Search Results for: budget

Do We Inflict Peer Pressure On Ourselves?

January 15, 2014 By MelissaB 10 Comments

When my husband and I got married, we were flat broke. Broke. We bought the cheapest wedding bands that we could find, and my diamond is small. However, that was my preference. I wanted to stay within budget, and I personally like smaller diamonds rather than the big rocks that some women wear. (All I could think was that when I had babies, I’d accidentally scratch them with a big ring.)

Still, there have been times that I’ve been in the presence of a group of women, each with a huge rock on her hand, and I’ve been a bit embarrassed by my small diamond. I’ve wondered what other people thought of us and our financial situation.

Peer Pressure Doesn’t End in High School

In high school, peer pressure is at its peak. If you want to be popular, you have to follow what the other kids are doing. I didn’t cave to peer pressure often. Instead, I had a few close friends, and I followed the path that was important to me. I was relieved when I graduated because I thought the peer pressure would finally be done.

In college, I found that the peer pressure did relent. People would respect your choice if you didn’t do what they were doing.

However, as I got older, I began to realize that there are societal norms that you’re expected to maintain. This becomes the “keeping up with the Jones'” phenomenon.

The Pressure Becomes Internalized

My husband and I are digging our way out of serious debt. We are scrimping and saving, knowing that in a few short years we will be out of debt and can start fresh. We can have all of our money be our own once we’re out of debt.

Meanwhile, we drive a 10 year old minivan with over 125,000 miles on it. I wear my small diamond ring, which I don’t ever plan to replace with a bigger version. We rent an apartment instead of owning a home.

No one is pressuring me to spend money that we don’t have. No one is passing judgment on us (at least not to us directly). But it’s hard not to look at other people’s lives and see the “stuff” that they have. The nice cars. The nice home with brand new furniture and a manicured lawn.

No one is telling me I’m failing, but I feel it sometimes. I feel that I’m not living up to society’s standards. I can see how easy it is to want to keep up with the Jones’, even if you can’t afford it. I can see how easy it is to pull out the plastic just this once because you’ve been scrimping and saving and just want to be like other people once in a while.

For the people who can afford it, there is no danger in this. For the people who can’t afford it, there’s just debt and heartache. You might then be just like those you want to be like.

Me, I’ll keep resisting the peer pressure, even though now it’s mostly pressure I put on myself.

Separate Your Business Accounts

December 2, 2013 By Shane Ede 13 Comments

I don’t think it’s any secret, in this online world, that just about everyone is trying to make a little bit of money with a website. After all, it’s not terribly difficult. It’s not necessarily easy, but it is far from hard. Throw up a website, put some work into it, and start bringing in money. I do it with this site and others. There’s work involved, but you can make money.

If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to treat it like a business from the start. I don’t mean that you have to create a company, license it with your state and the IRS, and create a board of directors. What I do mean, is that you need to have the business assets and accounting separate from your personal assets and accounting. Using your own personal checking account, savings account, and trying to keep them separate come tax time (and you’ll want to) can be very difficult. So difficult that you almost have to be a CPA in order to keep it all straight.

When I first began making money with blogs and websites, I didn’t separate anything. The money to buy the domains came directly from my personal checking account. The money to pay for the hosting of the websites came directly from my personal checking account. And then tax season came around. While I hadn’t made much money from the sites, I did make some. I wanted to be able to use the expenses of the sites to reduce the income from the sites, so I needed to figure all of that out and get totals for my taxes. Instead of just going into my accounting software, pulling up the business accounts, and running a profit loss statement, I had to go through each months’ statement of my checking account, and single out the transactions that were related to the sites. After I’d pulled them all out, I had to compile them into a spreadsheet and create a profit loss statement from them. It easily took twice as long as it should have. And that was when things were simple and I only had a couple of sites with a couple of transactions every other month or so. It would be much more difficult now.

How should you separate your business accounts?

I’m still a fan of keeping things as simple as you can. I don’t think you need to go through the whole filing process to create a company. That’s something that can wait until you’re making a decent amount of money. Ask your CPA if you want a more accurate number. You can keep it simple. What you really need is separate accounts and separate bookkeeping.

