Know The Difference Between Traditional IRA And Roth IRA

January 5th, 2012 Nichelle

Good has very informative article about understanding IRAs.   Here’s a bit below, but I suggest you read the full article.

In the traditional IRA, most taxpayers can elect to put up to $5,000 into an IRA annually ($6,000 if you’re over 50), and deduct that from their taxable income. Since this is pre-tax, it lowers your taxable income so it is an immediate tax benefit.

The Roth IRA, There is no immediate tax advantage because the contributions are made with post-tax money. The good thing is when you start withdrawing at 59 ½, you won’t be taxed at all. Another great feature of the Roth IRA is that all contributions can be withdrawn at any time with no tax or penalty.

If you not saving for retirement, start today. You can do it easily by setting up an account with Betterment.  See my earlier article about Betterment.

 

Credit Card Apr Rates, Dubious Credit Card Offers, and Loaning Money To Family

January 4th, 2012 Nichelle

cupcake crawl

From the blog Consumerist, here are three recent posts that you may want to read.

It is time to pay off that credit card debt as the average credit card APR is about 15%.

If you have lower credit score and are surprised that you received a credit card offer, don’t be flattered. It is a way debt collectors can resurrect old debt.

How to lend money to family? Short answer. Carefully, and be cool with saying no. Read the long answer which includes making a contract.

 

Tax Tips From Turbo Tax

January 3rd, 2012 Nichelle

This tips from TurboTax are good basic tips for filing taxes, but make sure to review any possible tax deductions.

File Your Taxes and Pay On Time

Complete  all of the work yet to be completed from the 2011 tax year before filing 2012.  April 17th is the last day to file taxes.

Double-Check Your Income Tax Withholding

If you’re not withholding enough money from your paycheck, then it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll owe on your tax return instead of receiving a tax refund. The Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate (Form W-4) will allow you change your withholding amount by changing your claimed tax exemptions.

Prepare, Organize, and Keep Excellent Records

Nothing will help you stay on top of your taxes better than developing an excellent strategy of preparation, organization, and record keeping. It may sound dull, but the benefits can save you a bundle of money.

Don’t Overpay for Unnecessary Tax Preparation

You may think your taxes are complex and find it necessary to go to a tax store to prepare your taxes, but you don’t have to overpay to have your taxes prepared.  Tax software like TurboTax makes tax preparation easy with step-by-step guidance.

Make Estimated Payments

For the self-employed, making estimated tax payments is a very smart way to stay ahead of the tax game. And, if your income is high enough, the IRS can even require estimated payments to be made. Instructions about estimated payments can be found on Form 1040-ES.

Regularly Contribute and Donate

If you have an IRA, 401k, 529 plan, or any other savings/investment accounts, be sure to find out what the maximum yearly contribution limits are and develop a monthly deposit plan to ensure that you can maximize the benefits of those accounts.

Also, consider giving to charity on a more regular basis. Many people/businesses wait until the end of the year to make charitable contributions

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paychex Introduces Two New Products For Small Business Owners

December 28th, 2011 Nichelle

Paychex Inc. has recently introduced two new tools that aim at solving certain tax credit related problems for the small and medium businesses (SMBs).  The two new products arteSmall Business Tax Credit Estimator and Small Business Tax Credit Package, have been innovated by Paychex Insurance Agency, a wholly owned subsidiary of Paychex.

These tools will be helpful in calculating tax credits resulting from payment of health insurance premiums.  The first tool is a free web-based tool and can be accessed through the website PaychexInsurance.com. The tool follows the IRS (Internal revenue Service) guidelines and based on employees’ hours, wages, premiums, and employer contributions, it helps to calculate the estimated credit.

Using the second tool, small business owners can assess their eligibility to receive the tax credit and thereby they can file for the same, if found eligible. However, to reap the benefits of the package for the 2012 calendar tax year, business owners have to be a Paychex payroll and Paychex Insurance Agency client for the entire 2012 calendar year.

 

What Are You Deducting? Popular Deductions for 2011

December 21st, 2011 Nichelle

Gina Noy is a CPA and a fellow member of New Work City. She has a blog post detailing the most popular tax deductions of 2011.  Here’s a few that may be of special interest to the self-employed/freelancer/sole proprietor.

9. Business Startup Costs
Startup Costs are “amount paid or incurred for creating an active trade or business, or investigating the creation or acquisition of an active trade or business”.   Starting in 2010, business can deduct up to $10,000 for start-up costs, there is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the $10,000 deduction if start-up costs exceed $60,000.

