Working on taxes.  Seems like I was just doing this yesterday.  Since I have taxes on my mind I thought I’d share a little tax tip with you free of charge.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A TAX PROFESSIONAL. THIS IS SIMPLY A TAX TIP FROM SOMEONE WHO IS EXHAUSTED FROM DOING THEIR OWN PERSONAL TAXES AND IS LOOKING FOR A BREAK OF ANY KIND.

I use TurboTax and a few years ago I received along with my tax software another software called ItsDeductible. ItsDeductible allowed me to enter in all the items we had donated to charity and it assigned a value to it and to be honest, the value it assigns is higher than I was using (by what I considered a significant amount). Yeah – love it when that happens! This year I didn’t receive the software and was a bit bummed. After doing a little bit of research I quickly discovered that they have eliminated the desktop software and moved everything online – you can check it out here. Now, I thought I was special because it was free for me but it appears, according to their website that this is free to all!

To use it you simply logged in with your account information (and if you don’t have an account you can set one up for free) and then click on the ItsDeductible link. At this point you must decide if you are going to work on 2007 (review previous data), 2008 or 2009 data. I chose 2008 since that’s what I’m working on right now. I simply pulled out my receipts and notes and was able to enter what we had donated fairly fast. It’s a simple point and click type of set-up which makes it really nice. When I was done with 2008 I decided to go ahead and enter the 2009 donations we’ve already made (we make a lot of donations, I get so tired of stuff lying around!).

Here’s a picture of the donation page:

If you have set-up an account, your data is saved when you exit. This is nice because you can access the data throughout the year. I went ahead and created a shortcut on my toolbar to this page so I can update it after each trip to our local Goodwill.

Now here’s the bonus beauty of this little tool. Since I use TurboTax I was able to download all the data in just a few steps. I was prompted to enter my username and password for my account and then I clicked the Import Now button. Viola, it was in Turbo Tax in a matter of seconds. A lot of data entered with very little effort on my part. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Now, if I could only get this automated with all other aspects of my taxes. One of my New Years Resolutions should have been to actually use Quicken! Is it too late?

P.S. I believe you can use ItsDeductible without establishing an account. The data just wouldn’t be saved for future use.

Classic post from 04/2009.

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  In May, 2000 I found out that I had tested positive for the BRCA1 genetic mutation which put me at high risk for both breast and ovarian cancer.  It was while I was on the path of determining what I was going to do with this information that I found myself growing more and more frustrated with my attempts at explaining to others what I was going through.  The journey up to this point had been long and complex, and the explanation of what I had been through was just as involved.  By this time, I had found FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered and was a frequent visitor to their message boards.  It was during this time that I created a new thread on the boards, posting out of shear frustration, “I need a label!”.   I needed one word that would simply and succinctly tie up all the complexity and put it in a word that doctors and others could understand.  Upon reading my post, Sue Friedman, FORCE’s executive director, immediately got it.  She understood not only what I needed personally but saw the greater picture of what this meant.  She realized that having a label would not only help unify our community but would also help provide credibility to our needs.   A small group of us, myself included, worked closely together to come up with a name that represented our community.  Previvor was born.  Over the last eight years the word Previvor has been embraced and used by our community as well as doctors in the high-risk field.  The word has appears in numerous articles and medical journals to date. 

December, 2007.  I’m on my way to the airport after attending the San Antonio Breast Cancer Conference and I received a call from Sue, who I had just left.  She told me she had just received a phone call telling her that ”Previvor” had been chosen as one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Buzz Words for 2007.  I was stunned.  Over the eight years since its inception, as one might imagine, I had developed quite an attachment to the word.  I had a dream, a goal if you will, for the word Previvor to become main stream.  A commonly used word.  I had a dream too that one day Previvors would be acknowledged, alongside Survivors, for the road they had traveled, no matter what their personal choices had been.  I felt in that very moment that this news was the first step towards these goals.  This was our first glimpse that the word Previvor and its meaning was going beyond us, into the public world, without our prompting.  Time Magazine – wow. 

FORCE personally changed the way I handled the complex situation I had found myself in eight years ago.  FORCE’s message boards early on became an invaluable resource as it gave me a place to interact with others who had not only gone through this ahead of me but who were going through the process at the same time I was.  Over the past ten years FORCE has continued to grow and expand its services to others.  FORCE provides education, compassion and awareness to the issues surrounding hereditary breast and ovarian cancer unsurpassed by any other organization.  Previvor is only one of the many positive marks FORCE has put on society since its inception.  I may have had the need, the dream and the request but Sue and FORCE had the vision and took action so many others could be empowered. 

Previvor  n. person who does not have cancer but possesses a genetic predisposition to develop the disease; a presurvivor

A person who does not have cancer, but has precancerous cells or a genetic mutation known to increase the risk of developing it: a pre-survivor. With the rise in genetic testing and groups like FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered) that encourage women to find out whether they’re likely to develop breast or ovarian cancer, some Previvors are taking such drastic measures as getting preemptive mastectomies or hysterectomies.

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Look how handsome and strong Oscar looks.

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