June 2009: My Net Worth Update and Personal Finance Report

By MoneyBlueBook

A few days ago, the legendary and super talented pop icon, Michael Jackson, suddenly and inexplicably passed away at the age of 50 due to cardiac arrest. After a long and glorious (but controversial) entertainment career that spanned 40 years and included the world's best selling music album of all time - "Thriller", the self anointed King of Pop was finally laid to rest in peace. Perhaps it was his enormous talent or his seemingly gentle nature, but I have always managed to overlook his eccentricities, the oddness of his perpetually changing skin color, and the lurid details of the tabloid controversies that followed him - particularly the allegations of child molestations and quirky behaviors and activities at his infamous Neverland Ranch. For me, I grew up as an adoring fan - enjoying amazing hits like "Black and White", "Billie Jean", "PYT", "Thriller", and "Jam". I will always remember Michael Jackson for his music, his stunning liquid pop locking dance moves, the ground breaking music videos, the moon walking, and his one of a kind "hee hee" falsetto squeals. Inevitably, artists in the future will continue to pay homage to Jackson by attempting to emulate his moves and his songs, but there will never be another one quite like him ever again.

Unfortunately, the story of Michael Jackson is also one of great tragedy. Aside from the eccentricities of his life and the untimeliness of his death, the man was a text book case on how absolutely not to live one's life. Despite building a massive

By MoneyBlueBook

Well it's that time of the month again. It's time to calculate my net worth, and update readers with a review of my current financial situation and prospective outlook. So, after spending a few months overseas for personal family reasons, I've finally returned home. As the bulk of my online and so-called real life business operations are run and managed over email, instant messaging, and Skype, there was barely a blip on my small business operations while I was away. In fact, despite me not even being in the country to run things for much of the last few months, the month of May still saw a pretty healthy bump up in income (as reflected by the significant increase in total assets), thanks primarily to the acquisition of several new legal clients and online affiliate partners. As my total net income is comprised of several income sources to form a diversified base, I've fortunately avoided much of the devastating carnage leveled by this ongoing economic recession. Only time will tell whether this healthy income streak will be able to continue for the foreseeable future at its current rate - however, I remain hopeful despite my cautiously bearish nature of late.

Thus, as far as I can tell based on current projections and observations, the only significantly damaging element that has the foreseeable potential to hurt me financially in a big way - is higher federal and state income taxes. Hopefully President Obama will play nice and leave existing federal tax rates alone and not

By MoneyBlueBook

Well, tax judgment day has come and gone, and after finally paying the federal government its annual tribute, I feel more depleted than ever. Due to my higher income rate during 2008, I winded up in the highest income tax bracket possible, necessitating that I pay out more than 40% of my total annual income to the Man via federal and state income taxes. So sad.....

Looking ahead at the upcoming official federal tax brackets for 2009, it doesn't look like my taxation plight's going to get any easier, particularly with tax happy President Obama at the helm. Although his positive approval rating's through the roof and the man is absolutely oozing with optimism and confidence, I doubt many of his supporters are really comprised of scrutinizing individuals or small business owners like myself who actually pay attention to the potential tax implications of his slight of hand wealth redistribution policies. For the sake of competitive small business owners everywhere, I hope Obama doesn't go through with his increasingly aggressive crusade to seize the financial proceeds of those who have worked hard to get to where they are today, with his continuous Presidential blurbs of patriotic taxation and "spreading the wealth around".

My Current Net Worth and Financial Status Update Compared To Last Month

By MoneyBlueBook

March 2009 has turned out to be a pretty routine month for me. As I'm currently traveling overseas for an extended period of time and won't be returning home to the U.S. for several months, I haven't had much time to really closely follow the progression of my financial portfolio. However, even while away, I still find time to occasionally glance at my net worth balances periodically to make sure everything is okay. So far, all basic metrics, bank balances, and credit reports indicate that I'm maintaining a pretty stable and healthy financial position - well positioned to keeping growing for the foreseeable future and weather any significant or further downturn in the economy.

While I've had to put my part time ambulance chasing legal practice on hold while traveling overseas for family health reasons, my portfolio of online and real world small businesses have continued to churn out a fairly steady income stream while I've been away, much of it passively generated without substantial attention on my part. Much of the hard work, mind numbing stress, and financial sacrifices that I made in the past few years in creating semi-self run businesses have finally paid off, allowing me to generate income and make money even when I'm not actively sitting at my home office desk in Maryland working on the computer or making phone calls.

In terms of my profession, I'm very thankful that I've been able to successfully make the transition from traditional 9-5 day job worker into a self employed entrepreneur and sole

By MoneyBlueBook

Due to a momentary cash crunch of my own, my net worth finally dipped during the month of February after months of steady and fairly consistent increases. The decrease in my total assets in comparison to my total liabilities can be attributed to a convergence of simultaneous factors related to the current economic downturn, such as non payments by my cash strapped legal clients (my part time day job) and noticeably late pay checks from my online businesses' affiliate advertisers. This month in particular, I also had to withdraw a fairly large sum of money from my emergency cash savings fund for family health reasons - primarily to make a good faith contribution to my Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother's assisted care fund. Thus for reasons foreseen and unforeseen, this month necessitated that I dip into my savings and siphon funds from my monthly income stream more so than usual. However, I'm pretty confident the late income payments will be rectified and added onto the following month's networth update, very possibly resulting in a higher than usual revenue report boost at that time.

Times Are Tough - Let's Hope President Obama Knows What He's Doing

In light of the ongoing financial crisis and economic recession, I wake up everyday thanking God for my continuous self employment and my ongoing ability to generate a fairly steady income. Times are certainly very difficult right now and thus far I've been able to dodge the painful recession bullets. Only a few years ago I was unemployed and found myself having to

By MoneyBlueBook

As a work from home attorney and self driven small business entrepreneur, I like to keep tabs on the pulse of the business markets and track the breaking of current economic news at all times. Whenever I'm working from home, I always have CNBC or the Fox Business News channel playing on the TV. However, because of this constant monitoring of the markets and relentless digestion of every piece of bad economic news that comes through the news wire, I've steadily become an extremely bearish investor of late. With little credible positive news to speak off for the foreseeable economic future, I've become ever more protective of my existing financial assets, making a mad dash for safety like I've never done before.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett (who despite all of his historical wealth building wisdom, seems to be suffering a bit of a credibility and legacy problem recently with the plunge of his Berkshire Hathaway investments) used to preach that the world of money and finances revolves around the inextricable interplay between two core human emotions - fear and greed. These two primal capitalist emotions dictate our personal financial paths at any given moment and determine how we each respond to potential monetary opportunities as they present themselves. The age old Warren Buffett truism is that we ought to be greedy when others are fearful, since valuations and expectations are lowest, and opportunities and potential upside are highest at the peak of overwhelming market fear - but unfortunately, I think I have succumbed to this