10. Home Office Expenses
If you are working from home make sure that you are using the office regularly and exclusively for business purposes, make a floor plan showing the area you use for your business and the percentage of the square feet of the home.  Also take photo of your home office so it is on file if there any questions later and please keep detailed records of expenses to substantiate your deductions.

11. Charitable Contribution
The itemized deduction for charitable contributions is one of the most frequently used by taxpayers to reduce tax liability. Generally contributions to a qualified charitable organization are deductible, subject to limitations.  A canceled check, bank statement or credit card statement is sufficient proof for small donations.  For donations of $250 or more, obtain a written acknowledgement letter from the charity.  Consider donating things other than cash, deduction for giving clothes, household appliances, cards and other personal property.

Check or credit card. Although a contribution must be made by December 31, 2011, to be deductible in 2011, the taxpayer does not necessarily need to part with his or her cash by that date. Payment by personal check is considered made in the tax year that it is mailed to the charity as long as it is cashed in due course. A contribution by credit card is considered made in the year the account is charged, irrespective of when the credit card balance may be paid off.

Small Business Retailer Tips: Ready, Set, Sell

November 22nd, 2011 Nichelle

Sweet Revenge: Now Serving Breakfast

Photo: Caramel Apples At Sweet Revenge

Here’s some tips and links for small business retailers this week.

Five Foursquare Tactics To Attract Customers
How To Work Holiday Craft Shows and  Artisan Flea Markets Without Going Nuts
Are you an Etsy seller?  Etsy just launched an iPhone app to track sales
Small Business Saturday is November 26. Tell your customers!

Blink: Bank Of America Helps Small Businesses Be ‘Outliers’

November 16th, 2011 Nichelle

Banks have been pretty stingy with loaning to small businesses, but Bank of America plans to help in a “Outliers” way by hiring Malcolm Gladwell.

From Raw Story:

Bank of America announced today that they had contracted with author and New Yorker scribe Malcolm Gladwell to headline a series of lectures designed to attract small business owners to the much-criticized bank.

In his presentations, the bank said, “Borrowing from the concepts in ‘Outliers,’ Gladwell examined the unique attributes that define high performance and extracted lessons that small business owners could adapt in their own endeavors.” In Outliers, Gladwell looked at everything from cultural heritage to class privilege to explain why, respectively, Asian students were better at math and Bill Gates is rich.

Bank of America added that “In each market, Gladwell’s presentation was preceded by a panel discussion on relationship capital, a core component of business success” — better known as a sales presentation.

Small Business Saturday is November 26

November 9th, 2011 Nichelle

Have you heard?!  Small Business Saturday is November 26. It is a way to support small businesses as you are doing holiday shopping. YouTube has teamed up with American Express to get showcase small business owners’ stories. You can submit you our story by November 15.

Manilla: The Dashboard For Bill Payments, Travel Points and More

October 28th, 2011 Nichelle

A few weeks I went to a lunch event for Manilla. Manilla is a FREE lifestyle and personal finance dashboard. What I like about Manilla is that is facilitates you to be more proactive with your money and subscriptions.

You can set bill reminders and do bill payments for utilities like cable, electric, phone.
You can track your magazine subscriptions.
You can keep track of hotel points and airline miles.
You can keep an archive of your bank account statements.
You can also keep track of your Groupon, Living Social

There is also iPhone and Android apps for Manilla.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Manilla.

Say Hi To Wave Accounting

October 18th, 2011 Nichelle

Shoebox Accounting Stops Now from Wave Accounting on Vimeo.

Every time I hear about a new accounting software, I get excited.  I am hoping for something that makes data entry easier so that both my clients and my self can spend time on analyzing working capital, budgeting and minimizing expenses.  Today I heard about Wave Accounting.  It does bank and credit card imports and it is free!

What Do You Want To Know How To In Quickbooks?

October 14th, 2011 Nichelle

I have been working with a CPA to help aggregate what a new bookkeeper needs to know what to do in Quickbooks. Coincidentally, I also want to provide clients who want to handle Quickbooks themselves.  So the question is this–what do you want to know how to do in Quickbooks?

  • Creating and Sending an Invoice
  • Recording an Expense
  • Creating a New Account
  • Creating A New Vendor
  • Doing a Profit/Loss Statement
  • Creating A Budget
  • Find out if you are making money

Please let me know in the comments what you want to know.

Gauging The Middle Class With Debit Card Fees

October 3rd, 2011 Nichelle

As I hear the news of Bank of America’s new $5 fee for debit card purchases, it got me thinking about the class hierarchy of credit and debit cards.

Credit Cards: If you have a great credit score, pay off your bill monthly, you can get a “wonder card” with low interest, reward points and all kinds of perks.  People who have these cards  have more than a steady income or paycheck.  These cards are targeted toward upper middle class professional.

