5 Things To Do When You’re Going To Have Problems Paying Your Bills

Everyone has a period where there’s a problem concerning paying bills. It could be for many different reasons but no matter what the reason is, the pressure feels great. A reality most people don’t know is that you always feel worse when you don’t know what to do than once you figure out and start to address the issues. Here are 5 things you need to do along the way towards getting back your peace of mind.

1. Figure out if you’re really in financial distress or not. This involves a word some people think is ugly, budgeting and yet it’s a necessary thing and truthfully not as evil as some people think it is. Trust me, it’s comforting knowing that you have a lot more money than you thought you did if you do it right, and sometimes even if you don’t have as much as you hoped, you find that you have enough to pay everything if you just spend smarter.

2. If you’re close to being in trouble the first thing to do is figure out what you’re allowed to be a little bit behind on. Try to never fall behind on credit card payments because they’ll jack up your interest rate and that adds to your outstanding debt greatly. Services like phone, cable, even your power will often allow you to miss the date of payment and tack on maybe a $15 late fee, and some don’t tack on anything. This is a short term solution if you know you can catch up.

3. You just might have to get rid of some things or reduce other things. Sorry, but comfort just might have to take a minor hit along the way. If you have to turn off or reduce cable for awhile it’s something to think about. Do you really need that big package on your smartphone or regular phone or can you drop something for a short period of time?

4. Pick up the phone and call. Hiding won’t make things go away, but picking up the phone and making a call can help greatly. If you have a car payment sometimes you’ll find out that they give you so many “grace” payments during the course of your loan, which means you’ll get to skip a payment or make a very much reduced payment. Sometimes your credit cards companies will give you a reduced payment rate for a few months as long as you agree not to use the card at all and won’t jack up your interest rate. Many companies in today’s world will accept a one-time smaller payment if you tell them what your situation is. Almost everyone will work with you, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

5. Don’t panic; get help if you need it. Why are accountants around? Why is there an organization called Consumer Credit Counseling? Why are there other people who can help you with budgeting and planning? Because many people need help with their finances and it doesn’t always get to the point of having to declare bankruptcy. Get help if you need it; if you don’t, then do what you need to do to get out of trouble and regain your peace of mind.
 

Are You Taking Enough Money Out For Your Taxes?

By now most people should be getting their taxes done. If you knew you were getting a refund you’ve probably already done them and received your money back; lucky you.

At the same time, there are a lot of people, probably half the population, that’s either already received or will be getting the biggest shock of their lives when they find out that they actually owe taxes, and not just a small amount. The main culprit? Your part time job.

This isn’t necessarily true in all states by the way, as a few states don’t have income tax. However, in states like New York that not only has a state tax, but a relatively high rate, people are surprised often because there are a few things they don’t know about.

Even though I said the rate is high, that’s only compared to other states. It’s drastically lower than federal rates. Thus, if you don’t make a lot of money, as in full time income, there’s a possibility that your weekly pay might not be high enough for whomever you’re working for to take anything out for state taxes. As it applies to federal taxes, you’ll have something taken out, but very little.

As it applies to state taxes, when it’s time to file you’ll have this lump sum of income showing that no taxes were taken, which means now you’ll have it applied to the lump sum. The amount you owe will probably supersede any full time taxes that were taken out, thus you’ll end up owing taxes of at least a couple hundred dollars if not more, depending on how much your part time job was paying you.

As it applies to federal taxes, the same kind of thing will occur, even if some money has been taken, because of how low it is. Depending on how much you were making per week, your liability could be in the high hundreds or even low thousands; trust me when I say this, because we see it often.

Does this mean you shouldn’t work any part time jobs? We’re not going to go out on that limb. What we will say is that instead of claiming so many more dependents you have your employer take out a lump sum dollar amount for both federal and state taxes. A general recommendation is to have at least $10 taken out of your weekly check for state taxes.

Federal taxes are harder to figure out, so there’s two responses for it. Either have the employer take out $15 on top of whatever they’re already taking or, if you’re also working a full time job, lower the amount of dependents you’re claiming. Many people don’t know that you can claim a negative number of deductions, which takes more money out of your check. If you’re investing the extra bit by claiming more deductions then you could end up ahead. Since most people don’t do this, you might want to explore whether going -1 to -3 can offer you some benefit.

Unless you’re prepared to pay a bit lump sum tax payment, it’s better to err on the side of caution. If you believe you can’t afford even $25 per paycheck coming from your part time job, you might have to reconsider whether it’s beneficial to you in the end, or whether you need a part time job that pays more money.

At least now you know.
 

4 Reasons Businesses Need To Track Their Money

Some months ago we wrote in this space about the art of bookkeeping, offering some tips on how businesses might make the practice easier to do. We didn’t go into why it’s important to do, and we’re going to rectify that now with 4 reasons why it’s important, since we gave 4 tips the first time around.

1. You need to know if you have enough money to do what you need to do. Forget having enough money to go on vacation for the moment. If you don’t have enough money to cover your expenses from month to month, your business will be in trouble. Unfortunately, none of us is the federal government, which means we can only spend whatever money we happen to have. Without budgeting, you might find yourself buying something, only to realize that you needed that money for something else.

2. You need to know where the bulk of your money is coming from so you know where to concentrate your efforts. If most of your money is coming from certain products or services, it would be smarter to try to get more clients for those things and put other things on hold for awhile. This of course touches upon the Pareto Principle, and yet it seems to be true for so many things.

