1)  Participating in a qualified retirement plan through your employer ( 401k,403b,457 plans ) . Most dollars are saved pre tax basis thereby reducing your taxable income for the year. I guess it is the most common way to save taxes in America .

2) You’re wise to take advantage of the dependent care benefits offered by your employer. That allows you to use pre-tax dollars to pay for dependent care expenses or to receive tax-free employer provided dependent care.

3) Going back to school reduces your tax liability . By  deducting ( or take credits depending on income and type of education ) your eligible tuition and fees, you save a bunch

4) By itemizing your state and local income or sales tax paid you save fed taxes on state and local taxes .

5) Home ownership : itemizing your real estate property tax paid  and itemizing your home mortgage interest deduction.

6) Itemizing your cash and/or non-cash contributions to charitable organizations this year you save taxes on donations

7) Hold your investments in taxable account for more than one year . Applying the lower tax rates on long-term capital gains and qualifying dividends

8 ) Having a child is good for you . Claiming the child tax credit  this year can help you reduce your federal taxes by up-to $1000

Many other credits and deductions are available depending upon your income and situations . See the the link below and plan for the coming year

http://taxes.about.com/od/deductionscredits/Deductions_Credits.htm

Nissan

* Sentra - $179/1999/39 - Eff $226
* Alitma - $199/2999/39 - Eff $270
* Maxima - $239/2999/39 - Eff $309

Hyundai

* Sonata - $199/2399/36 - Eff $261
* Genesis - $399/2999/36 - Eff $472
* Elantra - $159/1999/24 - Eff $218
* Elantra Touring - $239/1999/24 - Eff $313

Manu Car           Monthly / DownPayment (W/1st) / Months / Effective Monthly /  Exp                 Miles
Toyota (All Models 2010 except for Camry)
     Corolla LE    $179    /  829                /  36    / $197                 5-3-2010            36k
     Matrix        $199    / 1259                /  36    / $228                 5-3-2010            36k
     Camry LE 2010 $209    /  859                /  36    / $228                 5-3-2010            36k
     RAV4          $229    /  879                /  36    / $248                 5-3-2010            36k
     Camry LE 2011 $209    / 1909                /  36    / $257                 5-3-2010            36k
     Prius         $229    / 2219                /  36    / $285                 5-3-2010            36k
     Camry HY 2010 $239    / 2279                /  36    / $296                 5-3-2010            36k
     Venza         $279    / 1929                /  36    / $325                 5-3-2010            36k
     Tundra        $329    / 1729                /  36    / $368                 5-3-2010            36k
     Highlander    $299    / 2289                /  36    / $355                 5-3-2010            36k
     Highlander SE $369    / 1769                /  36    / $408                 5-3-2010            36k
     Highlander HY $469    / 4079                /  36    / $570                 5-3-2010            36k

Cadillac
     SRX           $479    / 2999                /  39    / $570                 4-30-2010

Mazda
     3i            $199    / 0                   /  42    / $194                 5-3-2010            42k
     3s            $239    / 0                   /  42    / $233                 5-3-2010            42k
     6             $239    / 0                   /  42    / $233                 5-3-2010            42k
     CX-7i         $239    / 3334                /  36    / $325                 5-3-2010            36k
     Miata         $269    / 3364                /  36    / $355                 5-3-2010            36k
     5             $299    / 2894                /  36    / $371                 5-3-2010            36k
     Tribute       $329    / 2924                /  36    / $402                 5-3-2010            36k
     CX-9s         $349    / 3444                /  36    / $435                 5-3-2010            36k

Honda
     Accord        $250    / 0                   /  36    / $243                 5-3-2010            36k
     Civic-LX      $220    / 0                   /  36    / $213                 5-3-2010            36k
     Civic-LX      $179    / 1799                /  36    / $224                 5-3-2010            36k

Honda link

http://automobiles.honda.com/current-offers.aspx

Note:  Do not sign a car lease because it is a good deal . Go for it if you need a car and it makes financial sense .

1) Housing credits will be drying up soon. Government needs money for healthcare reform and won’t have money to renew the offer $8k credits for much longer.

2) Interest rates are rising. They will likely continue rising for several years. As interest rates rise, mortgage rates rise. As mortgage rates rise, housing buyers are forced to spend less money on the house to maintain affordable monthly payments. This housing prices will be pushed down by higher mortgage interest rates.

3) Tighter credit for the forseeable future. The reason why housing was a good investment in the past was loose credit practices. Tighter credit means lower mortgages offered, means that housing prices are pressured downwards.

