Money Blue Book

If you run a small home business on the side like I do, it’s not always easy to project a professional image without breaking the bank. If your business is new, it’s unlikely you have the financial means or even the budget to afford a commercial office space, a secretary, a furnished meeting room, or any of the usual business amenities. However, depending on your budget and needs, there are affordable options out there.

Rent A Shared Office For Meeting Room Or Virtual Office Needs

More established small businesses might be able to look into renting a shared or serviced office space through a workplace solution company like Regus. These business office rental locations are usually fully furnished with desks, meeting rooms, functional kitchens, and business amenities like secretarial service and a professional front desk to handle clients, mail delivery, and customized call answering. They provide a professional working environment without the long term commitment. I would know – I’m currently working a contract project at such a location.

Rental offices are a good alternative for small but growing businesses looking to expand but don’t want to deal with the hassle of property ownership or long term commercial leases. However, many small business owners run things from their own homes. For them, there are virtual office solutions available:

1) Telephone Service

Sharing business phone calls with your personal home line isn’t a good idea, especially if you get a lot of incoming business calls. Dialing out is fine, but for incoming business calls how does one line handle voicemail greetings for both personal and business calls? You can always get another landline or cellphone number, but that can get awfully expensive, especially if it is underused.

Since I don’t have a separate landline at home, I currently use my cell phone plan in conjunction with eBay’s GrandCentral free phone service to re-route business phone calls to my personal cell phone number. The service provides customers a free separate number that can be given out as a business line, and have calls automatically forwarded to your personal line.

Since exceeding monthly cell phone plan minutes may be a problem, another solution is to sign up for an established Voice Over IP (VoIP) phone service like Skype. For $3 a month, along with an extra charge for a personal SkypeIn phone number to handle business calls, you can receive unlimited incoming calls from a cell or a landline. SkypeIn calls are handled through the online Skype interface and calls can be picked up anywhere you have internet access.

2) Fax Service

Although it’s ancient technology, it is still widely used, surprisingly. If you fax frequently, I’d recommend just going ahead and buying a cheap fax machine. But if you only need to receive faxes on occasion and rarely send them, you can try going with eFax Free, which will give you a free non-local fax number to accept incoming faxes through e-mail.

If you want to send faxes for free and don’t mind having cover page ads automatically attached to your outgoing fax messages, then you can always go with FaxZero. However, you will only be allowed to fax 2 document sets per day, with a maximum of 3 pages each.

3) Mailboxes That Offer A Professional Mailing Address

Personally I use my home as my business address, but if you want some privacy or if you expect to receive a lot of packages, you may want to get a larger standalone postal box. The U.S. Postal Service and most major private postal carriers like UPS and Fedex offer free pickup and the option to conveniently pay and print your postal stamp labels at home.

You can get a separate standalone P.O. Box through the U.S. Postal Service, but your mailing address will contain the “PO BOX” tag followed by your personal box number. If you want to get a more professional sounding mailing address that contains an actual street address, you may want to go with a private mailbox at a place like the UPS Store. Prices vary but private UPS box prices are usually about $200 a year (compared to less than $100 for a standard PO Box). However, unlike a standard PO Box, a private mailbox through UPS is 24 hour accessible.

4) Business E-Mail Addresses

Free e-mail addresses are simple to find – just check out Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail. However, if you want to sound professional and want to be taken seriously, you probably will need to get an e-mail address that contains your business name. There are plenty of email hosting options out there depending on your needs. For example, with DreamHost, you can get unlimited e-mail addresses and email forwarding for a pretty good $5.95 a month.

The end of the year is here, but don’t just take it easy and forget about important end of the year financial moves you may need to make. For those who have one through their employer, make sure you’ve fully maxed out your Flexible Spending Account (FSA). For the remaining unused funds, my usual end of the year routine is to get creative and spend the rest on qualified health care items like Tylenol, Advil, and over the counter cough medication like Delsym and Robitussin. Covered FSA medical expenses also include items like contact lens solution and eye care drops. If you have no immediate health needs, it’s always a good idea to stock up on emergency, medical kit type supplies like Band-Aids, gauze, and Betadine for common scratches and scrapes, particularly if you have kids.

