Firecracker Service

July 3rd, 2009

Happy Fourth of July, gang.  As I write this, I need to talk about how our country was founded on life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and at one point, firecracker customer service.  Now, it seems more like a fizzle.  Have you been on a phone waiting to reach somebody on the other end who turns out not only to be unfamiliar with the type of problem that you are having but also having to wait twelve minutes till you get through?

I don’t know about you guys and gals but I make a note to try to avoid going back and buying products where the support lines are several hours to several days in trying to contact them through voice or e-mail.

It is getting worse instead of better and I blame it all on trying to save money and trying to pigenhole all problems into digetible e-mails or IVR recorded sound bites.  If you are running a business, please take the time to improve your customer service comunications.  Unless you are selling something that absolutely and positively has to be bought from you, if people encounter too many problems with trying to either get a question answered or trying to get a product returned, they just will stop buying from you.  Period.

Businesses forget that in times of financial Depression, they have to beef up the following divisions in their companies:

1.   Research and Development

2.  Sales

3.  Customer Service

Some may ask, why, Kim?  We aren’t going to be profitable if we are wasting money in divisions like that.  That is where they are wrong because when times are tough, customers have less money to spend, they get very discriminating and they tend to spend money on:

1.   The latest and greatest – look at the Apple iTouch series of products.  People may not upgrade to the highest end product but they will buy something if the perception is that it is cutting edge or makes them trendy at a reasonable price.  Even when people don’t have money a lot of them try to look like they do.  Personally, I don’t think people should live beyond their means but that is what makes freedom of choice and capitalism so wonderful, right?

2.  People need to know about your product and with the blaring of commericals, web ads and endless stream of sales pitching going on you need to make certain that people hear about your product one way or another.  Maybe your product is better served by word of mouth.  If so, all the more reason to get your human sales force out there and talking up your product.

3.  Killer customer service will sometimes negate the stigma of higher prices.  If you offer a higher price for your goods or services and people feel that they are getting value from you they will go ahead come back to do business with you if they feel that you can help them with whatever it is you were selling (televisions, food, tax preparation services).

In this day of contraction of businesses and destruction of resources, now more than ever you need to treat every customer as if he or she were your only customer.  I am not talking about the people who want to discount you to below your cost of the product but you should be willing to work with and negotiate – and pleasantly I might add – with your clients.  Competition is fierce in the global markets and money is tight.

It isn’t cliche or stupid in these economic times to try verbally and in text to be a little polite.  Back in the day, if you didn’t say “please” or “thank you” you wouldn’t get the time of day, a parent might hit you (yes, back then, they could get away with that) or if you were in the Old West in America (or even any city today), you might get a bullet in your head.

The coolness of being rude, ignoring people, one upmanship and all that jazz has no place in running a profitable business and frankly in conducting one’s life.  Sure, there are times to be hip and cop an attitude however most of the time people have enough attitude handed to them and the last thing they need is more people yelling at them or being rude. 

Parents must not have learned manners themselves or spend too much time thinking about themselves.  That must be the only way to explain it.  People today and their kids just don’t want to take the time for a little bit of courtesy.  Be honest with yourself, do you like it when people cop an attitude with you? Sometimes your rudeness might be interpreted as unforgivable.

So, before you cop the attitude, take a second and really think about what you want to say.  If you are guilty of not saying please or thank you, you may want to think twice because the next time you deal with a particular clerk, gas station attendant, fast food worker, grocery store person, plumber or Department of Motor Vehicle’s worker, you may find that you are either sent to the back of the line,  your product may be “out of stock”, your order may be “misplaced” etc.

Have a fantastic and safe July 04 2009!

Hey, don’t go anywhere yet.  Having some tax issues or tax questions?  Any problems with trying to make it through the financial Depression we are in that is making you depressed?  Please read on.

I am expanding  my practice and taking on new tax clients.  If you are interested in having somebody who is a successful businessman and tax professional with integrity review your returns discretely and see if your tax guy or gal is doing a good or goofy job, please drop me an email or post a comment with your contact information and time.

