So here’s the thing, here in the US, every April 15th, we’re all forced to pay our share back in taxes.  Knowing what a dreaded task chore this can be for so many of us, many businesses offer up their own version of “tax relief”. I love how this year, some of the companies are extending their deals beyond early morning.

We hope this helps lesson the pain.

Boston Market: Individual dinner plates BOGO Free  04/15/2010 through 04/18/2010.
Cinnabon – 2 Free Cupcake Bites on 04/15/2010 between 6pm and 8pm.
HydroMassage – Free massages 04/15/2010 through 04/18/2010.
MaggieMoo’s – Free sample of MaggieMia’s Ice Cream Pizza on 04/15/2010 between 3pm and 7pm.
McCormick & Schmick’s – $10.40 dinner specials & drink specials at the bar.
P.F. Chang’s – 15% off food purchases all day
Starbucks – Bring in a reusable travel mug & get free brewed coffee
Taco Del Mar – Free taco per customer
McDonald’s – Select restaurants to offer BOGO Free Southern Style Chicken Biscuit
Subway – Free cookie for all customers
Chick-fil-a – Return before April 30th to receive the same order for free
T.G.I. Friday’s – Diners receive a $5 gift card w/purchase of $15-$25 or a $10 card w/purchases of $25 or more

Yes, we all dread tax day.  But it’s just slightly more bearable knowing that you can get a dine out discount or two.  Check out the discounts below courtesy of USA Today.

At McCormick & Schmick’s Wednesday diners will get a $10.40 certificate for future use. There’ll be $15 to $20 entrees discounted to $10.40. And bar patrons can choose themed drinks, such as a pint of Samuel Adams Deduction Draft.

The P.F. Chang’s chain is keeping it simple with a 15% discount for folks who dine at its 193 restaurants on Wednesday.

Food emporiums riding tax day for the first time with freebies on Wednesday:

•Free ice cream. MaggieMoo’s Ice Cream and Treatery will give away single-scoop servings to customers at 200 stores in what it calls an “e-cone-omic ice cream stimulus pac

•Free sweets. Snack chain Cinnabon will give out Tax Day Bites, free bite-size cinnamon rolls usually known as Classic Bites, from 5 to 8 p.m. at its 700 outlets on tax day.

•Free tacos. At its 275 restaurants in the West, Taco Del Mar will run a promotion: “Taxes Suck. Tacos Don’t.” People can register at the Taco Del Mar website for an e-mailed coupon for a free tax day taco.

•Free gift cards. T.G.I. Friday’s will give Wednesday customers $5 Bonus Bites gift cards for food and beverage purchases of $15 to $25 and $10 cards for those who spend more than $25. Members of the 1,000-outlet chain’s frequent-customer program also will get double points.

I assure you, you are not the sum of your stuff. I invite you to look at the state of your own economy and BE the change you want to happen TODAY. Just because you’ve been doing something a certain way, or wearing the same style for years doesn’t mean it needs to be the way you continue to do it.

Are you ready to consider making that switch?

• Do you shop every day?
• Do you have more than you can deal with in your closet?
• Do you feel overwhelmed and feel you have nothing to wear?
• Do you shop on sale because it’s SUCH a deal?
• Do you continually buy the same shape, style or color over and over?
• Do you buy clothing only to just return the following day or two?
• Do you have price tags or unworn clothing in your closet RIGHT NOW?
• Do you feel you are trying to keep up appearances but don’t have any idea how you would like to look?

If you answered EVEN one YES to any of the questions above then, great news, I can help you! You can CHANGE. You can live a happier, less stressful life if you know how to get your outer appearance in line with your inner essence.