What Is A Flexible Spending Account And How Does It Work?

Flexible Spending Accounts are tax advantaged arrangements set up by some employers to allow employees to set aside a pretax portion of their regular paycheck to pay for qualified expenses, usually for medical care, but frequently also for child care costs. The smart use of pre-tax savings through FSA’s can help you save up to 30% of the cost of out-of-pocket medical related expenditures. Most people contribute about $1,000 towards their FSA, but it varies depending on individual need.

Benefits of the Flexible Spending Account Include:

1. Contributions towards your FSA are pre-tax.
2. When you provide receipts to get reimbursed, the FSA reimbursements are tax free.
3. Convenient FSA debit cards are now frequently being used to make it easier for employees to use the funds in their FSA.
4. Medical FSA’s are pre-funded by the employer – when you set aside an amount for the year, the entire amount is available for use immediately at the beginning of the year, even though your periodic contributions will actually be made later.
5. FSA’s are well, flexible – they can be used to pay for a wide array of health care related expenses including dental, vision, over the counter drugs like painkillers and allergy medicine, and even elective medical procedures like Lasik laser vision correction surgery. FSA’s also cover health care related costs like insurance co-pays, deductibles, and other related out-of-pocket expenses.

The FSA “Use It Or Lose It” Rule – Two Way Street Between Employer and Employee

It’s important to properly and accurately estimate how much you are likely to need in your FSA for the plan’s coverage year. The biggest drawback of the FSA is that it is a use it or lose it account. If by the start of the new year there is still money left on your previous year’s FSA not spent, the amount is forfeited back to the employer, where it is used to cover administrative costs. Don’t let this happen because you’re just giving away your own money back to the employer!

However, this use it or lose it policy also works in reverse as well. As I mentioned earlier, one benefit of the FSA is that the entire allotted amount is available immediately at the start of the year. If you leave your job before the end of the FSA coverage plan year and have already used up the entire year’s amount, you do not need to refund or return the amount back to the employer. Some employers may attempt to recoup the loss by informally asking you reimburse them for the amount since you’re leaving the employment, however officially, employers are not permitted to see seek repayment of FSA monies so long as the original distribution was properly substantiated.

I have a moderate perspective on social issues, with a very slight lean towards the liberal left. But I always enjoy debating about interesting issues and enjoy hearing the views of others.

I’m going to talk about a fascinating topic I heard discussed on the Chris Core radio show today. He was talking about the existence of the stealth women vote in regards to Hillary Clinton and how some women are eagerly awaiting the chance to vote Hillary into office for the sake of seeing a women ascend into the nation’s most powerful role. However, the issue was brought up that there are some people out there, most notably women in particular, who resent other women like Hillary for her “Queen Bee” mentality and persona.

What is It?

The Queen Bee Syndrome goes like this. Women who have the Queen Bee condition are usually those who work in supervisory roles or in positions of power. They feel the need to be recognized and demand to be in the center of attention at all times. They regard other women as competition and see them as threats to their ability to enjoy exclusive attention and respect. They desire nothing more than having others fall on their knees to bow before them and lavish them with power, attention, compliments, and envy. Oftentimes, they will treat female subordinates much harsher than male employees. They have particular resentment and disdain for women who work in traditional stereotypical female roles, such as secretaries, models, and housewives.

Genuine Surprise At the Response

The issues raised were quite interesting but I could see how the discussion might be considered sexist by some, and I fully expected a torrent of angry female listeners to flood the radio show’s telephone lines to voice their displeasure and complaints. I was actually secretly hoping for this since I’m a sucker for juicy talk radio.

I was completely surprised at what happened next. A steady stream of female listeners began calling into the show expressing agreement with this theory. The majority agreed that many female bosses had this Queen Bee mentality, which caused great resentment and competition among their female subordinates. Many of the female callers indicated that they preferred having a male boss for the fact they think female bosses are harder on other women because the female bosses see other women as threats for attention. Apparently they don’t view men in this competitive light.