4) Mortgage and property tax writeoffs will phase out. I do not wish to get political and violate forum rules, but there has been speculation that federal government will remove or phase out many deductions in the intermediate future. If this occurs, then housing prices will be pressured downwards as the value of the tax shield disappears.

5) Immediate memory of housing crisis. There is always a stronger effect of remembrance immediately after a crisis that fades over time. Behavioral economics suggests people will be fearful of housing as investments for several years.

6) Property tax rates *must* rise. States and municipalities are running at deficits. With interest rates rising, their cost of borrowing through issued muni bonds will increase. With healthcare reform, the federal deficit will rise forcing the feds to reduce distribution to states, which will then reduce distributions to cities. Property taxes *must* rise, which effectively means people must take out reduced mortgages to allow payment of higher taxes. This puts downward pressure on housing prices.

7) Utility costs rising faster than inflation rate. Bigger homes cost more money in electricity and heating/cooling costs to run. This forces people to take out reduced mortgages to afford maintenance.

8 ) Contractor and landscaping rates will rise to accommodate health insurance costs they must provide to employees. Thus the cost of remodeling a kitchen will rise above the cost of inflation. When a person buys a house and his wife wants things remodeled, that must be factored into the cost of the home, driving housing prices down.
On their own, none of these would put enough downward pressure on housing prices to make a difference. In conjunction, I believe they all put downward pressure on housing and will continue to keep it down for the next 10 to 20 years. Let me know what your contrarian mind think about it by submitting a comment below .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQNvdKNTZUg

Rewards program to be handled by PenFed  credit union (or so it seems); $50 annual fee (waived first year), 20,000 bonus points after $650 in purchases on the card .

General Overview:
* Earn 5 points per dollar spent on airfare purchases.
* Earn 3 points per dollar spent on hotel stays and purchases made at restaurants until December 31, 2010.
* Earn one point for virtually every dollar you spend on all other purchases.
* There is no limit to the number of points you can earn.

Here is the link for more info

31 day wash sale rule - cannot repurchase a stock or similar mutual fund within 31 days or it negates the writeoff

Ways to defeat: Tax Loss Harvesting - you sell a down mutual fund and buy a “significantly” different fund the same day. With respect to the IRS, the VG Total Stock Market(TSM) and SP500 index funds are significantly different, even though they track eachother at 98% similarity because although TSM holds 5000 stocks, over 80% of it is the SP500 and the remaining 20% have strong correlation to the SP500. You get the loss but maintain market exposure so you don’t miss a potential rally.

Paypal(PP)

has carte blanche in pulling ACHs from linked checking account. This has caused me numerous overdraft charges from my bank, and even though PP reverses the fraudulant transactions, they do not compensate me for the overdraft fees from my bank.

Ways to defeat: After enrolling your checking account with PP, immediately close the account with your local bank. PP requires a linked checking account to be verified in order to work. Then add a second checking account but NO NOT verify it. PP will let you withdraw funds through ACH to the unverified second checking account, but as long as the primary checking account linked is closed at your bank, then PP cannot screw you over.

Checking Account Direct Deposit Requirement

Some banks require direct deposit into a checking account to qualify for free/reduced fees and/or reward dividends. Depending on the institution, this may be done by doing an ACH push from another bank, once a month. Perhaps if you own a MMF at VG, for example, you can set it to automatically deposit monthly dividends into external account - being the checking account you need a DD in. This works on some banks and not others.

Vanguard

60 day restriction on buying any mutual fund after you sell any portion of it:

Ways to defeat: - Setup a one-time automatic transfer from your VG MMF to the mutual fund you want the buy. The intention of automatic investments are that you could dollar-cost average, for example, $100 every month out of your paycheck into a mutual fund. However VG lets you set the frequency interval to “one time” so in essence you have a direct purchase and not an automatic recurring investment. If they ever stop allowing this option, you could simply setup a time interval of monthly and then discontinue the option after the first investment was made. Note that automatic investment purchasing is exempt from the 60 day restriction.

If you know more let me know as comments.

You can earn more money by switching your savings and checking accounts

According to Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) you are entitled to receive one free credit report every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. I generally recommend checking your credit file every 4 months (3 times a year once for each credit reporting companies). This free credit report can be requested through this website annualcreditreport.com, by phone or by mail. If you find any incorrect information on your credit file report it to respective reporting agency to fix it.

More information is available at

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/helpfaq#creditfile

As far as credit score is concerned you can check it free at creditkarma.com. It shows you percentile ranking nationwide and among your age group, what factors are making your score lower and what are making it higher.