Taking on Your Taxes

Now that I’ve started working and receiving a steady by-weekly income my fina
ncial responsibility has shot through the roof and I haven’t liked it one bit.

With financial stability come taxes, and lots of them. I remember getting my first “big girl” salary pay check. Yes, it was more money then I had been making serving cups of coffee three days a week, but holy Mary mother of all that is good did they take a chunk of money out for taxes. They could have feed a small orphanage in Ethiopia with that kind of money.

The good part about giving up all those taxes, is that some of it come back to you, at least that’s what I was hoping when I sat down this past weekend to do my taxes for the first time as an –independent, no longer a dependent on my mother. (She’s still currently jumping for joy at the re-established income she’s gotten since she’s stopped financially supporting me.)


There are a few ways to do your taxes:

· Turbo tax or similar online programs that you can purchase in store or online for about $30-40

· H&R Block or similar walk in places that’ll do your taxes for you at areasonable fee, depending on who and what you're claiming

· Accountant or CPA , a more costly investment


Seeing as I don’t trust myself doing my taxes on my own because I’ve seen one too many movies where the IRS comes after people for back taxes, I decided to opt out of doing them on my own. I’m scared of not doing them correctly and not getting all the money that I can possible get back, so I did a little research for myself.

There are so many kinds of over looked deductions according to your career and income, they all vary per state, your best bet is to do some state research and see what kinds of deductibles you can get in your area.

Be prepared with all your forms and your account number for your refunded to be directly deposited into your account. I used a tax checklist to make sure I had everything ready. I also used a tax calculator to estimate my return.

I still don’t own a home, I have no children, and I’ve only been working for six months, so I decided to go H&R Block and meet with Mary, a tax preparer. She walked me through my forms and also pointed out areas where I could be saving more money, such as the miles I drive back and forth to class can be added as a deductible, as well as the books I purchased for class or any kind of seminars that I have to attend for work are considered higher education and can also be deducted.

After going through all the forms and coming to the end of the process, Mary helped me get a whole two months of pay back from my taxes. I also had a coupon for $25 dollars off and through my tuition tax forms I was able to waive another $30 off my tax preparation fee. My total cost ended up being only $75, which is nothing for the peace of mind of not having the IRS come knocking on my door.

Now to figure out how to investment that money, hmmm. That's a topic for another day.

As for an accountant or CPA, these are the guys you go to when you have a multitude of investments, your own business, or you make a substantial amount of income. I have none of the above, so I'll be sticking to Mary at H&R Block.

Happy Tax Season!

A Personal Touch

Technology is great, it’s something that has become integrated into our daily lives, but it leaves people increasingly disconnected. There once was a time when personalized letters were the only form of communication between friends, lovers and family.

For my 22nd birthday, my mother gave me the greatest gift, a box of old love letters from my father. It inspired me to bring that tradition back, not only in my personal life, but as well as in my professional life.

When you write someone a letter you show that you care. It shows them they’re worth your time. Your able to share your ideas, your innermost thoughts, things that have been going on in your life, and more. It is much more intimate than an email or a text.


Letters and notes also help develop vocabulary and expressive language. It isn’t uncommon to write better than one speaks. Technology has, unfortunately, become written speech; we now write fragments and do not use proper grammar or punctuation. Letter writing is a way to
put proper language skills into practice.

Personalized stationary allows the writer to express themselves not only with their writing but with their choice in stationary.

I have special corporate station with my companies’ logo that I often send out to clients and partners thanking them for their help or business. I also have fun more feminine stationary I use to send to friends to just say hello or to congratulating them on a promotion or just for being a great friend. I love sending old fashioned post cards, or even taking a photograph and using it as a postcard.

You can get personalized stationary almost anywhere they sell greeting cards. However some of my favorite stationary comes from Etsy. It’s all handmade by real people and it’s unique and allows for a lot of expression.

Get your own stationary and write someone a note. You're sure to always get a smile out of them.

Jump on It

When you’re crazy busy and in a rush it can be easy to forget to turn things off whether it’s the TV, the coffee pot, or even the lights of your car.

