Ideas by Millan

You know how to make your donation to Haiti the easy way by texting. If you don’t click here. What you may probably not know is that you can get a tax break this same 2009 tax year for your donations as long as certain requirements apply. According to the IRS website you can get your benefit immediately, instead of waiting for next year, but the following rules must apply:

1. You must itemize your deductions on Schedule A
2. Standard deductions are not eligible
3. Keep record of donation (Telephone bill for text messages)
4. Only U.S. Contributions to U.S. Organizations are allowed
5. You can only get your break this 2009 or next 2010 tax year.

See the IRS.gov website for updates.

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The best place to find black friday offers is
Black Friday Ads

You can view the store’s add for Black Friday before you venture out early Friday morning…click here!

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Get over the economic crisis and cook with your kids at home. For a family of three or more, eating at restaurants every week can be very expensive and will end up affecting your yearly budget. Get your kids involved in cooking with you, together you can learn new recipes and will share more time together. If your kids are at or near the age where they will be going to college then sharing time with you in the kitchen will teach them to be more aware of their health. If your kids know that there are healthier choices they can easily prepare, then they will not be limited to frozen TV-dinners once they get to college.

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Buying fresh pre-cut fresh vegetables is a very practical way to save time, but not money. Avoid buying pre-cut vegetables. A bag of pre-cut lettuce or a packaged ready-made salad will make things easier, but it will cost you more than buying every ingredient by itself. Buy a head of lettuce, a head of cabbage, tomatoes and whole carrots, and cut them yourself.

On other note, frozen vegetables, in many cases, are more affordable than fresh, specially if the vegetables you need are not in season. Don’t worry about buying frozen vegetables, they have the same nutritional value as fresh vegetables

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Generic drugs usually cost much less than brand name drugs. The Food and Drug Administration, through a strict and rigorous process, analyze every generic drug to make sure it is as safe and effective as the brand name drug. A generic drug is made of the same chemicals as brand name and are just as effective.

Source: Food and Drug Administration

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If you are someone who always buys brand name products without looking at the price, you could be paying too much. Many stores have their own brand and many times their products are made by the same company that makes the products of well known brands, and this does not mean the products have less nutrients nor less vitamins. In fact, it is very probable that you will not notice any difference in taste or quality. But, if for any reason you happen to not like the taste or quality of the store brand product, in many cases, the store will allow you to exchange it for the name brand you know or some other brand you will like to try. Store brand products, almost always, cost less than well known name brands and usually are of the same quality.

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Today my 2003 Explorer “door ajar” light came on, I’ve had this light come on once before and had turned out to be the rear lift gate. Checking the lift gate was instinctively my first reaction, but nothing happened, then I opened and closed the hatch window… nothing, all doors… nothing, re-rechecked the lift gate, and aha!!! I found a ballpoint pen under the weatherstripping. Then I pressed the remote’s door lock button and instead of beeping once, meaning that it was locked, it beeped twice, meaning that a door was open; this really annoyed me because I knew that all the doors were shut. To make matters worst, the interior lights and the side-view mirror lights would not turn off.

 

The problem was the door latch, which door?  I really don’t know. So what I did was to spray WD-40 on all the door latches, the lift gate latch, and the hatch window latch. I sprayed every latch once and nothing! The” door ajar” light was still on, so I went back to every latch and with my key I pushed in the latch’s hinge to close it. I re-sprayed with WD-40 making sure I got everything really lubricated. This fixed the problem, no more “door ajar”! I guess the door sensors were dried out. I will just have to wait and see if the problem comes back or if this is a permanent solution.

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