1. Grab three large garbage bags for alterations, donations and resale. Your clothing has value and the longer you hold on to clothing the less value it has. If you never thought about selling your clothing begin to consider reselling the most eco-nomical way to feed your shopping habit. Clothing isn’t an investment, but HOW you BUY it and WHEN you SELL it is.
2. Get ready to change. If you’ve had clothing longer than 3 years (5 years for a man), then take a VERY hard look at each item. Clothing has a shorter life span especially for women. Ask yourself…does it still have value in today’s trends? Keep in mind that staying current and ageless has nothing to do with being trendy. As a rule, accessories typically last much longer than your wardrobe.
3. Consider each piece. Are you attached? Does that dress remind you of your first date with your man? Did you spend a lot of money on it? If so, consider your local high end resale stores. You can buy and sell regularly each season. Consider it your recycling and doing your part for the planet.
4. How do I know if my clothing is out of style? Great question. Pick up your favorite fashion magazine. Does what you own look like anything on the pages or do those parachute pants and neon tops look like something out of an MC Hammer video? This is the best way to figure out if you need an update. If you do have similar clothing to those on the pages of the magazines, then good for you. You simply need new ways to create new looks using what you already own before you begin to shop again.

Barbra Horowitz is a personal stylist and the West Coast correspondent for British Vogue online. She has also written Closet Control: The Ultimate Guide to Revitalizing Your Wardrobe and Revolutionizing the Way you Store It and can be found blogging all about fashion at So You Think You Have Nothing To Wear.

Scott Pelley reports on the mortgage crisis that’s far from over, with a second wave of expected defaults on the way that could deepen the bottom of the U.S. recession. Whitney Tilson explains that sub prime mortgages are just the start of our foreclosure woes and we’re still only halfway through the bursting of the mortgage bubble. We still need to be concerned about the All-Day and Option Arm mortgages.

Every adult should have in place an Advance Health Care Directive and a Financial Durable Power of Attorney.  Estate planning is not just for rich people.  These legal documents are important for everyone who loves their family.

If you don’t have these legal documents in place and something scary happens, it will make life a whole lot more difficult for the people you love.

An Advance Health Care Directive (also known as a living will) does two things:  first, it names the person you want making health care decisions for you if you cannot make them for yourself and second, it lets that person know how you want them to be made.

This is important because if you are in the hospital and cannot communicate, you need someone to make decisions for you and you want them to make those decisions as you would want them made, without question.

If you don’t have this document in place, it could create a huge rift among your family as the people you love fight about what you would have wanted.

The important thing in this document is that the whoever you name is also given authority under the new (within the past three years) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (aka HIPAA).

If your health care agent (the person named in your Advance Health Care Directive) is not designated as your agent under HIPAA, they will not be able to look at your medical records, which makes it mighty hard for them to make health care decisions for you.

By the way, if you have college age kids going off to college, you’ll want to get this in place for your kid.  Otherwise, when you call the school nurse to discuss your child’s illness, you may find no one can or will talk with you because they would violate HIPAA if they did.

We get frantic calls in our office at least once or twice each fall from parents looking for legal documents for their college-age kid for just this reason.

The second legal document you absolutely need to have in place as an adult is a Durable Power of Attorney. This document names someone to make financial and legal decisions for you if you can’t make them for yourself.

Beware of the one-page standard durable power of attorney you find on the internet where you just check off a list of applicable powers.  I’ve seen family members try to use those to access their loved ones assets and then not be able to because the form was too generic.

It’s important for your kids going off to college to have this in place too because if they are in an accident you are going to need to take over paying the bills and get access to bank accounts and make legal decisions.  But, you will have to go through a long and expensive court process if there’s not a signed Durable Power of Attorney in place.

It’s the same for you too.  If you are in an accident, and you don’t have a Durable Power of Attorney in place, it will be difficult for your family to deal with things on your behalf.

So, regardless of the amount of money you have in the bank, get your Advance Health Care Directive (or living will) and your Durable Power of Attorney in place at the bare minimum.  Oh, and of course, if you have kids under 18 at home, get your comprehensive Kids Protection Plan in place too.

None of this has to do with money.  It has to do with making life as easy as possible for the people you love.

Alexis Martin Neely makes a relationship with a Personal Family Lawyer™ accessible and affordable to everyone who wants to leave the world a better place. Subscribe to Alexis’ free Family Wealth Secrets online magazine at FamilyWealthMatters.com. Find your own Personal Family Lawyer™ at www.PersonalFamilyLawyer.com.

Let’s see…that must be the thirty-first person to claim to have “the answer”.

How many of these people already own the SECRET, and e-books from sites claiming to have the answer?