I have experience in international business, small businesses, partnerships, multi-state tax returns (they can get complicated) and anything else you can probably think of.

I also do business consulting and have ran several businesses (still running a few) myself so you are in good hands.

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Firecracker Service

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Employee Depth

July 3rd, 2009

It is summer time and the weather is easy as the song goes.  It is also the time for some companies to have staff members take some of their accumulated vacation time as well as dealing with employees who are hit with summer colds.  That is the springboard for today’s topic, namely employee depth.

The hallmark of a good company and great leadership is when business can keep going even if you, the owner or manager, aren’t around.  The method of doing that is making sure that your staff, your employees, are well trained and if need be cross-trained.

Sure, there is a lot of concern about overwhelming staff members or fear that they may not be able to do the job and yes, we are in a financial Depression and they better know how to do the job or they will be replaced but that doesn’t help the day-to-day operations of your business and it can piss off your existing customers who are use to your great service if they suddenly don’t get it.  Even worse is if somebody blows a transaction that could be the loss of a large account or causes a great deal of money to be lost.

The way around the above referenced problems is to take the time and start cross training about half a season before you need the person to handle the coverage and once or twice before the vacations start to let the person do the job of for the person that he or she is suppose to be covering.  Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, companies large and small don’t have the time to spare the extra man (or woman) power to take the time to train somebody.  Folks, you need to bite the bullet to do this.  What happens if somebody gets sick while somebody else, the key employee is on vacation?  You end up with horror stories when the person comes back like, “It was chaos without you here.”

As exciting as it may sound to be a Most Valuable Player (you know, like in baseball, where it is abbreviated as MVP) you run the risk that your business may end up in the ground and you will have to say RIP (Rest In Peace).

No person, including yourself should be so valuable that you can’t step away from your business for a few days or weeks.  Fears of being replaced should be replaced with fears of losing customers, fear of having work backed up so high that it will take additional weeks to crawl out from it.  We don’t want to get into situations like that because it makes for a stress inducing work environment.

Don’t forget to document as well.  There are too many firms that rely on “Good Old Harry” who has been with the company for twenty years and knows the operation of the ice cream machine inside and out and knows just how to repair it.  The problem is that “Good Old Harry” probably doesn’t have his knowledge written done and if Harry wins the lottery or retires – or God Forbid, has a stroke from eating too much ice cream-you will be without an ice cream machine server or repairman.

Managers should bite the bullet and pay a little extra for staffers to stay a little late and document what they do or take advantage of downtime in this current Depression to write up and distribute their duties so people can have the knowledge what to do in case they aren’t in the office or store.

While I am on the subject, don’t forget to make a list of what to do in case of emergencies, contact information and phone numbers.  It is common that sometimes a very high level command decision is needed or you need to reach the owner to let him or her know that a bulldozer is outside the store waiting to plow down the store.  Things like that are important to relay to management.

Building employee depth is one of the keynote factors that business people need to stay proftiable and it goes hand in hand with keeping your contingency plans up to date.  As I talked about before in the blog, a contingency plan is what is needed to keep the business going or what to do if you have some kind of catastrophe.

Remember that employee and customer safety are paramount and you might have to be in compliance with local, state or national guidelines for whatever business you are in.  Play it safe and please play it smart.

And keep your staff cross-trained.  You will appreciate it when you are vacationing in Europe or Las Vegas and don’t want to get a call at 3 o’clock in the morning your local time asking what to do because the ice cream machine is broken.

July 03 2009

Hey, don’t go anywhere yet.  Having some tax issues or tax questions?  Any problems with trying to make it through the financial Depression we are in that is making you depressed?  Please read on.

I am expanding  my practice and taking on new tax clients.  If you are interested in having somebody who is a successful businessman and tax professional with integrity review your returns discretely and see if your tax guy or gal is doing a good or goofy job, please drop me an email or post a comment with your contact information and time.