Prepaid Credit /Debit Cards: If you have a bad credit score, no bank account, then you have prepay first to get credit card.   People who have no bank account are called the “unbanked”.  Plastyc, who presented a few weeks ago at Finovate, has a debit card for the unbanked  called the UPside card that also encourages users to save money. These cards are targeted the poor and/or immigrants who have not opened up an US bank account.

Regular Bank Debit Cards: People with bank accounts, but either prefer to use debit cards instead of credit cards or they may not have a credit card.  Or they don’t have one with low interest so the credit card is used sparingly.  I equate this group with being the middle class.  Debit cards have been a lifesaver for the middle over the last  twenty years. It has enabled people to make big purchases without affecting their credit. In fact, debit cards has been a boon to consumer spending.  Five dollars a month may not seem like a lot of money, but banks are pretty laying the gauntlet and saying, “We only care about the rich people”.  I am making generalizations, but if all the big banks start charging debit fees, then middle class consumers will cut back on spending with debit cards and may greatly reduce spending altogether.

 

 

#Finovate Day One Highlights

September 21st, 2011 Nichelle

finovate swag

When I attended Finovate for the first time two years ago, it seemed like everyone was gunning to be next Mint.com. Mint made having a clean design and clearly defined dashboard to be a priority for any personal finance management (PFM) application.  PFMs are moving beyond the dashboard that only shows what happened with users’ money.  Today the goal is to provide users with proactive money tools to save more, spend wisely and invest easily.

To that end, here are some of the presenting companies of note:

Betterment. I wrote about Betterment a few months ago, and their new feature is the ability to add multiple goals to your investment account.

Kabbage. I missed the presentation but talked to them afterwards, and I am very impressed with what Kabbage is doing. If you are a small business owner, then you know that retail banking are not keen on loaning money to small mom and pop businesses. Kabbage makes working capital loans to small businesses quickly and easily. The extra bit they do is there “Social Klimbing” which gives small businesses additional access to capital based on social network activity.  [This is like Klout for small businesses and another good reason for small businesses to engage on Facebook and Twitter.]

Fraud and internet privacy is something everyone is concerned about. BillGuard is a free service that sends you alerts akin to spam alerts to warn you of possible fraudulent charges on your credit card. MyId is a product owned by Experian helps you manage your social networks and online identity. Think of it as like a combination of a “Google Alert” on your name and reputation management. It can also detect if someone is stealing your identity online.

Enabling mobile payments is pretty popular these days with everything from Paypal, Google Wallet, Square, Venmo. I don’t know which one is doing it perfectly, but the important thing is to get the merchants on board. That’s why I am interested in Modo Payments. They have facilitated easy merchant onboarding and I love that Modo is platform agnostic. It works with SMS, Android and iPhone.

Lastly, Yodlee is like the Amazon Cloud Server to many financial applications.  It is not a cloud server, but Yodlee is the platform that many innovative financial tech companies are using to develop their applications.  The news from Yodlee is that many of the major banks are going to redesign their online banking sites to make them more user friendly with better UX design and a more personalized experience based on the customer’s financial goals.  I personally would welcome all banks to make it easier to find the link to download transactions into Quickbooks.  I am not a developer, but I think Yodlee would benefit to reach out to the developer communities on both east and west coasts and do a “hackathon”.

Can Watching Ads Make You Money? Finovate Starts Tomorrow

September 19th, 2011 Nichelle

Jingit is a new app that actually rewards people for watching ads and taking survey with cold hard cash–actually it’s a debit card. Jingit will be presenting at Finovate this week. I will be attending part of the conference to see the latest in financial innovation whether it is personal finance management tools, banking or financial security.

Ten Challenges For Women Entrepreneurs

August 29th, 2011 Nichelle

She Takes On The World surveyed a 1000 women entrepreneurs and they identified the top ten challenges for women entrepreneurs. I think most of these challenges apply to men as well, but some stem from women needing to brag more and have more confidence in their work, product or service.

  1. Being afraid to take the leap into a new business or the next stage of my business
  2. Becoming an effective online marketer and feeling good about selling
  3. Finding and carving out the right niche and then owning it
  4. Access to a large and engaged network of women at a cost I can afford
  5. Attracting high quality clients like national brands that people know about
  6. Managing my time in the best way possible and being more productive
  7. Adding more streams of income to my business and understanding the financials
  8. Creating products that bring me a passive income and allow me to work from anywhere
  9. Becoming more tech savvy and keeping up with the fast paced online world
  10. Running a thriving business and actually leading a fulfilling, healthy and balanced life
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