No one is willing to put “the bell on the cat”…no one is willing to be the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes; no one wants to tell the truth: You actually have the answers right inside of yourself. It may not be attractive, it’s not sexy, and frankly, it can be pretty darn painful at times, but, it’s your truth…and nothing but the truth. You own it; it’s your core issue.

We have become soft; a culture bred on quick fixes and cheese doodles. Have all those ingested preservatives finally damaged our capacity to truly heal? We seem to drift towards terminal vagueness and the desire to ‘check-out’, be numb or be dumb, that’s the ticket.

Everything we need to understand in order to change has already been written…and those books are probably sitting on the shelves of all these people throwing their money to purchase yet another “answer”.

The truth is: having money or food ‘issues’, or any other self-destructive behavior comes from living one’s life on two tracks. Not being whole, not being authentic; being afraid to really go deep and shine a light on the childhood shame and confront the proverbial monsters in the closet.

Gaining self-awareness is the key to change, but the pop culture spin that has currently become so topical, is nauseating. The truth is: all these suffering souls were in trouble long before gas prices hit $4.50 a gallon, long before the mortgage industry hit the skids. They just hid in denial. True healing requires courage, faith, discipline and desire. It takes work…hard work to constantly confront those pieces of ourselves we have spent so much energy running from. There are no real quick fixes.

Pegi Burdick is known as The Financial Whisperer.  She believes in teaching women to become financially literate, to demand what they deserve financially and to encourage women to recognize and understand the hows and whys of their money beliefs .

It’s not a surprise. 70% of people die without even a Will. So why in the world should you care about estate planning? You’re young. You’re healthy. You may not even have kids or very much money in the bank.

You should care because you are financially smarter than your parents and you care more about the people you’d leave behind than the 70% who will die this year leaving their loved ones in the lurch.

You may be young (or young at heart), but you likely have more far more wealth than your folks already; you certainly have bigger dreams, and there’s a good chance you have kids.

It’s not your age that matters when it comes to planning. Your vision and your family circumstances determine whether you need to plan and when to start.

Regardless of how much money you have in the bank, if you have kids at home, you want to be the one who decides who would take care of your kids in the short-term and who would raise them for the long-term, if you were in an accident. You definitely don’t want to leave that up to a court to decide.

Choosing who will take care of your kids and legally documenting your decisions is estate planning … if you have kids, you need it.

If you do have money in the bank (here in California more than $100,000) or own any real property, you will want that money to get to your family as easily as possible if anything happens to you. The State has a plan for your money, but it’s one that will make life difficult for your loved ones. Under the State’s plan, your family will have to deal with the Court, not have complete control of your assets for 12-16 months and they’ll pay a load of unnecessary expenses that you could have avoided if you had planned ahead.

You definitely don’t want to leave the people you love with a mess because you didn’t take care of things.

Giving your loved ones easy access to your money if you are in an accident is estate planning … if you have money in the bank or own even one piece of real estate, you need it.

And, if you have a big vision for your future, you want to set up your business in such a way that it can never be taken from you if you get divorced or sued and so that when you die, your family won’t lose half of it to the government. Yes, there are ways to totally protect what you are building and they are a lot easier to put in place when your company isn’t worth much, like when you are just starting out in your 30s.

Showing the Universe you mean business about your business and setting it up so that it grows protected for your family is estate planning … if you have a big vision for your future, you need it.

Last, if you want to pass on much more than just your financial wealth and leave the world a better place, you need to set forth the intention to do that and then take action steps throughout your lifetime to capture the intangible assets that are most often lost when someone dies, like your intellectual, spiritual and human assets. It’s about who you are and what’s important to you.

Creating a structure and plan for passing on your values, insights, stories and experience is estate planning …. If you want to leave the world a better place, you need it.

So, what do the old rich guys know that you should know too?

They know that real deal, make a difference for your loved ones estate planning (what I call Family Wealth Planning) is about far more than documents; it’s about making the very best financial and legal decisions for yourself and the people you love most, so you can leave the world a better place.

Think about the old rich guys …. the guys whose family wealth has grown at each generation –Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford to name a few – all had the trusted guidance of personal lawyers advising them and their family after they were gone and long before they amassed their wealth. Because of these relationships, they left long lasting legacies that improve the world. Contrast that with rich guys like Joe Robbie, Powel Crosley, Jr., and Cornelius Vanderbilt who were once the wealthiest men in America and whose fortunes have been almost entirely dissipated to estate taxes, lawsuits, divorces and general affluenza.