I have experience in international business, small businesses, partnerships, multi-state tax returns (they can get complicated) and anything else you can probably think of.

I also do business consulting and have ran several businesses (still running a few) myself so you are in good hands.

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Employee Depth

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Posted in Business | No Comments »

Can I Write Off My Swimming Pool For Medical Expenses?

July 2nd, 2009

This was a question from several readers and I saw it also in Rett Nett (and I have gotten it before from clients):  Paraphrasing  the questions:   “I am using a pool for my bad hips and artificial knees, can I write it off?  The therapy helps.”  “We built a pool  for our special needs daughter’s well being.  Are we able to write off a portion of the building of the pool since she uses it 100% for therapy?   My daughter’s pediatrician says that she will give me a letter stating that it is necessary for her therapy but she was not sure if this is all that is needed to write it off on taxes.”  “My doctor is an expert in hydrotherapeutic techniques and suggests that I build a pool for me and write it off.”

Other questions I have had related to that are:  “I heard that you can deduct a swimming pool through interest payments on a 2nd mortgage if I used the pool on my primary residence.  Is that true?”

The following response is not an answer for your specific tax situation and should only be used as a basic guideline or springboard (appropriate for the pool talk since diving board means we will make a big splash, don’t you think?) for you to do your own research and due diligence. 

My answer is it depends though based on the way the pool was built, the chances are that the way you asked the question that the answer will be no.  Here is why:  If you were going to build the pool mainly for therapy you will need to take into account what would the value be proportionate to the total value of the pool and use by you and the rest of the family.  The IRS can basically state that prior to building the pool you should have taken into account what percentage of the pool will be used for your/ your daughter’s/your parent’s  medical condition and the rest for fun and frolic.  Chances are that it would be disallowed.

The bible for this is Publication 502 and that is available from the IRS website.  You can find out about medical related deductions and it can at least familiarize yourself with the information if you are talking to a tax professional.

What can be deductible is interest paid from a Home Equity Loan (HELOC) or refinance where you used the money exclusively for a home remodel that added value to your property.  A pool qualified for adding value in most places in the country.  If you use the money for buying other things (like a car, a boat, etc) that don’t add value to your primary or secondary residenc, the interest won’t be deductible.

You also need to break the 7.5% limit of your adjusted gross income (AGI) before the deduction can kick in.  Depending on your income level that may or may not be a problem.

The key phrases that you need to read, re-read and then consult with your tax professional on from Pub 502 are:

“Medical expenses are the costs of diagnosis, cure, mitifation, treatment, or prevention of disease, and the costs of treaments affecting any part of the body or function.’

“Medical care expenses must be primarily to alleviate or prevent a physical or mental defect or illness. They do not include expenses that are merely beneficial to general health, such as vitamins or a vacation.”

I am not going to tell you how the doctor should write the letter but it boils down to how the doctor feels the swimming will actually help the person.  In some cases it will work great.  In others, not so much and it won’t make sense to go against the grain by lying or stretching the therapy beyond reasonableness.  There should be a body of supporting medical evidence for the claim.   By that there would have to be a lot of well-known, thorough long-term studies where they found that swimming reverses aging, cures the common cold, etc.  If a doctor doesn’t think that a letter is enough to support a position, he probably deep down doesn’t think the therapy is viable for whatever condition it is prescribed for.  That is just my two cents and opinion.

The mindset of the IRS is that it has to be something that has documented – legitimately – evidence of actually making a person feel better or improving their quality of life. 

If swimming is prescribed as treatment or physical therapy, the cost of constructing a home swimming pool may be partly deductible as a medical expense. That initially sounds like good news, yes?  However, the IRS is likely to question the deductions because of the possibility that the pool may be used for recreation. Nine out of ten times if there is something that is used for recreationally purposes normally, you can be expecting a letter to question the deduction. 

