Last week both the House and Senate approved the payroll tax extension, sending it on to the president to sign into law. Which will happen amid a bunch of hoopla and congratulations about how your elected leaders saved your wallets from the plight of emptiness.
The law, as it did last year, will extend the 2% reduction in the payroll tax that funds Social Security through the end of the year. Which sounds great. Who doesn’t want more money from their paycheck.
So what’s the point of the tax cut? The government lets you keep 2% of your income in exchange for you to spend it. The theory is that spending your 2% will help the economy grow more quickly. Sounds fair enough, except that money is supposed to be put towards retirement. At least someone’s retirement with the inefficiency of the Social Security System.
The payroll tax cut is a terrible short-term fix that will only cause more problems down the road when the difference has to made up. Which is the inherent flaw. I don’t see any logic in spending retirement money before we retire. But that’s the government in a nutshell. Continue Reading…
You can’t go through tax season or 
The biggest reason anyone fails at their finances is because they never really start. Sure, they may get through a few weeks. But then it falls off. We lead busy lives and sometimes we let things slide. So it becomes tomorrow’s problem.
There are only two ways of improving your financial situation and neither involves an insurance scam, lottery, gambling, selling a kidney, or a myriad of other legal or illegal activities. In fact both are covered abundantly on finance blogs and websites. Yet the topic is skirted around rather than just getting to the point.