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Intuit is offering taxpayers free answers to tax questions up until January 31st at http://www.FreeTaxQuestion.com.  There is no purchase necessary.

According to Intuit, anyone can talk to an expert who will answer their personal, federal tax-related question for free. Taxpayers can submit a question online and they’ll receive a personal call back, at a time they request from a tax expert from TurboTax. This is a limited time offer and subject to availability through January 2009.

It may seem like Intuit products are getting mentioned often around here.  That is not our intent, but just the result of a big push by Intuit offering many new deals and free services.  Intuit dominates the market for personal finance tools and solutions.  When they have deals and freebies, we think they are worth mentioning.  They now have free versions of many products and are rumored to be coming out with more new solutions.  We are trying to track down the specific details of a new Quicken IPhone App.  If anyone has information about this, please share with us in the comments.

Looking to find a great rate on a certificate of deposit (CD), money market or savings account.  There is a very interesting service we found called MoneyAisle.com.  They essentially auction your money to the bank that bids the highest rate for your account.

It’s a free service that lets you know the bank with the best offer in just a couple of minutes.  They only work with FDIC insured banks.  They even have a test drive so you can first see how it really works without fully registering.  If you register and run an auction, but don’t want to open an account, there is no obligation to accept the winning bid.  It only takes a few minutes and doesn’t cost anything, so it’s definitely worth a try to see if you can get a better rate on your deposits. 

Let us know how it goes and what types of rates you are seeing.

Tax time is just around the corner.  This week we have seen the release of some of the leading do it yourself tax solutions.  We are providing links here so you can check out some of the offerings for this year.

One big change for this year is that federal e-filing is now included in the price by all major providers.  With this change, tax filers will no longer have an economic impediment to federal e-filing.  The software now costs the same whether you print and mail, or just simply e-file.  If you count postage, return receipt fees, driving to the post office and the delay in getting a refund, it’s just not worth it anymore to mail your return to the IRS.  There is a big push every year by the IRS to get as many returns e-filed as possible and it looks like the major providers have now seriously helped out the cause.

Of course e-filing was a major source of revenue for providers, so prices of the base products have increased.  We don’t have all of last years data, but it looks like each provider’s total cost to prepare and file online will be roughly the same this year.  Both TurboTax Online and TaxCut Online are closely priced.  
Preparing and e-filing a federal and state return costs $50 with TurboTax Basic and $65 with TurboTax Deluxe.  The same return with TaxCut Basic is $50 and TaxCut Premium is $70.  CompleteTax is slightly less at $45.  TaxACT is significantly less expensive at $17.   If you aren’t sure which online solution is best for you, each one is free until you try to print or file.  So you can give them all a try at no cost.

As for desktop software, it’s a little more complicated.  TurboTax Desktop will now charge a fee for each additional return plus state e-filing charges.  TaxCut allows up to 5 federal returns, but charges a little more for each state e-filing.  Here’s the back of the envelope calculations for a federal and state return, both being e-filed.  TurboTax Deluxe costs $78 for the first return and $28 $18 for each additional.  TaxCut Premium costs $70 for the first return and $20 for each additional up to five.   Again, TaxACT’s desktop download is priced significantly below the other two software providers at only $28 for one return.  UPDATE – TurboTax now allows up to 5 federal returns at no additional charge.

All of the prices quoted here are subject to change.  And these companies are known to adjust prices during tax season.  (They actually changed within hours of our post.)  One great thing that hasn’t changed and won’t change – low income and simple federal returns can still be prepared online and federally e-filed for free.

We haven’t made feature comparisons at this point, but these links take you to the different features of each of the products.  If you find any good product reviews and feature comparisons, please share the links by commenting on this post.

Online Tax Preparation

Which TurboTax Is Right For You? Click Here. 

Compare TaxCut Online products

TaxACT
Compare TaxAct Online Solutions.

See the CompleteTax offering.

Desktop Tax Software

TurboTax CD/Download Products

TaxCut Software Complete Features List

TaxACT
Compare Software Downloads

Quicken Online announced a new and interesting feature yesterday.  Quicken Online now has a forward looking paycheck and spending forecaster.  This allows people to now track their spending ahead of time and is another feature that helps look for ways to save.   With this feature, Intuit says you can “see all of your spending, what bills are coming, and how much money you’ll have left over. It makes staying on top of your money easier than ever before.”  It provides you a graph showing how your finances will look over the next few pay periods, anticipating income and bills over the next 30 days.  It shows where you might be spending between now and your next paycheck.  

In addition to helping with budgeting and giving a clearer view of upcoming spending, we think it can help reduce bank fees from overdrafts.  They also have an “alert” feature where Quicken Online sends notices to your cell phone or other device when it looks like you may be overdrawing your account or exceeding your credit limit.  Combining these features should help everybody eliminate unecessary bank fees.  It’s free, so it’s definitely worth the money; saving on fees makes it definitely worth your time.

There is really no reason not to give it a try.  If Quicken Online doesn’t work for you, try Mint.com as they have many useful features as well through a free solution for managing your money online.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires each major credit reporting company to provide you access to a free copy of your credit report one time every 12 months.  The three companies required to provide this service are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.  You can order your free reports online, by phone or by regular mail.  You can confirm this and get more consumer information at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website. 

Online
If you want to order your free annual credit reports online, there is only one authorized website: AnnualCreditReport.com.  The AnnualCreditReport.com website was created by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to fulfill their obligations to the consumer.  They have done a pretty good job in making the process painless and giving the consumer a central place to request each of their credit reports.  Best of all, you get your report instantly and can print it out.

By Phone
To request a credit report by phone, call (877) 322-8228.   There is a verification process over the phone and your credit reports will be mailed within 15 days. 

By Mail
Download a request form.  Print out the request form.  Mail the completed form to:
Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281
Your reports will be mailed within 15 days.
 
When trying to get your free reports, do not contact the three nationwide consumer reporting companies individually.  According to the FTC website, the only way to get your free annual credit reports is one of the three options listed above.

If you are looking to get a credit report or credit score directly from one of the reporting companies, please see the services featured at http://www.moneycafe.com/creditreports/.   Here you will find credit reports and scores, as well as credit monitoring and identity theft protection services from most major providers.

This post is not just for middle aged and AARP folks, but for twenty-somethings too.  Financial and retirement planning may not be “fun for all ages,” but it is “important for all ages.” 

This is a stunning time in history to live through.  No one has been unaffected by the housing crisis and equity markets losing more than half their value.  Was yesterday the bottom for the equity markets?  Not likely, but we do know we are closer to the bottom than we were last week.  I’m not sure any of us have clear thoughts about what this all means for our future.  So now is probably a good time to start reassessing our financial plans and start rethinking our goals and assumptions.

One good way to get the thought process going is to visit Boulevard R.  I found this site a while back, but revisited yesterday.  It has an easy to use interactive tool that helps you get a big picture view of your financial situation.  They call it the Boulevard R Roadmap.  For a free web service, it’s quite robust and remarkably thorough.  It walks you through your current situation, short term goals and long term goals.  It asks about your savings plan and lets you try different scenarios. 

When I first went through the planning steps I thought it was pretty cool and easy to use.  Only on a second run-through did I realize the depth of the site.  You can customize so many of your choices.  There are also data that pops up when you mouse over some of the graphics.  You can run through it in minutes if you want or spend a lot of time drilling down into it. 

It appears they are ultimately trying to sell you financial planning services.  I have not tried those out, nor did I sign up for anything.  So I can’t speak at all to those services.   Because we all need to be thinking about this stuff,  Boulevard R is definitely worth a look.