This week my daughter made an appointment with the eye doctor.  For whatever reason, she can not see as good as she used to.  It may be that a lens is bad, that her eyes have gradually gotten worse, or something else.  In either case, she has lost focus.  Recognizing that, she determined she needed help to get things back in focus.

As I thought of that, it reminded me of people who have lost focus on specific areas of their lives.  Maybe a marriage, a personal relationship, a spiritual walk, finances, career, and maybe life in general.  Like my daughter above, something(s) shows that you have lost focus.

Focus helps you succeed.  In your marriage, focus means you are string to meet the needs of your spouse and that builds a strong, close relationship.  In your spiritual walk, you tend to lose focus on who God is and what He is in your life and you become more self-centered and doomed to experience pain.  In your finances, things begin to spin out of control and you feel there is no hope of turning things around.

Fortunately, there is hope.  You need to get things back in the right focus.  Focus brings intensity and results.  When we focus we see what is important and make the necessary changes to get things back on track,

What is out of focus for you and, more importantly, what are you doing to get things back in focus and on track?

Have you started thinking about taxes yet?  I know it is the dreadful thing that we would like to avoid, but they say that taxes are one of the two certain things in life.

Many will begin getting W2 statements this month along with the 1099’s and all the other documents to begin preparation for our 2011 tax filing window.  With that filing, many of you will get a refund of the taxes you have overpaid through the year.

That overpayment, from each one of your paychecks, is money you could have used to buy food, pay utilities, save for a car, save for a vacation, fund your retirement account, etc.  But no, your money has been held by the US Treasury to make sure you had enough for your tax obligation.

Did you know you can better manage the amount of money that you do have withheld from your paychecks?  You can go online (see below) to the the IRS, fill out all the questions, hit enter and learn what you should be claiming as true exemptions.  By making the changes on your W4 and submitting to your employer, you can begin bringing home more of your money to manage to your plan each month.

Likewise, if you find yourself owing each month you can use the tool to determine how to correctly withhhold to avoid owing the IRS each year.

Two things to keep in mind.  First, an exemption is NOT the same as a deduction.  You should not have the same number of your dependents as your exemptions unless you run the program to suggest that.  Some people decide that since they have five in the house that their exemptions should be five.  That is not necessarily the case.

Second, this tool is not fail proof.  Your have to enter as correct of numbers (projections for this year) as you can and if your numbers change during this year, you may need to re-do the whole task.  The IRS and their programmers are not as perfect as we would like.

The tool is now available for this year.  Want to check it out?  Click here.

I recently read an article on wire.com that really had me excited from the title.  Like most Americans, and people around the world, our ears (in this case eyes) perk up when we see that the economic conditions might be improving.  So, you can imagine my interest when I saw the the first part of the title, “Another Positive Indicator:, but as I finished scanning the article my heart sank -Another Positive Indicator: More Consumer Debt.  Seriously, more consumer debt is a positive thing?

According to the article, Americans increased their borrowing by $20.4 BILLION in November 2011.  Along with the story, I heard someone interviewed on radio say that either people are feeling more optimistic about their jobs or that they have very short memories.  I vote for the later.

Why would we, collectively, increase our borrowing more?  I think it is part of the Thanksgiving Day Syndrome where people feel that they have a little more room and then gorge themselves with more.  Instead of turkey and pie, in this case it is debt.  They have lost the feeling of the pain from the last episode and now they can take on more.

Do you remember the definition of the word “insanity”?

One of my clients recently shared with me that in all their years of marriage, this past Christmas was their very first debt-free one.  They indicated how all the gifts were purchased and paid for well before the holiday.  And while they escaped the mad rush and stress of the holiday spending, now they are stress-free knowing that there are no credit card bills on the way to their mailbox.

Why do we go and spend more than we have?  One example to all of us may be our government.  This morning I read that our president is requesting $1.2 TRILLION be added to the debt ceiling.

I guess some of us will never learn…