and apology letters to where the checks had bounced and reimbursement for the costs resulting from same (or so I hoped). I found the deposit slip and found it is was my error - out of force of habit I had deposited the check to our savings account!!!
I sat down to call the bank - I could barely see the phone pad to dial and could not see the deposit. Husband offered “Do you want to go to the bank to deal with this?” I looked at the clock - only 3:30 - we went to the bank.
One of the higher level tellers who knows me said hello and came over and asked how they could help. I managed to get out that I had deposited the money in the wrong account. He nicely told me that all I would need to do is transfer the money from one account to the other. I sort of sputtered out that no, I needed to see one of the platform (desk) people as checks were bouncing.
Luckily the person we spoke with was a woman I had worked with before for other more normal matters. She also tried to calm me down. She pulled up our account - two other checks had come through before a later transfer I had made into the checking - and they had both been paid despite the lack of money in the account as they were small amounts - but of course they each had a $34 charge. Finding this out I felt a bit better - I had envisioned maybe 10 checks bouncing and the work that would be needed to be done, as well as the expense, as well as needing to transfer money to cover the cost of the fees on the checks.
She transferred the money to our checking account for us. She then checked and since we have not had any other bounced checks or such in the last 2 years (on her records - maybe 35 years for us and then the checks bounced because my pay check bounced) she could reverse up to 3 fees for us - just the number of fees we had. Oh, I was feeling a bit better. We thanked her and headed home.
I then telephoned the credit card company. I explained to the employee what had happened. I think she could hear the panic in my voice as she was very reassuring. She, of course, saw on our record what had happened and asked if I wanted her to debit our checking account to pay the bill. I thanked her and said that I was going to ask if she could do that. It was done and the payment was made. I was very lucky. I mail the payments at least a week before payment is due. This payment was due on the day this was happening. I checked with her and this counted as paid in full, on time - no interest due! I asked her what the bounced check fee was - $25. I was about to ask if she could waive it, when she said that she was going to check to see if she could. Again, since we pay in full every month with no prior problems or fees, she was able to waive the fee. I thanked her. (I was going to fill in the survey that was suppose to follow and compliment her profusely, but it never came on the line and I hung up.)
I started to breathe normally again.
Then I remembered that we had also received a letter from our RV insurance company asking again for the premium payment - per the transaction listing from the bank this was one of the checks paid without funds. Panic started again. Was this just a question of the second bill and our payment crossing in the mail or had it actually bounced. I telephoned the insurance company and it was just a case of paperwork crossing in the mail - thank goodness. The ability to breathe returned to me again.
I looked husband in the eye over the desks and told him that he could yell at me all he wanted to about this - “tomorrow” - I could not deal with it that day as we still had the business return to finish and send out the next day. He is not a yeller, but sometimes out of frustration yells, and I could see this being one of those times. He calmly said that he was not going to yell, but thinks it would be a good idea for him to check things as we go along and that I should do the same for him as he is forgetting things and getting confused. I told him this was fine with me as I keep trying to get him more involved in our money management (we are the opposite of the normal “husband deals with the money and the wife has no idea about it”) and it would be fine with me.
The corporation return went out on Tuesday on time. Finished - except for all the catching up.
Important to note is the fact that I was able to get all the fees waives as it was a one time occurrence. My hard work at keeping all our bills paid timely and in full paid off again in this situation. It was obvious that it was some sort of one time unusual problem and not us bouncing checks at random.
The fact that it was dealt with immediately also helped as there was no time for additional charges to occur - if I had called the credit card company the next day, my payment would be late and I would either be asking for the interest payment to also be waived or paying the interest - on our largest credit card bill in years.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
It should be obvious after the above that my thought is that it is very important to make payments on time and in full - or at least the entire amount of the minimum amount due or more. When one has a good record with the various companies one does business with (and yes, your personal finances are doing business with the various companies you deal with) it is recognized when help is needed.
In addition, hopefully you have all filed your income tax returns if you are in the U.S. or at the very least have filed an extension. Start working to make next year’s return easier to do. At the very least set up a folder or large envelope and drop bills which will be deductible next year into it. Drop income items into it also. Put a large X or * next to expenses paid by check or credit card payments which pay same if they are tax deductible. A program such as Quickbooks or Quicken or a simpler program can be a big help if you use it. A spread sheet that you make up in Excel or similar can also help. I personally do not keep anything in “the cloud” and want my data here in the house, but if that is what you prefer that can help you also. (“The cloud” is actually just someone else’s hard drive and since it on the Internet it can be, and most of them have been, hacked.)
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