As a child, my Uncle Andy and Aunt Anita bought my sister and I a book by James Stevenson called Could be Worse. It was a humorous book about an old man who’s favorite response to any sort of complaining—such as when his grandkids get a splinter, or their kite flies up into a tree—is “could be worse”.

The 2010 tax brackets are out. Now you can start planning for your 2010 taxes and determine your correct withholding.

As a reminder, tax rates are marginal; you pay tax at each incremental tax rate until you reach your taxable income level.

In 2009, over 3 million homes were forced into foreclosure. High unemployment, adjustable rate mortgages, and tight credit came together to make it simply impossible for many American homeowners to continue making mortgage payments.

I’m excited to announce a new Free Money Friday offer just for My Dollar Plan readers! I know many of you like to send me deals that you find (which I love getting!) Starting today, we’re going to sweeten the deal for you by giving you free money to find and submit the free money offers!

Each January I like to review all of our spending for the prior year. Since I track everything in Microsoft Money (yes, I’m still holding out until the end of the year to convert to Quicken) it’s pretty easy. I look at the average spending and then project what our spending will be for the upcoming year.

Want to take a tax deduction for your new car? If you bought a new vehicle last year, you can take advantage of the following tax savings on your 2009 taxes: deducting the amount of state and local sales and excise tax paid. You can also take further tax deductions if you donated your old car.

While the Cash for Clunkers program helped many people in the market for buying a car optimize their savings, many people were unable to take advantage of this program (like myself!) because their ‘clunker’ or used car had too good of gas mileage to be counted.

Another downfall was the fact that it significantly dropped the number of available used cars for purchase in the US, since vehicles traded in for the program had to be destroyed.

My fiancé and I recently purchased a home, as well as a used vehicle when my car died. In other words…we are close to starting from scratch with our savings. We have not been this low in our emergency or other savings accounts in years, and so I thought this would be a great time to talk about how to go from $0 to meeting your savings goals.

The first step, of course, is just to start.

How much money do you have to make to file taxes? That seems to be a popular question these days, especially for people that made less money last year due to the economy.

Income Requirements

For the 2008 tax year, you need to file taxes if your gross income meets the minimum income for your filing status and age:

Every Friday, it’s time for Free Money here at My Dollar Plan! In case you missed any, here’s a collection of free money ideas that we covered during the year.

Banking & Bonuses