If you can show that the pool is specially equipped to alleviate your condition and is not generally suited for recreation, the IRS will likely allow the deduction. For example, the IRS allowed a deduction for a pool constructed by an osteoarthritis patient. His physician prescribed swimming several times a day as treatment. He built an indoor lap pool with specially designed stairs and a hydrotherapy device. Not the sort of thing for having or holding swimming parties and orgies.  Given these features, the IRS concluded that the pool was specially designed to provide medical treatment.  So, if you are building the pool as a small, specific therapy machine you shouldn’t have any problems (as of now) with a deduction like that.  You of course, need to due your own research, consulting with a doctor and your own due diligence.  Sorry, you can’t pin the decision on me .  I also advocate honesty in all your deductions and expenses.

The IRS looks at deductions that are red flags like this on a case by case basis and they will scrutinize you very closely.

My suggestion though is that if you have a legit deduction or expense, you should take it if you can support your position in it.  Remember that there are other expenses for upkeep of the pool, chlorine, electricity, etc.  and you need to account for that in a real, practical matter and not just try to write it all off .  You will end up in the deep end of the pool with the IRS and it won’t be a fun place to float.  The take away is supporting evidence, a reality check for what you are doing and getting a good tax professional if you aren’t sure what you are doing.

Also—-just because somebody else had a deduction or expense that was allowed doesn’t mean that the same circumstances apply to you.  I have had clients who have tried to tell me that their neighbor took a deduction or expense with something and how come they can’t?  I didn’t do their neighbor’s return so I can’t comment one way or another.

Hope that helps.

July 02 2009

I am expanding  my practice and taking on new tax clients.  If you are interested in having somebody who is a successful businessman and tax professional with integrity review your returns discretely and see if your tax guy or gal is doing a good or goofy job, please drop me an email or post a comment with your contact information and time.

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

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Posted in Business, special needs | No Comments »

Contrarian Investing A Go Go

July 1st, 2009

Question from a reader:”What is working for you in terms of investing in this market, Kim?”

My answer is that you should be flexible, not locked into one type of investment approach, do your own due diligence and research since I am not a financial advisor.  That being said, what has been working for me is being a contrarian in this particular market at this particular time.  For how much longer this will work and especially after this is published, who knows, but I give it to you freely because there is no magic about it.  It is common sense and you know from my approach in writing profitable and practical books that if you start trying to chase pie and the sky things you might as well be rolling dice or playing cards.  That reminds me that maybe my next book should be on wagering since so many people are looking for quick fixes and I need to remind them to keep their feet on the ground while their heads are in the heavens.

So what is my contrarian investing a go go approach (I have to throw in a little disco, right?).  When I start reading on the Internet, listening to the talking three quarter bodies on the business news cable channels and reading the papers,   If there is a lemmings mentality (lemmings, by the way, are the Northern rodents that have population booms and then disperse along the way and have been attributed in myth to following each other off of cliffs in mass suicide.  There was also a cool video game named Lemmings that I played on multiple platforms including the Amiga back in the dinosaur days of computing), I research the stock or fund that is being touted and I do the opposite of it.

My theory is similar to other investors of the contrarian cloth in this particular market.  We aren’t out of the woods yet and when everybody is saying how great things are or how wonderful a stock is they aren’t looking at the reality of the situation.  The wheel of income needs the American consumer to get back to buying 2/3 of things made – we are the uber-consumers and with people still being laid off there isn’t much of a chance that happening at least for a financial quarter or two and maybe even longer.  Even if a stock is blue chip, golden hued and iron clad, if the investing public gets skittish about the future, the money will flow away from the stocks no matter how highly they are touted.

I also don’t like so much touting because it screams to me that it is pump and dump time.  I have also noticed with minimal supporting evidence that highly touted stocks drop when you would think they should go up after all the hubris and discussion with them.  Go figure unless you start to think that people are selling off their shares or trying to short the thing.

