Archive for January, 2010

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Sunday Money Roundup – Nordstrom Rack Edition.

For Christmas, I received a sizable gift card to Nordstroms. Mind you, I have never shopped there or really ever been in one, but I was thrilled to be given some money to be spent on clothing, which I rarely buy for myself. So one day I grabbed my gift card and headed to the mall, where I almost had a heart attack looking at the prices of these clothes. $150 for jeans? $99 for a shirt? Um, at this rate all my money would have gotten me a whopping 2 or 3 items, which is crazy. Then someone reminded me about Nordstrom Rack and how much cheaper it was – and boy was he right! I went over there and spent only 1/4 of the value of my card on 3 new shirts, leaving me with plenty to go back again and look for more. So if you ever receive a Nordstom gift card, you may want to take it over to the rack so you can actually get more than 1 thing with it! On to the roundup…

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Money Quote Friday – Character, Conduct, and Capacity Edition.

“Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.“ – George Bernard Shaw


I could not agree more, George. Making money truly means nothing to me after I have enough to be comfortable; it’s what else I do with my life that matters. Have a great weekend everyone.

quotes
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Why I Am Not Claiming My Donation To The Haiti Relief Effort.

President Obama recently signed into law a bill that allows you to claim any donations you may have made to the Haiti relief effort on your tax return for last year (2009) or the current year (2010). If you donated any money between January 11th – March 1st, 2010, you can claim it on your return for either 2009 or 2010, whichever you want. Personally, I won’t be taking the deduction at all because I don’t feel it is right to give money to those less needy – and then take a write-off for it. I have the money to give, so I should give it without strings. I have always felt this way and have always donated money with the same intentions. My donations of “goods” to the Salvation Army or Goodwill are claimed, but any cash money donated is never claimed. Am I being foolish? Maybe. But it feels better to me to give the money without wanting any of it back, so I don’t ever claim it. I gave an entire day’s earnings from my sites to the relief effort and I don’t want any of it back from my own government; those people have nothing and I have a lot, in the grand scheme.

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taxes
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Getting Financially On Track And A Book Giveaway.

The following is a guest post from Manisha Thakor, MBA, CF. Manisha and Sharon Kedar, MBA, CFA, are the authors of the book Get Financially Naked: How To Talk Money With Your Honey. Lucky for you guys, the publisher is sending me a copy to give away to a reader, so don’t miss how to enter at the bottom of this post!

Now that we are in the beginning of the New Year, it’s the perfect time to poke your head up and ask, “Am I on Financial Track?” Here are some rough rules of thumb that you can use to benchmark your progress as you move through life’s decades.

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giveaways
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Which Stores Are Closing Down In 2010.

I just found out that the Borders Bookstore in my neighborhood is going out of business. It kinda sucks because it is the only bookstore within a very close distance and I thoroughly enjoy spending time in there looking for new books to pick up. Of course, this is after the Circuit City left a vacant building here too and the shoe store has a “Going out of Business” sign on its front door, so it’s really not all that surprising. But it got me thinking about what kind of situation a store must be in to actually close it’s doors, which in turn led me to an article online about who was closing stores in 2010. Wow, what an eye-opener…

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shopping
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