I love it when my friends collaborate. Amber Marlow Blatt of Hey Brooklyn interview Lauren Fairbanks of LifestylerMag talks about personal finance tips for GenY, going to the free events in the city and using Groupon for teeth cleaning.

Bonus: Geeta Dayal has a great tips for freelancers, artists, and creative types.

Now is the time to track deductions for next year. Jenn Escalona tells you how.

Lighten your wallet and save money. Use Cardstar app (iPhone, Blackberry) to enter all your loyalty and reward cards.

If you are buying a car soon, then check out True Car which is a new car pricing research site.

Let Ally be one of your allies in the fight to save money.  I just set up a savings account today, and it took only five minutes.

Student loan payment may not be so much of a struggle if you check out the new federal program, IBR (Income-Based Repayment.)

Yesterday Intuit hosted a Town Hall at NASDAQ where there were sessions on Small Business, Kid & Money and Personal Finance.  I attended the Small Business and Personal Finance sessions. It was curious to note that the event was held at NASDAQ since it was also the first stock market in the United States to advertise to the general public. When I was in college studying finance, I considered it to be the stock market for real people. Coincidentally, Rhonda Abrams stated at the end of the small business panel that small businesses “make up the real economy”. According to Intuit’s small Business Index, small businesses with fewer than 20 employees added 66,000 new jobs in April and 300,000 new jobs since June 2009.

Let jump back up to the beginning. For this event, I was press and was escorted up the studio where the town hall was being held. The event was livestream and the panel included about a dozen small business owners. I know a few of them which included Sarah Endline (Sweet Riot), Jill Frechtman (Fretzels) Beth Schoenfeldt (Collective-E) Marlo Scott (Sweet Revenge). Rhonda Abrams and Cameron from Intuit moderated the panel. The conversation talked about hiring employees, using social media, handling cash flow and health insurance and markteting. There were great contributions to the discussion by the panelists that I took note.

Regarding the economy– Sarah Endline said, “can we talk about thrive instead of survive? We all want to move into the thrive part right now, but maybe we’re somewhere between survive and thrive.”

On Cash Flow: “The small business community is currently a self-financing ecosystem. Everyone’s paying late.”

On Health Insurance: “My health insurance is looking both ways before crossing the street.”-Marlo Scott, Sweet Revenge

On Marketing: Jill uses social media–Facebook, Twitter and does monthly giveaways on Fretzels’ Facebook Page. Drew, the owner of Dead Apple Tours does a lot of local offline guerrilla marketing with signage, posters. Alexis of The Beauty Bean uses twitter to find people who may be talking about beauty products. She also schedules tweets so at to manage her time.

“As a small business owner by nature, you have to be optimistic.”

After the panel ended,  there were lunch and some of Sweet Revenge cupcakes were there. As required by my duties as a cupcake blogger,  I tasted the Tart, a new seasonal lemon cupcake made with lemon curd.

Today I am at the Intuit Town Hall.  I will be tweeting about it at niche, and Intuit Town Hall is tweeting as well. you can  follow the hashtag “#intuitth. You can also register the livestream.

This morning is a small business panel. The afternoon sessions will be about Kids and Monday and the last session will be about Personal Finance. Aaron Patzer will be moderating an afternoon session.

Lunch and Learn: Marci Alboher will talk about “encore careers” at the 92 Y Tribeca on Tuesday, April 27.

They can bring home the bacon:  Read this post about women entrepreneurs by Adelaide Lancaster.

The Lady Knows: Yesterday, I say Melinda Emerson (AKA SmallBizLady) speak at the 140Conf. I love that her goal is to end small business failure.

Add fun to your bar:  Stickybits lets you add digital content (mp3, jpg, mov) to barcodes.

Credit check: Transunion has launched Zendough, an all-in-one site that addresses concerns abour credit scores and identity theft.

I have been writing about small business accounting, bookeeping and personal financial application for a while now.  It’s been exciting to new start-ups come up and make business cycle operations easier, but none have been able to everything that Quickbooks. Today I got an email from Working Point, and I think that they may have done it. I will try it out later, but wanted you know about this news.

We’ve been hard at work on our banking integration and we are excited to announce that the “foundation has been laid!” We know that this is a feature that you are excited about as well so, we have decided to break the feature into 2 parts so we could give you access as soon as possible.

The first part of our banking integration offers Premium subscribers the ability to view financial institution account balances in WorkingPoint. WorkingPoint can securely connect with over 4,800 bank and credit card providers, including PayPal. Connecting to your financial institutions is easy and administrators can set up connections in just minutes. By creating a simple connection between your financial institution accounts and your bookkeeping accounts where you track your business activity in WorkingPoint, you gain real-time insight into your actual cash and credit card liabilities all from where you manage your business: WorkingPoint.

Lynn Applebaum at City College of New York wrote an excellent post which gives guidelines on having interns.

These are Lynn’s top five ways to manage an internship program successfully:

1. At the time of application, provide a written description of the internship, including the skills required and nature of the work.
2. Assign a supervisor (not in human resources) to oversee the intern on a regular basis.
3. Once interns have fulfilled their assigned responsibilities, allow them to interview staff (within reason), to either expand on the knowledge gained in their assigned area or to learn about new areas.
4. Definitely don’t wait until the end of an internship to offer feedback. Give constructive comments after the first month (preferably in person) and discuss with the intern what he or she would like to do to benefit from the experience.  Note to interns: Have your list ready!
5. If you can’t pay a salary, consider covering commuting costs or picking up lunch in appreciation for the work the interns do.