In this economic time, the key things to watch for are change and real earnings.  If companies are earning real cash and not just “losing less money” as so many are, they can be candidates for investing.  They can also be candidates for avoiding or if you feel you need to short something but I really caution that you can get slammed if some bit of market news comes out that the public over-reacts to.

Look at the trend of the stock for the last few years as well if you can and see if there is anything cyclical about the business.  For example, income tax preparation stocks should be peaking now with earnings coming out after tax season and then they should drop until maybe Winter and then they should start going up again in Spring when it is tax time.  At least that is the theory and again, reality may be washing against the rocks of the river of commerce and taking your stock with it these days if you aren’t careful.

I also like to look at volume of shares being sold now because it indicates whether there is any kind of momentum going on, somebody (an institution maybe) is dumping shares or even loading up. 

Even with all this research it can still be just an educated guess especially if some news comes out, a natural disaster or medical finding that can affect the stock.  It won’t help a fast food company in the short term if there is a bad beef scare or if medical findings reveal eating french fries causes you to grow an extra nose on your arm, though that might be an interesting mutation to have I suppose.  You can honk your nose on your elbow or something like that.

Note that my suggestions are for short term plays, for this particular market and you still need to take the time and look at what information is coming out that may be editorial fluff and sift that through fact and downright horse sense.

Good luck and let me know how things are working out.  Have a great day and here is to a wonderful July gang!

July 1, 2009

I am opening up my practice to take on new tax clients.  If you are interested in having somebody who is a successful businessman and tax professional with integrity review your returns discretely and see if your tax guy or gal is doing a good or goofy job, please drop me an email or post a comment with your contact information and time.

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Contrarian Investing A Go Go

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Posted in Business | 3 Comments »

Summer Tax Planning and Loss of Work

June 30th, 2009

Question from a reader:”I lost my job and am want to know how to deal with quarterly taxes now.  I am anticipating working this coming third quarter but I don’t want to pay taxes on money I haven’t made yet and then worry about having to wait till 2010 to get it back as a refund.  Any suggestions for me, Kim?  Thanks.”

My answers  are that, first, if you are taking about your second estimated or June payment, you are late (I always seem to get a lot of emails when it is after the filing date.)  Your payment is due on June 15 2009 in this case.  You should be paying taxes on what you estimate to be your 2009 tax liability up to this point based on what you have earned. The worksheet that accompanies the 1040-ES forms on the IRS website along with the tax bracket ranges should give you an indicator how much you should pay.  If you didn’t make any money, had a really bad quarter (or series of quarters so far this year)  that wasn’t/weren’t  profitable, you do not need to file estimated taxes.  Remember that we are in a pay as you go system and the latest that Uncle Sam likes to get his money (and in some cases if you have a state income tax like California, Aunt California) is quarterly. 

If you are being paid cash, I suggest you track your logs and pay whatever tax you calculate that you owe because if you are already a going concern, the IRS may ask to see your records if there is a super drop in your income stream.  Don’t get me wrong, they are aware that we are working in a Depression, they just have a mandate to generate tax revenue.  It is their job.  They also are more willing to work with people that are in compliance with the law than with people who are trying to do something to skirt it.  I tend to agree with them on the subject of, if  I am paying taxes, they are paying taxes, you should be paying taxes as well if you owe money.

I would always caution a reader to make sure that you use money for food, clothing and shelter first and keep an awareness that there is a tax consequence or benefit for every transaction and plan accordingly.

Getting back to the question, I would suggest that you caclulate what your tax is using the tax tables or if you want a super quick and dirty method to take the gross amount of income that you received and send in a third of it to the Fed.  If you live in a state with a state tax (like California) I would take the total income and calculate a third of it for taxes. Out of that third, divide that into thirds and send in two thirds to the Fed, and a third to the state.

 

A quick guesstimate example might look like this:

 

You made $3000 for the second quarter.  You take one third of the $3000 and that gives you $1000.  That was calculated as $3000 / 3 = $1000.