I did just that this past week. After getting caught in torrential down pour I was so busy trying to devise a plan of escape so as not to be late for an early morning meeting that I thoughtlessly left the lights to my car on, and you guessed it, I killed my battery.

I made it to my meeting on time but then wasted an hour of my workday looking for jumper cables until finally scoring a set from Jenna in finance. I realized that after finding a pair of jumper cables I was clueless on where to put them without frying myself to death.



Embarrassed at my lack of knowledge on automobiles, I hesitantly asked a co-worker if he could teach me how to jump my car as well as lend me his car for power.




How to jump start your car:

1. Every woman should have her own set of jumper cables; I purchased mine at target at a great price. The jumper cables should be heavy gauge, copper, and at least ten feet long. They’ll have pinchers that look like hair clips at each end. Two of them are red (positive) Two of them are black (negative).

2. Before you start, protect your eyes and skin from battery acid that can seep. Use your sunglasses and gloves, if you don’t have gloves you a cloth or a sock before you touch the battery.

3. Have the helping car park as close as possible to your own car. Hood to hood is ideal.

4. Put your car in park and set your emergency brake.

5. Pop the hoods of both cars and locate both batteries. Now it’s time for to kiss. Place one red clamp on the positive post on your own dead battery. (Look for the “+”sign) Place the other red clamp on the positive post of the “good” battery.

6. Hook the remaining black clamps to the “-“post of the good battery.

7. Hook the remaining black clamp to the engine or to something metal (non-painted) surface of your car. Keep it as far away from the battery as possible, and make sure the cables aren’t in the way of the engine.

8. Have the person who’s helping you start their engine and give it a little rev. A minute or so later start your car, and give it a little rev as well. Once it’s running, remove the cable clamps. (No worries you won’t electrocute yourself). Remember to take the clamps off in reverse order that you put them on. Or if you forget, remember black-black-, red-red, starting with your engine (black), and ending with your battery (red).

9. Cruise in your car for at least twenty minutes. If possible take it on the highway.



Learning how to not look like the Bride of Frankenstein.






After this little incident, I learned my lesson and bought a pair of jumper cables and a car kit for my own car for fairly inexpensive. Thankfully I was at work and in a safe location. Another alternative that I think every woman should have is an AAA membership, entirely worth the cost.





My new car kit I purchased.

Bake with No Effort

Having a few signature dishes is essential for the single woman who doesn’t have neither the time, nor the patience to grocery shop for ingredients she’s never heard of and finger through complicated recipes.

As a social single professional you’ll frequently be invited to everything and anything someone merits as a celebration. Whether it’s a housewarming, a promotion, an I’m newly single and back on the market or even the I have a new boyfriend and I want you all to meet him party. As a proper guest should, it’s always polite to bring a gift, nothing out the pottery barn catalog but something that can be consumed for the celebration. The most common of them , being a bottle of wine ($15-20).

I started to catch on that apparently every other single professional had the same exact idea when I started seeing that the designated food table started looking more like a wine bar and everyone had starved expressions and or/ was getting intoxicated at a more rapid pace.
So after too many nights of depriving myself of food , I decided to look up easy recipes that I could make as an alternative to my lazy, poor excuse of a gift , as well as look like the domestic goddess I wanted everyone to think I was.

I decided on baked Brie that had a whopping 5 ingredients and took 5 minutes to prep and less than 30 minutes to bake, leaving me hands free to put myself together. As the kicker, I stocked up on inexpensive glass dishes that I make the Brie on and leave as a gift for the host. Voila! I was genius and now you can have a fabulous brie too. You can even garnish the dish with some sliced green apples, strawberries or french bread.



This past weekend at a wine tasting dinner party.


Everyone will be beyond impressed not only with your faux domestic ways, but they’ll melt over how delicious your dish is. Now, you’ll be praised for your efforts,but no need to tell them how easy it was, let them think you worked a full day, slaved in the kitchen and managed to show up perfectly put together. They’ll be dying to know how you do it all.