3. You need to know where the bulk of your money is going. Tracking expenses is never fun, but it’s the only way you know if you’re spending too much money on the wrong things, or if something might be amiss. I had a client who was spending a lot of money on a supply item that wasn’t crucial to the business. He found that his employees were ordering this item and either using it for purposes it wasn’t designed for or taking it home for their personal use. Yearly it was a lot of money going out the door that, once it was pointed out to him, was an immediate savings to his company once he shut it down.

4. You need to know where your business stands financially. You can’t plan for the future if you don’t know where you are now. If you need special certifications that have to be paid for, you need to plan for that. If you need to pay quarterly taxes you might need to plan for that. If you have employees you pay weekly or bi-weekly, you need to plan for that. Knowledge is power and safety, and if tools or people like accountants are available for you, it’s smart to use them to your advantage.
 

Increasing Income

In our previous post we talked about the importance of decreasing debt. Now we’re going to talk about the importance of increasing income.

Most of the time when you hear about businesses trying to get control of their finances, you only read about them laying off workers, cutting back on benefits, or raising prices. In our post on debt, we talked about ways you could save money.

Nothing works if all you try to do is cut and slash expenses. Even the federal government realizes that at some point you have to raise revenue; that’s what taxes do. For individuals or small businesses, it’s not as simple as raising prices, or even going in and asking for a raise. If you think about a raise, how much does a 3% raise help you when food costs have gone up 5%, insurance has gone up 10%, etc?

This means that you have to think about ways to increase your income. There’s not a single person in the world that needs money who wouldn’t want this to happen, and yet very few people take a shot at it. I’m going to help you out by offering some ideas on how you might be able to not only increase your income, but maybe even find a new career at the same time:

* Set up a website and sell stuff. This can seem scary but most of the time you can find low cost ways to get started. There are also known systems where, if you follow them to the letter, you can find ways to generate an income. It’s not easy, and it does take work, but it can be done. Think about it this way; once you get it set up properly, you might be able to make anywhere from $100 to $500 a month in the right field, and you make money at all times of the day. Just don’t be scammed by anyone who tells you that you’ll be making thousands in a few months; that almost never, NEVER, happens.

* Figure out what your knowledge base is and then figure out how and whom to market it to. In The Millionaire Messenger by Brendan Burchard, he talks about how everyone has a skill and has something to share with others who are willing to pay for it if you can figure out how to reach them.

* If you have a hobby you’re good at, you can make money at it. Have you been to a craft show and seen creations made by other people? Have you gone to a seminar of any kind where the person is talking about something they did or figured out how to do better than others, such as grow the biggest roses, train dogs to get the mail, or fly robotic helicopters? There are always people interested in the same thing you are and if you’ve mastered even one small piece of it, someone will be willing to pay you for it.

* Get a part time job. When all else fails or you can’t think of anything, this is always a viable option. Even a minimum wage job at 20 hours a week would give you an extra $145 a week, or almost $600 a month in extra cash. That’s a car payment, more food, the movies, or just paying off debt quicker, either for a short or long period of time. If you make more, even better. Yeah, there will be taxes to deal with, but less with a part time job.

These are just some ideas to think about, but it’s important that you do think about these ideas if you want to pay off bills or have more money for other things.
 

Decreasing Debt

This is the first of a two part series on managing your money. It goes beyond just thinking about budgeting your money, something we feel strongly about. Instead, it’s looking at debt, why you want to reduce it and how, and then looking at why you need to also think about increasing revenue. That’s for next time; right now, let’s talk about debt.

Having too much debt can be debilitating. Sometimes people come up with some radical ways of attacking it. There was a recent story on CNN where a young man just out of college with around $26,000 in debt decided he was going to pay it off in 2 years. How he did it was to go extremely austere. He didn’t turn on the heat in the winter, and he lived in Minnesota. He bought a lot of foods at discounted prices and ate much of the same thing over and over, even when it expired; that put him in the hospital a few times. He bought few clothes, and when he did he went to discount places. He didn’t drive a car for those 2 years so he wouldn’t have any expenses related to that.

There were a few other things he did, but he did end up paying off his debt. It was a pretty extreme way of doing it, and I’m not sure it’s worth going to the hospital, especially if your insurance isn’t as good as his apparently was. What it did point out though was how well things can go if you have a plan, even if it’s not as extreme as his was.

How do you increase debt? Obviously you stop spending too much money. However, you still have to live, and if you have kids, you still need to address their needs. Here are some ideas:

* Cut down on snack foods

* Buy foods that allow you to cook large meals that you can eat many times.

* Buy some items in bulk or on sale and freeze them if you have to

* Cut down on eating out

* Plan your trips out for the day ahead of time and plot a course so you’re not driving all over town, out of order, and wasting a lot of gas

* Instead of going to the movies pay for a service like HBO, which offers 13 channels (2 in Spanish) for only $7.99 a month, which offers movies for children and adults alike at a reasonable price. You can cook your own popcorn for less than 30 cents a bag.

* Plan what you want to buy before you leave the house, and stick to that

* Leave the house with a specific dollar amount in mind and don’t go over that amount, no matter what

* Pay a bit more on at least one of your bills every month, and concentrate on the one with the highest interest rate

* If you must use a credit card, wean yourself down to only one and monitor how much you spend on it

If you can follow most of these rules, you’ll be able to pay down debt without increasing more, still be healthy, and possibly be able to afford one fun day every couple of months or so, which helps make staying in control much easier to deal with. Give it a shot; you might surprise yourself.
 

Accounting & Financial Advice from the Syracuse NY area