Wouldn't you love to be organized this year? I know I sure would. The one thing I do stay on top of is financial organization, thanks to Dave Ramsey. I know you are probably tired of hearing me talk about him and how much I like him and his view on finances. Sorry, that is the way it is. Why re-invent the wheel? When it comes to money, if you want to be financially set, you need to do what those that are financially set do. One thing for sure, you must be organized. The rest of my life is terribly unorganized but I am on top of the financial end of things in our house.
The first thing to do is get a large file to hold all of your bills. I have one that I keep all of our bills for the whole year. You never know when there will be glitch in a computer somewhere and a creditor might come to you and say, you did not pay your bill when you were supposed to. If you keep that bill and mark how much you paid and the date it was paid, that will never be an issue. You can simply say, oh yes that bill was paid on X date and if you have kept your bank statements you can go back and see when the transaction cleared your bank. I have had this happen once. I was prepared and it was taken care of very quickly because I had kept very good records. You may ask why would I keep all of my bills for the entire year other than what I mentioned above? If you are self-employed and work from home you may have some home deductions for your taxes. If you work and have a cell phone, use your Internet at home for work then there is a possibility that those could be deducted from your taxes. Check with your tax person or if you do them yourself check with what ever software you use to do your taxes. Turbo Tax is the most well known but, HR Block has come out with their own tax software and it seems to be more reasonable than Turbo Tax. If all else fails contact the IRS. I have actually done that before, we had a crazy year where we had odd deductions that I had not dealt with before and I called the IRS. The gentleman I spoke with was very helpful and very nice and he walked me through filling out my forms for this particular deduction.
I always start in January getting my information together for tax time. Whether you do your taxes yourself or you have someone do them for you, you need to keep everything straight. I keep my tax specific information together separate from my other bills so that I can make sure that I get all of that information before I start our taxes. Those usually start rolling in about mid January.
The IRS started issuing warnings in March of 2014 about con artists calling people and telling them they were with the US Treasury and that they owed the IRS money for their past due taxes. There were many that fell victim to this scam, please be aware government agencies do not just call you and have you give them your debit card number over the phone to settle a debt. If someone calls you and says they are with some government agency please demand identification. Do not take anything they say for the truth, question everything. If you stand your ground odds are they will get scared and hang up, then you know it was a scam. If you suspect a particular phone call is a scam, simply call the agency using a number that you know to be true and let them know or call the police. This goes for all government agencies, there was a scam that ran through an area near us where people were threatened to be taken to jail over a failed jury duty appearance. These people were told if they paid a sum of money that it could all be taken care of with no jail time. Con artists and scammers are all around and come up with new ways to steal money all the time, be on your toes in 2015. Here is a link to Dave Ramsey's tax tips:
www.daveramsey.com/tax-tips
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