Then you take the $1000 and divide that into thirds and get $333.33 for each third.  You would send in 3/3 to the Fed by the filing deadline (roughly $667) and the respective state would get $333.  Again this is very rough and you need to base it on your particular financial situation and income stream to make it work.

That is a quick and dirty method and a very generalized one but that should help mitigate any tax liability you might have.    I am not a huge fan of that method because you may be overpaying your taxes and you will be in the situation that you mentioned where you will need to wait till 2010 to get your refund back.  For a more accurate calculation, you will need to sit down with your tax guy or gal and crunch the numbers or get into the tax software yourself and start tallying up what your income was, cross-checking that with the tax tables and making your estimates accordingly.

If you look like you are going to owe it is better if it doesn’t bleed you dry financially to pay the taxes now since you may not know what next year will bring.  Sure, your financial situation could be better.  For a lot of people it will be the same or get worse.

Do your own research because your particular situation might involve other income streams and tax scenarios that are not covered by this quick suggestion.

If you also have any resale or state required license taxes that need to be paid off or installment paid, please remember to make the payments as well.  You may find that some local municipalities have horrible penalties for non-compliance.  It is better to just bite the bullet and make the payments.

If you are short of cash, you need to start tracking your income stream a little better.  The agencies want their money and they will get it from you one way or another.  You can bet on that.  Hope that answers your question.

Good luck getting your income back and have a great day!  Best of luck to all my readers as well!

June 30 2009

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea”? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Summer Tax Planning and Loss of Work

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Posted in Business | 3 Comments »

More On Celebrity Debt

June 29th, 2009

Judging from the e-mail response I have gotten from my article on Michael Jackson, there seems to be some more interest in celebrity debt. 

What can I say about celebrity debt?  Not much more than was said in the previous article.  There are some interesting points though where people get caught in the same situations as celebrities (actually it is the other way around).  Ed McMahon was involved in a lawsuit over mold in his house when construction workers were working on his own house and he won a settlement for several million dollars.   There were stories about him also having money in offshore accounts though I don’t know anything more about that other than it was a report.

What I do know is that Mr. McMahon did have a huge cash burn each month and in his own words stated that after having a lot of ex-wives, an expensive mortgage and having his income stream diminish it was pretty easy to see in hindsight that he was in debt.

A lot of celebrities get into trouble with the IRS and end up having their property seized and sold for back taxes or, like Willy Nelson, work years to pay off their debt and get back into the black and making money.

We don’t have to be in a position where we are living beyond our means.  All it takes is that we start reeling in the spending and start cranking up paying off the bills that mount up each month and slowly and then hopefully a little faster later on, the debt shrinks and eventually goes away.

This may not be the case at the national or state level because of all the leveraging that we are doing but for the average person even though it may take some doing, a person can get out of debt.

Similar to celebrities, the average person these days may not know where his or her next job may be coming from.  In the case of a lot of people, they are working part time hours or for short term gigs.  That has been the story for most actors for years and often times even the highest paid celebrities drop down into out-of-work status once in their lives at the very least.

The tip we can take from them is that the ones that bounce back try to reinvent themselves.  John Travolta was a superstar, out of the limelight for years and came back around the time of Pulp Fiction and Broken Arrow.  It happens and with time and patience, people can change and make a living.

One thing that I haven’t seen a lot of is celebrities making the change into manufacturing.  Sure there has been outsourcing of production of designer clothing lines but that kind of business usually goes out of the country.  I am talking about celebs going ahead and starting up and continuing businesses here in the United States.  There isn’t a shortage of labor and we definitely have the resources to get things done.

Going back in time, there are dozens of television celebrities who have died without a lot of money.  From the television show, Bewitched, back in the 1960s, the actor who played the “first Darren”, Dick York, who spent time also arranging homes or places for the homeless to stay in.  Medical bills when one gets older afflict both the famous and us regular joes and that was an issue that affected Mr. York.