Bank of America is rolling out text banking.

Tax deadline is this Thursday, April 15. File Later if you have to.

If you need help with your filing, Simplfi has some tips on how to double your tax refund.

Finovate Spring Conference is May 11 in San Francisco.

Invoice Bubble is a new online invoicing tool which is good for freelancers and small businesses.

To set up an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) in New York, you must be published.  Why is this necessary? You are a business, not a professor or a doctoral candidate. Why should each early stage company pay $2,000 to publish that it exists in a tombstone ad in an obscure newspaper? It almost seems like this a way to keep struggling print newspapers a  steady trickle  of income.
The LLC publication requirement puts New York at a disadvantage to Silicon Valley and Route 128 in attracting new tech companies to form in New York.  Not only tech companies but any entrepreneur-from cupcake bakeries to fashion designers. The LLC publication requirement robs New York of jobs in one of the largest sectors of the economy, companies that employ five or fewer employees. The LLC publication requirement amounts to a government subsidy to certain publishing companies at the expense of early stage companies.  The LLC publication requirement has no practical reason, when any company that forms in New York can be found on the New York Department of State website. It is time for New York to abolish this obsolete bureaucratic practice and support our burgeoning entrepreneurial community.  Sign the petition here: http://www.nytm.org/why-2k

Today is an excellent time for this advocacy since March 29 is National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day.  According to Fast Company, 70% of United States Commerce comes from small businesses.

 clipped from www.inc.com

Before you start shopping around for a financial institution, consider why you need one in the first place. Are you looking for specialized services, such as investment help or a small business loan? You can search online for local banks that specialize in equipment loans or small business working capital

Consider also how much cash flow will be moving in and out of your business account. Is your “business” even a business yet? You will be required to have a business name and usually be registered with the state upon opening up a business banking account. San Francisco-based financial advisor Kathryn Amenta suggests using this rule of thumb: “Once someone is spending 20 hours a week on a project and counting on the revenue to make up as much as 50 percent of their personal income, it’s definitely a business for financial and tax purposes,” she says.

Last night I attended a wonderfully informative and free event at the New York Times. Sponsored by Ally Bank and Lufthansa, the Financial Tune-Up discussion was moderated by Ron Lieber  the “Your Money” columnist for the New York Times. The panelists were personal finance rock stars, Jean Chatzky, Ben Popken, and Burt Malkiel.

The idea for Financial Tune-Up  is to take some time and unlock some cash. Here’s the checklist which includes both immediate and long-term benefits, from cashing gift cards to reallocating investments.

Jean Chatzky is an author of several books including Make Money, Not Excuses and financial editor for The Today Show and a contributing editor to More magazine. She said that debt was the number one question she gets asked about. Jean’s best shopping advice is to do a “purchasing pause” before buying something at a store.

Princeton professor Burt Malkiel is the author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street . It’s a book I read while at college, so I was excited to meet him. When it comes to investing, Malkiel advises to diversify your investments and to rebalance annually. Rebalance is to reset the mix of  bonds and stocks in your portfolio.  He also advises to invest in a stock index fund and a bond fund. Both of the instruments should have low expense ratios -rock bottom low.

Ben Popken is the co-managing editor of The Consumerist.  One is his to-dos is to the early termination charge from AT&T removed from his bill when upgraded iPhone.  He also advises to use an “EECB” when having a customer service issue with a company. An EECB  is an “executive email carpet bomb” which is a classic tactic for getting attention to make sure your complaint gets shoved under the nose of someone with decision-making powers.

All three of the panelists agree: Don’t take on any credit card debt.  Spend less than what you earn.

If you have kids, consider opening a 529 account, and do research on Saving For College to review the best one for you.

By the way, the New York Times has a Buck Blog filled with news about how to make the most out of your money.

I just heard about this today on Twitter.  Ally Bank is hosting a Tweetup at Stitch (247 W. 37th St) and a Financial Tune-Up at New York Times (620 Eighth Avenue - 15th Floor)  tomorrow, March 25th.

The Tweetup: Stitch from 5:45pm - 6:30pm

The Tune-up: 6:30PM-8:30PM

Ally Bank is looking for friends in New York City! We’re sponsoring a personal finance symposium at the New York Times from 6:30-8:30 and would love to meet some enthusiastic Twitterati in the city before. Afterward, you can join us at the Times event with Ron Lieber, NYT “Your Money” Columnist; Jean Chatzky, best-selling author and financial expert; Burt Malkiel, Princeton University professor of economics and Ben Popken, The Consumerist co-managing editor. Sign up for the symposium at Financial Tune Up. Space is limited.

Here at Keeping Nickels, I write mostly about stuff for entrepreneurs and freelancers.  Lately, I have found some good links for job seekers and wanted to share them.

Futurama: Marci Alboher gives nine tips for preparing for jobs for the future.

Workerbee: Web Worker Daily

Lance-a-lot: Freelance Writing Gigs

Ideal Job: Idealist

Are you a  blogger or freelance writer? Have you filed your taxes yet?  If not, don’t worry.  You can save more by taking these deductions. About.com has a great article detailing the categories of tax deductions.

1. Internet-related Expenses

2. Computer Equipment

3. Communications-related Expenses

4. Office Equipment

5. Supplies and Stationery

6. Advertising, Promotion and Design

7. Travel and Entertainment

8. Professional Association Memberships and Periodicals

9. Office Space and Related Expenses

10. Miscellaneous Other Expenses