My Complete Financial Net Worth and Progress Summary for 2007 - A Good Start, But Still Ways To Go

By MoneyBlueBook

Comparing financial networth can be tricky since you aren't always comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Married individuals that combine the incomes and assets of both spouses will clearly have much higher networths and much lower expenses than single individuals.

With that in mind, here is some background information to help you know where I stand. I am currently in my late 20's, not married, currently renting, and working a contract job that pays reasonably well. I graduated from law school a few years ago and am still trying to figure out exactly what is it that I want to do professionally. I took things easy after graduate school, choosing to enjoy life and neglected the importance of saving early. I did not start tracking my finances and focus on saving until the start of 2007 last year. All of my savings and investments were initiated one year ago on January 2007. Here is the summary of my 2007 financial progression and where I stand now.

Tracking My Financial Progress Using Networth IQ

I've held off from using Networth IQ to track my financial net worth and progress due to my original dislike of the program's overly simplistic graphical chart displays. For such a popular widget among financial bloggers, you'd think the company would have come out with a nicer and more sophisticated looking display. But I've finally caved and have decided to enter in my stats and will be tracking my monthly progress from here on, starting January 2008. It'll be interesting to

By MoneyBlueBook

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

By MoneyBlueBook

Happy New Year everybody! So long 2007 - it was an interesting year but I'm glad it's behind us. Let's pray the world can see more peace in 2008 and hope the financial markets will resume its bull run again. Markets are incredibly difficult if not impossible to time, but here are a few of my predictions and projections for 2008. They may or may not come to fruition, but I'd just like to put them out there to see if I am correct or not. I'm not advocating or pushing for them to necessarily happen, but I think they are likely to occur.

Here Is How I Think The Economy and Financial Markets Will Respond In 2008:

By MoneyBlueBook

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:

By MoneyBlueBook

Is your stock portfolio making you sad? Are you bummed out about your disappointing returns and contemplating selling your positions to stem the losses? If so, fear not, Uncle Sam has a tax system in place to help lessen the financial pain and make your situation more bearable.

If you've lost confidence in your stock positions, maybe it's time you cut your losses to take advantage of tax breaks that can help you avoid having to pay taxes on other realized gains for the year. Perhaps you owned stocks that were hit particularly hard, like Countrywide Financial or even ETrade, both with grim and uneasy future prospects. Holders of such dubious positions might want to contemplate selling their shares now to lock in their losses by the impending January 1 deadline for tax purposes.

It's Best To Push Tax Bills Into The Future And Accelerate Deductions Into The Current Year

Generally, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allows you to deduct capital losses from capital gains and other income. Since we are so close to the end of 2007, it's best to postpone any further gains that could be treated as taxable income a few days more, at least until January 1. If you have loser stocks that you can sell without any regret, now is the time to do so before the start of the new year. If you can unload enough of these losing positions, you might be able to completely wipe out all of your other realized capital gains for the year. Even if

By MoneyBlueBook

I was routinely checking my Citibank balance online the other day when I noticed a little warning box above my account balance mentioning something about a savings account transfer limit of 6 per statement cycle imposed by a federal rule called Regulation D. I had heard about it before but never previously paid it much attention. Examining the reminder message, it was clear to me that this was something that might easily be overlooked by the average savings account holder. It's the type of important information that should be, but isn't readily advertised enough by banks. Particularly at this stage of the current ongoing economic crisis as high interest savings accounts continue to rapidly grow in popularity, it's more important than ever to be mindful of the transactional limitations of such accounts. Your money may be earning the highest interest rates at the top savings banks, but the trade off is a reduction in liquidity and access to funds.

Banks Place A Limit On The Number of ACH Transactions You May Execute Per Month

Bank savings and money market accounts are regulated by the Federal Reserve Board's Regulation D, which governs deposit accounts and their reserve requirements. The reserve percentage is the amount mandated by federal law that banks must retain in house and not loan out to customers. For savings and money market deposit accounts, Regulation D limits the number of electronic ACH transfers that one can make to 6 per statement cycle, which is about a month. While the regulation doesn't impose a