At last count there are about 23,000 mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) available to investors in the U.S. Picking from among them for your portfolio can seem daunting. Do you pay attention to past performance? fund management? or something else to find a suitable growth vehicle for your money?

When picking funds, all else being equal (i.e. you’ve already decided on an asset class and investment account), the most important factor for actual returns is expense ratio. This is the annual fund operating expenses fee charged as a percentage of invested amounts in the fund.

Let’s look at how this affects your portfolio in detail.

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When I worked at Northrop Grumman, they always celebrated National Engineer’s Week with a token gift to employees and some cake in the cafeteria. While I was there, I think I received things like a laser pointer and an insulated lunch bag. More recently, they’ve made donations to the STEM Education Coalition, a very worthy coalition that works to improve Scient, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education.

The question posed by one of my friends is whether or not they could deduct that donation, made in their name, on their taxes.

Unfortunately, no.

By definition, only the person who makes the actual donation is permitted to take a deduction on their tax return. If I were to donate to a qualified charitable organization in your name, only I could take the deduction because I made the contribution. You may get the recognition, but I get the tax benefit. If I were to give you the money and you made the contribution, then you could deduct it on your personal tax return.

How this works in practice is that if I made a donation in your name, I would receive the receipt indicating I made the contribution and that serves as documentation of the contribution. You, despite having your name appear on the gift, would get no such receipt and so you cannot deduct it.

Yay taxes!

According to the CDC, in 2009 the divorce rate was 50%. Per 1,000 people there were 6.8 marriages and 3.4 divorces. Looking at the data from the past three years, it might look like the trend is reversing as the number of divorces per 1,000 people has fallen in each of those years but the number of marriages has fallen at the same rate. Sadly, there aren’t a lot of negative life events with a higher degree of probability so being prepared and knowing what to do financially if it does happen, is well advised. It might not be such a well advised topic of conversation but what should you do to prepare for and deal with divorce should you be one of the 50% who ends up with a broken marriage?

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Late last week, members of Congress decided to go ahead and extend the payroll tax cut through the end of of 2012. Set to expire at the end of 2011, the payroll tax cut was extended by a couple of months as a stop-gap, and now has been extended through the end of the year.

The move is designed to keep the employee portion of the payroll tax at 4.2%, instead of the usual 6.2%. Employers still pay their entire portion of the payroll tax. The extension came as Republicans backed off their opposition to the measure following a bruising battle in December, during which voters expressed their displeasure with the idea that the payroll tax cut might not be extended.

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Now that we’re in the heart of tax season and the tax brackets for the current calendar year have been finalized, I’m ready to take off the “sneak peek” off the label for the 2012 IRS tax brackets. Our original figures were not off, the 2012 tax brackets were exactly how we predicted and that’s in part because we knew what inflation would be (and it’s effects on our tax structure).

The current tax brackets, that is the tax brackets that are in effect for the 2012 tax year, can be found on this archived page for 2011 tax brackets. These apply for tax year 2011, which you are preparing for today. The rates below will apply when you go to file your taxes in 2013.

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Before the popularity of online banks with their high yield savings accounts, you never transferred money directly out of a savings account. You usually transferred it to your checking account and then write checks, withdrew cash, or used a debit card. Regulation D didn’t matter to you, the limit of 6 ACH transfers didn’t matter to you, and you were never penalized for it.

Now, with everyone trying to optimize their savings to maximize their accrued interest, it’s happening more and more often and it’s pissing people off because banks are charging them fees and, when it happens too often, closing these accounts.

So what is Regulation D and why is there this limit of 6 transfers?

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We’re deep in to tax season and that means that Americans are thinking about the ways they can better position themselves in the coming year to pay less taxes. For higher net worth individuals, giving to their children in amounts that surpass $13,000 becomes a problem because they can trigger the 35% gift tax.

There are a variety of ways to give to your children or grandchildren while making your bank account as tax efficient as possible while helping the child with their future or present large scale expenses.

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Social media is everywhere. And, believe it or not, you can actually use social media in your job search. If you are looking to upgrade your career, a strong social media presence can help. Not only that, but you can leverage your network to help you reach out to more potential employers.

As you prepare for a new year — and a new career path — don’t neglect social media. In fact, a number of companies use social media as part of their recruitment processes, and many employers will run a web search of your social media profiles before finalizing the job offer. So, as you build your resume and write a cover letter, don’t forget to use social media as part of the job hunt.

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Right about now, you will have received most of your tax forms. The Form W-2 if you are employed, a 1099-INT from all the banks that paid you all those pennies in interest, and maybe even a Form 1099-K if you sold a lot of things on eBay.

Another common form that you may get is the Form 1099-MISC. A 1099-MISC is a tax form sent by someone who has paid you money, usually over $600 in a year, in return for work you did for them. It’s often issued to independent contractors by employers, instead of a W-2, but can be used to report rent, royalties, and any other income that wouldn’t otherwise get reported.

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It’s a whole new job hunting world thanks to the internet. When our parents were graduating from college as young twenty something’s, all they had to do was make sure that they had quality references, no criminal record, and stellar transcripts and that was all of the reputation management that was required. There weren’t companies charging tens of thousands of dollars to protect companies’ and individuals’ online reputation and unless we were well known in our field, our reach wasn’t world wide.

That isn’t the case anymore. Thanks to the internet and more specifically, social media, what we say and do is public knowledge. Thanks to camera phones (that can also record a pretty nice video) everything we say and do is captured for a lifetime and those pictures, movies, and comments are online for anybody to find unless you do something about it. If you’re entering the professional world after college, it’s time to get your online reputation cleaned up. Here’s how.

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