NorCalSavant

I am back to the blog after spending months being extremely busy looking to buy a house.  We finally bought the house, and of course, soon after Congress passed the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which includes a $6,500 credit for repeat homebuyers but only for those who buy their houses after [...]

With the ongoing recession things have not been looking too good for California’s budget.  With politicians entrenched in Legislature and ideological camps with safe gerrymandered seats, there has been no clear solution to matching state income with state expenses.  State Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger have taken some half-hearted measures, although the problem seems far from [...]

In an earlier post I had briefly described the personal-finance benefits of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or the stimulus package signed by President Obama for kick starting the moribund economy. Here is a rundown of individual benefits in the stimulus package in a little bit greater detail. More on this topic (What's [...]

In an earlier post I discussed the options available for tax preparation and electronic filing using a computer.  What if someone you know does not want to use a computer to file their return?  What if they needed to ask a question or clarify something? What kind of help is available for them? Turns out, [...]

I have been using tax preparation software packages for over a decade now to prepare and file my taxes. The benefits included ease in preparing the return, eliminating calculation errors, having any change cascade automatically through the entire return, error-free filing with the electronic filing option, and faster refunds. I think I used Tax Cut [...]