With April 15th rapidly approaching, many will start looking for fast, efficient ways to file taxes. The IRS has partnered with a number of sites to provide free online filings. This helps the IRS by decreasing the number of paper forms they have to process. In most states you are still going to have to file a state return. If you plan to use software, it may be easier to do the Federal and State together at the same time. Still, for states without an income tax, this is an easy way to do your taxes and get them submitted for free. Here are a few free sites that offer free filing … [Read more...] about Free Tax Preparation Sites
Archives for January 2011
Your Money or Your Life
A number of years ago, I was managing the IT department for a large non-profit and I had an opportunity to interview for a well funded startup airline. The airline was just launching and they were going to fly me out to New York to interview for heading up their IT support services. Their plan was to go public within a few years, which at the time looked like it would be very financially rewarding for the early employees. From a money perspective it looked like a great opportunity. However, the more my wife and I talked about it, the more we realized that we'd be trading a significant part of our life away for more money. While this wasn't necessarily a bad thing--everyone does this … [Read more...] about Your Money or Your Life
Questions about Online Degrees
Here are some of the questions I've received from readers about online degrees. Most of these were prompted by my post about getting my masters degree from Harvard's Extension School. So would you recommend the Harvard Extension School program? ~ Dana Yes. If they have a degree that fits your needs and you can meet the residency requirement, the Harvard Extension School offers some of the best value in education that I'm aware of. Be aware that some of the students who are full time on campus have a negative view of the Extension School students. One of the main complaints I've heard is that it is too easy to get into the Extension School. Some students feels that their acceptance into … [Read more...] about Questions about Online Degrees
Skill vs. Better Tools
I have been doing quite a bit of programming over the past few months. Last night I took a few hours to see if I could find some better tools. I tried out a different programming environment and tested some tweaks to Eclipse (the program I currently use for programming). My goal was to see if I could find a way to get my tools to help autocomplete certain parts of the code I was typing into the web templates. For example, if I start to type " I found a few things that look promising, but I couldn't find anything that worked automatically out of the box. I started wondering if it was worth spending those hours looking for a better tool. What if I had of spent two hours in just … [Read more...] about Skill vs. Better Tools
When Procrastination is a Good Thing
Most of us think of procrastination as a bad thing--something we should avoid, but that isn't always the case. People focus too much on the task or job that is not getting completed, but you can't tell if procrastination is good or bad by looking at what isn't getting done--you have to look at what is getting done instead. For example, if instead of writing this post, I start fiddling around on the Internet and spend a mindless hour on social sites or reading jokes, that is probably a bad thing. This post is more valuable to me than an hour wasted on the Internet. However, if I decided I don't really want to write this post and instead decide that it is nice enough outside that I … [Read more...] about When Procrastination is a Good Thing
iPod Giveaway
Congratulations to Violeta on winning the iPod. If you are interested in other contests, go ahead and enter so you'll be notified when they run. We should be doing another one in the next few weeks. We haven't given anything away for awhile, so I thought it is about time we did another contest. Here are the details: The iPod is going to be given away to one person who likes both Productivity501 and Mark Shead's page on Facebook. If you have already liked both pages, you are already entered in the contest. If either page gets over 750 "likes" we'll give away two iPods to two different people. (So sharing the contest with your friends may double the number of prizes given out … [Read more...] about iPod Giveaway
Understanding Taxes
When it comes to your finances, there are few things you can do that are as beneficial as really understanding taxes and keeping up with current tax law. Most people don't realize just how much they pay in taxes every year. The government is always coming up with various schemes to get you to do this or that and most of the time they try to motivate you by giving you some type of tax rebate or credit. In the past year, I've been able to save over $15,000 simply by paying attention to the changes tax laws and taking advantage of different credits, lower tax rates, etc. That may or may not seem like a lot of money, but considering the average household income where we live is in the … [Read more...] about Understanding Taxes
How to deal with a boring job
Reader question: My job is driving me crazy! I work in tech support, so I'm mostly getting paid to be there if there are any problems that come up. This means many days I'm just sitting there dinking around on the internet for 2 or 3 hours at a time. This might be a dream job for some people, but I feel like I'm losing my skills. I'd look for another job, but I think my place is pretty secure here and I don't want to risk going somewhere else only to get let go in a bad economy. Do you have any suggestions for me? Brad Those are some good questions. I've previously talked about figuring out your work zone to help decide when it is time to leave a company and … [Read more...] about How to deal with a boring job