Even one seasoned female manager who indicated that she has worked many years in a supervisory role expressed reluctant agreement that the Queen Bee Syndrome was a pervasive affliction in the work place. She remarked that she personality felt an extra responsibility to help other women rise up to her status, but she felt some of the subordinate women felt entitled to this special treatment and resented managers like her when they didn’t provide the extra attention.

Is It a Real Condition In the Workplace?

I found the radio discussion to be utterly fascinating and I began thinking about the type of social interactions I often observe at work. I’ve always thought the opposite was true in the work place – that women tended to give each other extra attention and assistance for emotional and professional support out of mutual sympathy and understanding. I usually see women congregate together and go off in pairs or groups during social and working situations. They even visit the restroom together! Little did I know, they are secretly plotting against one another.

I’m curious to hear what other people think!

This topic has been discussed and debated by many in the financial community and is regarded as controversial by some. Numerous bestsellers have been written on the subject.

Traditionally, when it comes to making money, most people share the same mentality – “If I work harder in my job, put in more overtime hours, I’ll get ahead and make more money.” Unfortunately, no matter how many hours they put in, they’ll forever be constrained by the laws of nature. There is only a finite number of hours you can work in a day during which you can exchange your available working hours for monetary compensation – essentially, trading hours for dollars, or trading time for money.

The New Approach

The new approach is hard for many to accept as it requires a different understanding beyond what we were taught as children. The new approach places lesser priority on active income and a greater emphasis on passive income generation. Active income would be money earned while putting in your hours sitting at your office desk (trading hours for dollars). But passive income would be money generated from sources such as stock investments, real estate appreciation, rental income, and even advertisement revenue earned by websites that you own. The limitations of the old approach to money are obvious.

You Are Constrained By Time

By trading hours for dollars, you are foregoing time that could be spent tending to other things in your life such as friends and family. You are choosing to spend your time in an office, rather than accomplishing your other hobbies and interests. You don’t want to spend precious time working, but you know that to earn those dollars, you need to trade for them using your available hours. The less you trade in, the less you’ll earn.

Nowhere is it more poignant than in my own full time job. I blog part time and in my full time, I perform contract work. I earn an excellent income rate but I only get paid when I work. If I stopped trading in my hours, I stop receiving dollars. If I want to make more money and hit extra overtime pay of time and a half, I have to keep trading in even more hours. Of course, no matter how many hours I work, I am always limited by the ever present constant – there are only 24 hours in a day.

You Are Taxed Unfavorably

When you trade in hours for dollars, your earnings are usually taxed immediately and you receive very limited favorable treatment in taxation. The deferred taxation offered by 401k and other retirement investment vehicles are the few taxation breaks available to you. The majority don’t even take advantage of this! While businesses can generally use their pre-tax dollars to deduct many of their business related expenses as well as any losses from business related activities, you must use your own after-tax income to purchase most of your day to day items.

Your Ability to Trade Hours for Dollars Will Eventually End

None one can live forever, and eventually there will be a time when you can no longer trade hours for dollars. You will either become too old, too sick, or too injured to work. The moment you stop working and the moment you stop trading hours for dollars, the money will stop. If you had planned ahead and provided for your retirement savings or obtained adequate health insurance prior to sickness, you may be better protected. But that of course depends on how you prepared in advance, and many don’t.

Don’t Ditch Your Job, But Start Learning About and Focusing on Residual and Passive Income

So what now? Certainly, there is no reason why anyone should neglect an active income source, aka a job. A real job provides social stability, an occupational purpose, and a generally predictable source of revenue. But don’t forget the importance of passive income. Learn to plan your finances and understand passive income sources. Invest in the stock market. Invest in affiliate programs. Start an income producing website or blog. Invest in a potentially profitable business run by others. Invest in appreciating real estate. Such sources allow you to earn income even when you are not actively working or trading in your hours. Even when you are sleeping or resting, your passive income sources are still producing for you. Start your progress towards financial freedom today. I’m personally still a very long ways away, but I am slowly inching towards my goals.