Strange Texts

                                                               Medical Expenses                                 38) A critical strategy for maximizing medical expense           deductions is known as "bunching." The idea is to pay           as many medical bills in one year as possible.  The           7.5% floor on medical expense deductions requires this           tactic.  Once your medical bills for the year exceed           the floor, all expenses above that amount are fully           deductible.  So you want to make payments that year           whenever possible instead of waiting until next year           when you must start trying to exceed the floor again.                When emergency care and necessary surgery occur,           you can do little to change the timing.  But you can           influence elective surgery and continuing care           expenses.  The first step is to determine how likely           you are to exceed the 7.5% floor this year.  If you are      

                              Opening Format                              by Tony Curro     A few days ago you stuffed yourself with turkey. Now, it is time to     do your Christmas shopping. I hope you checked out my picks last     month to help in your purchases. There were many programs that I did     not touch on last month. I mainly focused on utilities and games. No     word processors were mentioned. The reason was that I had not yet     looked at MS Word 6.0 for Windows. After looking at it, I feel that     if you purchase it, or WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows, you will not be     disappointed. These are the two big pro grams for Windows. Both     companies have improved and enhanced their products. Word has made     it easy for WordPerfect users to make an almost painless switch. On     the other hand WordPerfect has made its program more windows-like,     which is a big plus. I have used both products, and do not have any     negative comments about them.     Our News column thi

                                                           Miscellaneous Deductions                                 23) Retaining their medical, miscellaneous and employee           business expense deductions is important to most           taxpayers, because these expenses generally are           unavoidable.  Yet Congress tried to curtail these           deductions because one of the ideas behind tax reform           was that you would give up some deductions in order to           get lower tax rates.  Yet the clever taxpayer knows how           to keep some of those deductions and get the benefit of           lower rates.  Even after tax reform, that is possible.                The change in the medical expense deduction is           very simple.  You can deduct only the unreimbursed           medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted           gross income, and then only if those excess deductions           when combined with your itemized expenses exceed the           sta

                                                                 Mutual Funds                           Mutual funds offer the investor immediate           diversification into carefully selected and managed           securities.  An investment program can be started for a           small amount of money (typically $500-$1,000) and           subsequent purchases can be as small as $50.           Automatic reinvesting of capital gains and dividends           will speed up the growth of the investment.                A mutual fund is a professionally managed,           diversified portfolio of securities, such as stocks or           bonds.  The great appeal of mutual funds is that the           investor shoulders none of the investment decisions or           timing decisions required by individual stock           investing.                Mutual fund portfolio managers are trained in           finance and have years of experience managing           portfolios.  Many funds have in-house a