photo credit: Яick Harris

Welcome to summertime! In between grilling, vacations, and just enjoying the sunshine, take some time  to improve your finances and your savings this summer:

1. Pay estimated taxes (if needed). For those in the U.S. who pay quarterly estimated income taxes, the due date is June 15th.
2. Review the last six months of financial records and your savings goals. Go over your expenses as compared to your budget: are you staying on track? If not, what can you do to get back to where you should be? Are you on track with your contributions towards your savings accounts and retirement contributions? If not, contribute a portion of what you wanted to to take advantage of the properties of compound interest and long-term investing. Finally, are you getting the most that you can get out of your bank accounts and credit cards? Check to see if you can get better interest rates with a different bank or credit union.
3. Cut your expenses. What can you cut or reduce the cost of? Is there anything that you can downgrade to save a little more money? Perhaps you could find a way to take advantage of special offers, as some do when they threaten to cancel (or actually cancel) their cable bill in order to be eligible for new client offers.
4. Make financial wonderful home improvements. You could take on big projects — like new windows and doors — that cost a lot of money and time up front, but save money over the longterm. You can also do little things, like installing your own programmable thermostat, or planting a small garden.

What are you doing this summer to improve your financial situation?

My sister-in-law is graduating from medical school this weekend, so Mr. Savings and I are flying out to Seattle tonight. On the flight ( if I’m not passed out from exhaustion) I’ll be studying my test prep materials for Part 1 of the IRS Enrolled Agent examination.

photo credit: The Master Shake Signal

What is an enrolled agent? The IRS states: “An enrolled agent is a person who has earned the privilege of practicing, that is, representing taxpayers, before the Internal Revenue Service.” Basically, an enrolled agent (EA) is the highest level of licensed and certified tax professional — like a CPA whose only concern is taxes. Unlike your run-of-the-mill tax professional at one of the big box tax prep firms, EAs can represent you if you are audited by the IRS, to the point of even going to the audit on your behalf. They can do this for an individual such as yourself who is being audited, small businesses, or large corporations. EAs are “unrestricted as to which taxpayers they can represent, what types of tax matters they can handle, and which IRS offices they can practice before.”

(Full disclosure: For the past four years, I have worked as a run-of-the-mill tax professional at the biggest of the big box tax prep firms — the one with the large colored quadrangle for its logo.)

To become a licensed enrolled agent, you must:

1. take and pass three exams (Individual Returns, Partnership and Corporate Returns, and Audit & Representation Issues), each of which is three hours long,
2. apply for enrollment with the IRS, and
3. pass an IRS background check.

I take the first test on July 14th. My current weak spots are estate and gift taxes, simply because I don’t have much real world experience with them from my past clients — but that is what studying and practice tests are for!

Anyway: happy graduation to all new grads, happy studying to all my fellow EA wannabes, and happy weekend to everyone else!

Best Links of the Month:

• The Eight Money Ratios: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4: “The book Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security lists eight money ratios that are designed to help us all determine where we stand financially. They’re so good that the Wall Street Journal called them “some of the best tools we have seen for gauging where you stand.” So I thought I’d list each of them as well as tell you where I stand on each measure.”

Craziest Links of the Month:

• Buying Opportunity?: “The stock price of BP is at about $42/share. When the US Market opens after Memorial Day, the price will have surely fallen because of the company’s failed “junk shot” and “top kill”. Because it is a multi billion dollar company, and because the world will still need oil, I don’t expect it will stop drilling or that the oil it extracts will be any less valuable. But this disaster will probably push its stock price lower than ever in modern memory. So, on Tuesday, is it a buying opportunity?”

More Links:

• 44 Ways to Ruin Your Financial Life By Age 30: “Hopefully, by sharing a few of these bad money moves, it will prevent others from doing the same. And don’t worry, if you are over 30 and still doing these things, it is never too late to start living frugal.”
• 6 Free Budget Software Choices for Everyone
• How I Transformed My $45,000 Income into a Six-Figure Income
• How to Build Credit Without Borrowing Money: “Thanks to Payment Reporting Builds Credit (also called Pay Rent, Build Credit, Inc.) and what’s called the FICO Expansion Score, you can build credit without borrowing money.”
• How to Give Your Kids $25,000 at Graduation
• How Much Life Insurance Should You Buy?: “Maybe you know you need life insurance, but all you get is the policy through your employer because it seemed cheap. Maybe it is cheap, but is it adequate?”
• Seven Easy Steps to Your Dream Job
• Should You Put Extra Money Towards Your Mortgage or Invest?
• The Two Biggest Retirement Misconceptions: “In particular, there are two financial misconceptions that baby boomers can fall prey to – assumptions that could prove financially harmful for their future.”

Well, this is an inauspicious start.

As you know if you’ve read my last post or visited this blog’s About page, I’m pregnant. I’m in the second trimester, so I’ve been feeling much better — until today, when morning sickness reared its ugly head again in its new incarnation as morning-afternoon-evening-night sickness.

Please forgive me, but I couldn’t write anything smart (or even dumb) today. I’m trying some tricks tonight, and hopefully will be back in good shape by tomorrow.

Welcome to The Savings Journey! I’m “Savings Gal”, owner and operator of this blog. I’m female, almost thirty, married, with a brand new house — and a brand new baby on the way!

I’m an English major by training, a web designer/developer by trade, and an aspiring IRS enrolled agent. I’ve been interested in personal finance and building personal savings for years, but I only recently decided to get serious about personal finance blogging.

Topics to be covered on this site:

• Building your personal savings
• Budgeting
• Planning for your retirement
• Dealing with credit: the good, the bad, and the ugly
• Taxes! Tips, tricks, and warnings. (Note: I should warn you, I get really excited about helping people with their taxes.)
• Buying a house and its repercussions (dealing with a mortgage, renovations, etc.)
• Dealing with the money-sucking vortexes known as children (I kid! I kid! Get it, “kid”?)
• Saving for education: college, graduate school, and other options
• Whatever else pops up

Posts will appear Monday through Friday, except for holidays. (This schedule may be modified or reduced in December 2010 and January 2011 during my maternity leave.) Once a month, I will collect great personal finance links from around the Web and present them with brief commentary.

Please subscribe by RSS or e-mail to keep up with new updates, leave a comment below, or get in touch with me through the contact form. Thanks for exploring The Savings Journey, and I hope you enjoy the site!