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Order your copy of Building Wealth in a Paycheck-to-Paycheck World by Paul Petillo. It is packed with safe, proven wealth-building strategies that cover all the major components of a balanced financial plan, including:

• Straight talk on mutual funds, bonds, real estate, and annuities
• Techniques for avoiding financial disasters
• Tools to help readers track their debt and create a plan for staying out of it
• Road maps to buying a home and saving for college and retirement

If You Have Children
Children, never seen as an asset unless they turn out to be supporters of dear old mom and dad, have proven their worth in the new tax code update this year. But problems arise when tax payers try to determine who is the child when they are using one of the five different types of tax credits allowed this year.

Families have five choices when it comes to filing their taxes this year, all with different results, depending upon the age considered creditworthy by the IRS. There is, currently, some attempt to create a uniform exemption age but for filers this year, the chances of error remain high - and confusing.

For instance, the five choices available to parents are:the earned income tax credit, the child and dependent care tax credit, the child tax credit, head of household filing status, and dependency exemptions. Each of these can present different returns for comparable incomes and family sizes, depending on how they claim the children and their ages.

Full time students remain children well into the age of majority (19 to 24) or if they are permanently or totally disabled.

Middle class wage earners will find that that child, who may still be in high school at age seventeen is no longer eligible for the child tax credit.

At age 13, dependent care credits end for parents. The suggestion before the Treasury Department would make these tax anomalies disappear under a uniform age for minors of 19 years old.

A uniform definition of age would eliminate a large amount of filing errors, a confusion that even your tax preparer might not fully comprehend. The Treasury department is aware that a full 20% of returns who opt for these credits probably have made a mistake. The biggest mistake according to a Congressional study is an inadvertent double dip: claiming a child for both the exemption as a dependent and as a reason to qualify for the earned income tax credit.