Josh Eastburn.com

It is that most wonderful time of the year when W-2s start arriving in the mail.  I enjoy the process of filing my own taxes every year–as long as I’m getting money back.  For the past several years, I’ve been using TurboTax online.  If you can trust Intuit to store your tax data in their online “vault,” it makes it even easier in subsequent years as the application can auto-fill a lot of things for you.  Best of all, there is no software to install year after year.

There are always deals out there for TurboTax.  Here are my recommendations for the 2008 tax year:

1. If you aren’t itemizing deductions and have a simple return to file, TurboTax Free Edition is probably the best choice.  Federal returns and efile are free.  You only pay $14.95 for each state.

2. If you are itemizing deductions or need to file Schedule C, click here for a 25% discount on Federal and State returns through Fidelity.  You don’t have to be a Fidelity customer to get this discount.

Happy filing!

I am all about eliminating things I don’t need–especially when it comes to stuff in my wallet. I have a yet-to-be-produced invention that is a “10 credit cards in 1″ device. All you need is one card and a touch of a button on the front changes the magnetic stripe on the back to the selected account: check card, AmEx, FSA, etc.

While I’m working out the kinks on that one (it currently requires 4 D-size batteries), I did come across a site that will allow you to eliminate all those pesky grocery store club cards that dangle from your keychain and hit you in the knee while you drive: www.justoneclubcard.com.

Just gather up all your membership cards and enter the numbers below the bar codes. When you’re done, you have a printable card that can store up to 8 different club cards. Laminate it for extra durability. The people at the register never cease to be amazed by it.

Or at least I’m a guest blogger now. Check out my post on the Christmas gift I made with my daughter.

I have been considering getting an HDTV for about 2 years now. We had a shift in priorities a little over a year ago, with the goal of eliminating all debt except for our mortgage, so upgrading my TV was put on hold. As of last week, we are now debt free except for our house. I felt that deserved a bit of a reward, so it’s time to do some TV shopping.

Aside from knowing where to look for deals online, the biggest factor in getting a great price seems to be patience. Since I knew I would be purchasing a TV early this year, I started looking about 3 months ago. Prices have gone up and down, but I got a good feel for what is a good price and what isn’t. The easiest way of doing this is to find a product on Amazon.com, add it to your cart (or “save for later”), and check your cart every now and then. If a price has increased or decreased, you will be notified at the top of the cart page.

As for knowing where to shop, I used to rely on Froogle or PriceGrabber. However, just this week, I discovered a site that found a price that was $100 lower than any price I had seen for this TV: Bountii.com. Bountii only lists prices from reputable sellers and it lets you track price changes by RSS or email. But the real genius of the site is that it pays people to find the best deal. You can go to the “price hunt” page and if you find a better deal, they will pay you a small reward, or I suppose I should say “bounty” (between $4 and $8). While I haven’t been able to find any prices that beat theirs, it definitely gives people with time on their hands incentive to find the best deal which can be shared with others.

In the end, I got my Sharp Aquos TV from Dell and a 6′ 24AWG HDMI cable for less than $10 from Monoprice. In the coming weeks, I’ll be using Bountii to get the best deal on a Tivo HD.

While at my parents’ house over the holidays, I found my journal from elementary school. It is fun to read my perspective on life from so many years ago.

This got me thinking about starting the habit of writing a daily (or at least semi-daily) journal again. Since I can type much faster than I can write longhand, I looked around for a program that would do this for me. In the end, I decided to go with something I already use every day: Gmail.

Gmail allows me to search and label every entry for easy access in the future. This also means that your personal musings are stored on Google’s servers, but that is up to you to decide if you are comfortable with it.

To set this up, I used Gmail plus-addressing, which lets you create unlimited personal email addresses by adding a plus sign (+) and text after your email username. Here is how I set it up in my Gmail account:

1. Create a new label called “Journal” (or whatever you’d like to call it)
2. Create a new Contact using a plus-address. I named the new contact “Journal” and set the email as username+journal@gmail.com.
3. Create a new filter. When To = username+journal@gmail.com then Archive it, Mark as read, and apply the label “Journal”

Now you’re ready to start journaling. Just compose a new message, set the “To” address to the “Journal” contact you created and type away. When you click “Send” it will not show up as new email but it will be listed under your “Journal” label. For the subject line, I’ve been using the journal entry date, but other suggestions are welcome (I’ve also added short descriptions in the subject like “Europe Trip” after the journal date).

Another great thing about Gmail labels is you can apply multiple labels to each journal entry. So if you are writing a vacation journal entry, you can apply another label, like “Travel,” and you can now easily search for just vacation journal entries by viewing those two tags.

The only thing left to do is to make journaling a habit.