Stimulus Trilogy: How Stimulated Will You Be?
This is the first of a Stimulus Trilogy, a series of three guest posts by Intuit’s own Bob Bobala, personal finance guru and former Motley Fool editor-in-chief. When Bob isn’t busy doing his real job – trying to help small businesses save all they can on taxes – he enjoys a rousing game of Ping-Pong, his guitar, and chiming in on the Quicken blog.
Grass roots economic stimulus
CC Image Source: Kristal Kraft
One of the provisions of the government’s $787 billion stimulus package is cash back directly into your pocket in the form of a 6.2% tax credit for 2009 and 2010. That sounds great, but don’t book your flight to Tahiti just yet. The max single taxpayers will get will each year be $400 ($800 for married couples), and if you make over $95,000 ($190,000 for joint filers) you’ll get zilch. Put another way, it looks like the stimulus will give most Americans an extra $8 a week. Need a little cheer? Here are some additional ways you might save on your 2009 tax return because of the stimulus.
The rest of us will start getting about $30 to $40 a month in extra take-home pay this spring. The nice thing is you don’t have to do anything. Your employer will change its tax withholding from your paycheck automatically. That makes it easy, but if you’re not paying attention you might not notice the extra cash is even there. So let’s think about what we’re going to do with this money.
The government wants us to spend it, of course. This is “stimulus” cash after all. But you can be just as good an American by putting it in one of the many high-yield savings accounts available online (easy to open) or use it to pay down your credit card debt, especially if you’re carrying a card with a high interest rate.
Of course, with the way things are going out there, you may need that extra money just to put food on the table. We’d like to know what you’ll use the extra scratch for. Necessities, savings or a little fun? Just how stimulating do you think $40 per month is? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned for more on the stimulus from Bob.
Tags: savings account, stimulus package | Categories: Personal Finance, Saving |
[...] the last part of our Stimulus Package Trilogy (see How Stimulated Will You Be? and Top 5 Ways I’m Spending My Stimulus Package to get caught up if you haven’t been [...]
[...] I talked a little about the Stimulus Act in my first post of three in this week’s Stimulus Trilogy. Starting this spring, many Americans are going to [...]