So, learn from the old rich guys who did it right. Show the Universe you are serious about your business by getting control of your financial future. Leave your family with a legacy of true family wealth. If you want to leave the world a better place, even on a small scale, now is the time for you to begin planning your estate and for building your own relationship with a personal lawyer.

Alexis Martin Neely makes a relationship with a Personal Family Lawyer™ accessible and affordable to everyone who wants to leave the world a better place. Subscribe to Alexis’ free Family Wealth Secrets online magazine at FamilyWealthMatters.com. Find your own Personal Family Lawyer™ at www.PersonalFamilyLawyer.com.

There isn’t any reason to be daunted by selling on eBay – it just takes a bit of planning to be successful. This article will provide some planning ideas and put you ahead in the learning curve and on your way to success.

You will need some basic tools – a digital camera that takes good, clear photos, a seller account on eBay, a listing tool to make managing your listings easier, and a PayPal account or merchant credit card account. This last is a new rule intended to make the buyer experience easier.

First, you will need to register an account on eBay. It’s free, fast and easy. If you will only be selling a few things from around the house, one account will be just fine. If you are thinking of selling for others, or of selling item(s) that you will have regular access to, or of selling regularly, you will want to consider having two accounts – one for buying and one for selling. This way, if a transaction goes bad on your buying account, it will not affect your selling status.

Two helpful articles from eBay are Setting Up a Seller Account and Seller Policies.

If you are setting up a new account for selling, or only have a few feedback on your existing account, start buying some inexpensive items (like CDs or eBooks, or other items you need and will use) to build up feedback. Buyers have more confidence in a seller with more than 10 feedback ratings.

If you don’t have a PayPal or merchant credit card account, you will need to set one up prior to selling. PayPal lets buyers and sellers exchange money via e-mail. Buyers make payments online through credit cards or bank accounts, and PayPal relays the funds to sellers’ accounts. Basic usage is free for online buyers, but sellers who use added features (required by eBay) must pay fees based on the amount transferred. Rates may change, but currently are 30 cents per transaction plus 2.9% of the transaction value.

EBay has a simple “Sell Your Item” form within the website, but it is time-consuming (you can only do one item at a time) and you can’t take advantage of using multiple photos for free. It’s best to use one of the many free listing and management tools available. A couple that are very popular are Turbo Lister, a desktop interface which is owned by eBay, and Auctiva, a web-based service. You can research others by Googling ”free auction management software”.

Photo hosting is the next item to consider. Auctions with multiple pictures sell better and for higher prices than those with just one. EBay charges for every photo after the first, so a free or low-cost hosting service is essential! If you don’t choose a listing service that offers free photo hosting, there are photo hosting websites that make it easy. I have heard good things about both the free PhotoBucket and low-cost InkFrog. You can Google “free photo hosting” for additional resources.

I can’t emphasize enough that you must have a good digital camera. Not expensive, but one that takes clear photos and is easy to use when you might have to stand at an awkward angle to get the best shot. Easy to use photo editing software is also essential.

Get your accounts set up, practice editing some photos, and I’ll be back with tips and explanations on creating powerful listings!

Robyn Volker has been selling on eBay for about 10 years and has been a full-time Power Seller since 2003. She is constantly learning and refining her business model to maximize growth in eBay’s ever-changing marketplace. She receives no compensation or consideration from any of the companies or products that may be mentioned. She welcomes your questions and comments.

A week or so ago she did an interesting post regarding joint funds. I know this isn’t a new topic, considering it’s frequently discussed here on CC. As Mir puts it “I don’t care if you work or you stay home; I don’t care if your spouse is a jerk or up for canonization; if you are married, you still need to have at least one bank account and one credit card in your name only.”

Did you know that Omaha Steaks has an overstock section?   There are often a couple of contests going on as well.  She has a lot of information if you’re in the market for saving money – and who isn’t?  Check her out, you might find yourself a bargain or two…or at least score a free bag of chocolate turtle Chex Mix.