FINANCIAL HOUSEKEEPING | Stop prescreened credit card offers
If you are satisfied with your current credit cards, don’t want new issuers poking around your credit report or simply want to reduce your junk mail burden, you can opt out of prescreened credit offers with a simple phone call to 1-888-5-OPT-OUT.
The Consumer Credit Reporting Industry Opt In/Opt Out line allows consumers to preclude themselves from offers either for five years, or permanently. As the name implies, however, it also allows consumers to opt in to get offers or to come back from the forbidden list.
The service extends to all companies that draw their client base from the four major credit bureaus, which means it will end the vast majority of unsolicited credit applications.
SHORT COURSE | Depreciation
An accounting technique used in tax preparation in which the cost of an asset is spread over the time period when that asset is useful.
For example, you spend $3,000 on a computer for a home-based business. If the computer’s useful life is five years – and if it has no value thereafter because it is technologically obsolete – you have two ways to account for the expense.
One is to deduct the entire cost in a single year; the other is to depreciate the cost over time. Using straight-line depreciation, by which you divide the asset’s value into equal parts over its useful life, your $3,000 computer could be a $600 tax deduction each year for five years ($3,000 divided by five years).
