1000 Things Update

In 2009 I only worked part of the year, as a result we cut back on our giving. Usually we are above the standard deduction for giving, not so in 2009 and it looked like the value of our 1000 things would not get us there. Being so thrifty weNancy just took things weshe did not want and put them in a box in the basement under the stairs waiting for 2010.

I think there are more than a 1000 things under the stairs now that I added the 4 things I don't want.

Now that 2010 is upon us weNancy is entering into DeductionPro, that wonderful sister program found with H&R TaxCut. This helps to assign a realistic value to all our wonderful gifts to charity so we can get an accurate tax write off.

Nancy has entered in about 150 items so far. Lo and behold DeductionPro is helping us get there! Lets go through an example. Shirt, thrift store value $1.00. Save file. Open file. Shirts $5.00 total. Save file. Open File. Shirts $25.00 total. Save File. Open File. Shirts $125.00 total. Nancy called the help desk and was able to figure out a work around before the person at the other end could even understand what was going wrong. No it is not PEBKAC. For some reason if anything is donated and assigned to the other category there will be five of them if that file is reopened. Open and close the file again and there will be 25 of that item. All other categories are fine and stay correct, there are issues with other. The work around is once you save and close a file, never reopen it.

A file is supposed to represent everything given to a specific charity on a specific day. Our plan was to catalog everything thus far and then call St. Vincent and have them pick the stuff up. New plan is to tell the software we are donating each day then when it is all documented call St. Vincent and have them take our many days of donations away in one day.

Late breaking news! Nancy just found another solution. Use her computer instead of mine.