Start with setting up separate accounts for the business funds to flow into. You’ll need your own business savings account. Add a checking too if you think you’ll have need of a debit card or actual checks to write out. I’ve got a checking account and several savings accounts set up that are used solely for the business funds. If you’re not going to use the business account debit card for online purchases (it’s probably safer not to), you’ll also want a credit card that is used only for business transactions. Again, it doesn’t have to be in the business’ name, it just has to only be used for business use. I use one that has a 1-5% cash back feature to save a little extra on expenses.

When it comes to keeping your books, you probably don’t need anything too fancy for your personal accounts. Just enough to create your budget, and keep track of accounts. For business, you really need something a little bit more. I prefer a full on business accounting software. There’s a couple out there, and you can probably pick one up cheap off of eBay. They’re a little more complex than the software created for personal accounts, but I like the detail the complexity gives me. Maybe you can get by with a robust spreadsheet. But, something that you can use to give your CPA (even if that’s you) a full detail of the profit/loss of the company including all sources of income and expenses.

It may sound a little difficult, but it’s not any more difficult that it would be if you didn’t separate them first and then tried to separate them after you need to. You’ll thank yourself later.

How Much Life Insurance Do I Need?

November 23, 2013 By Shane Ede 3 Comments

Life insurance seems like a second thought to so many people. You’ll notice that the title of this article isn’t “Do I Need Life Insurance?”. That’s because there really isn’t much question about whether you need life insurance or not. I suppose there might be a few exceptions, but pretty much everyone needs and should have life insurance. It’s just a matter of how much you need. There’s a couple of ways to figure out how much you really need.

How much life insurance can I afford?

This is probably the most popular method of choosing life insurance. And it’s completely wrong. If you ask most people how much life insurance they can afford the answer is almost always “little” or “none”. Again, wrong answer. Most of us carry car insurance because it’s something that covers us against a loss. If our car is damaged in an accident, we have the insurance to help with the cost of repairing or replacing the car. To the people who depend on us for income, we need to have life insurance in place to help with the costs of continuing on when our income is lost.

How much income do I need to replace?

This question is usually a pretty good place to start when determining how much life insurance you need. If you’re a regular budget-maker, you probably have a pretty good idea of how much income you and your family need to pay the bills and keep food in the fridge. It’s probably not your entire salary, but it might be close. Take into account any investments you have, as well as assets that might become unneeded if you die. You’re family probably won’t need that second car anymore, for instance. Also, any payments on those assets that can be disposed of can be discounted as well.

How long do I need to replace the income?

Once you know how much income you need to replace, the next question you need to ask is how long you need to replace it for. In an ideal world, you’d be able to buy enough life insurance to set your family up for life. Your spouse would be able to quit work and take care of the kids full-time. You’d be able to pay for the children’s college education. But, the world we live in is far from ideal. Most of us won’t be able to afford the premium payments on a life insurance policy that will pay out enough to do those things. In a romanticist world, your spouse would grieve for your loss for the rest of his or her life. That isn’t all that likely either. It’s far more likely that your spouse will remarry at some point.

All of that still leaves us without a real answer to the time question though, doesn’t it? You’ll have to make some assumptions in order to really answer the question. Assume that your spouse will get remarried. Assume that you’re not going to be able to pay for your kids’ college education with the pay-out. I think a good starting point is somewhere around 3-7 years. Some will say that’s too long. Others will say that it’s too short. I don’t think there is a perfect answer. And, when you’re faced with a question that has no perfect answer, you’ve got to find an answer that is as close as possible.

Calculate, then purchase.

You’ve answered how much income you need to replace, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of how long you need to replace it for. Now, you’ve just got to put the two together and come up with how much life insurance you need. Multiply the income number by the length and you’re in the ballpark. Let’s say that you determine that you need to replace about $30,000 a year in income. You’re married to a real hottie, who shouldn’t have any issues with finding suitable future spouses, but you don’t want him or her to rush into it, so you use the 5 year length. $30,000 a year X 5 years = $150,000.

You might want to add a bit extra for sudden expenses at the time of death, like funeral, casket, and burial. But, that’s a pretty good ballpark number for how much life insurance you should buy. Now comes the big step… You’ve got to purchase it. Find a good place to compare life insurance policies and costs and get all the information compiled. Then pull the trigger and purchase the policy.

That will be the hardest part of the whole thing. If anything does happen to you, your family will be thankful that you did.