I’ve often been asked – even be told – that I would make a lot of money later on for celebrity wannabees if I help them out now for free and that when they hit it big later they would take care of me.  If you want to make money in show business, you need to start a laundry business near the apartment buildings that actors are living.  It is very hard to break through and make a living where you can support yourself as an actor.

I generally smile when people propose payment later on for an offer to hitch a wagon to their star.  I would rather, as John Dillinger (I hope it it was him that said it), “Take the cash and let the credit go.”

In this current climate and economy it is better to take the cash and payoff your credit cards before you let them go.

Before I forget, I am looking to take on new clients for the upcoming income tax season.  If you have any issues or want me to see if your tax professional who did your return previously did a decent job, please drop me an e-mail or a post.  The information and requests will be kept in confidence.  Please include your name, phone number along with the best times or dates that I can contact you.

Have a great day and week people!

June 29 2009

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

More On Celebrity Debt

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Posted in Business | 2 Comments »

Celebrity Debt, Your Debt and Michael Jackson

June 26th, 2009

I have gotten a few e-mails and posts asking me to talk about Michael Jackson’s passing.  First, I sympathize with the Jackson family(s) with the lose of the their son/brother/father.  It is never easy when a loved one gets taken from you.

Second, celebrities are a lot like you and me.  Some of them make good business decisions with their money, others not so good decisions.  The debt of the average person is similar to what I call celebrity debt in the sense that they keep living a lifestyle that they can’t afford.

In the case of Michael Jackson and the late Ed McMahon, they were spending more than they were making.  We have all done that at one point or another in our lives unless we were drilled home in our heads about keeping things frugal, saving money and watching out for a rainy day.

In the case of Michael Jackson, he worked like a real trouper when he was a kid and when he grew up tried to recreate his childhood.  I am not going to deal with allegations and abuse charges here since it is out of context with our topic which is pretty important as well, cash management.

As Michael Jackson continued to make millions, he continued to spend and live in the style of American royalty if such a thing can be called.  He had his own version of the Pirates of the Carribbean ride on his Neverland Ranch, animals, an entourage that would travel with him and none of those things are cheap.  Unfortunately, when the income streams start to dry up, you need to cut back or make more money.  His financial advisors early on didn’t have the guts to tell him to watch his money and I suspect the few that did either left after awhile or may have been dismissed.

There is an old saying that remember that the higher you climb, the higher the risk of falling that you will hurt yourself.  If Michael Jackson’s health was deteriorating over the years that added fuel to the cash burn that was going on in his life.  At one point, Mr. Jackson purchased and owned the rights to the Beatle library of music.  He has parted with a small portion of it to raise cash.  I think Sony/ATV is his partner with this and I have no idea what is share is currently worth though I suspect it is hundreds of millions even with the current economic hard times.

Depending on the rumors and news releases that are out, at the time of his passing, Michael Jackson was in debt $400,000,000 or was completely cleared out because he had received advances on his upcoming performances.  I just read another report and his debt is reported to be $500,000,000.  That is five hundred million dollars.  Considering his monthly rent for the palatial estate he was in was about $100,000 a month, that amount makes sense.

Did Michael have life insurance?  That I don’t know and I don’t know how much of that is going to make a difference in the estate debt and how much would go to his heirs.  In this case, his children would be the people I would think would get any money.  Any other assets will probably be seized by creditors.

The take away from this is that you should not live the lifestyle of a king, a rapper, a superstar unless you are living within your means.  There are plenty of kings, superstars and average people that live well within their means and are saving money.  Some of them are millionaires.  The secret is to not try to live like your neighbor (especially since a lot of our neighbors are losing their jobs, homes and pensions) and try to live like you should.  Save your money, live your life but live it within your means.

A sad irony is that now that Michael Jackson is gone, his debt should go down because his spending is down and his estate consisting of his music will probably skyrocket with a demand for his songs (similar to what happened when Elvis and John Lennon died).  Eventually his heirs should have a decent income stream if they ever get out of probate in one  piece.  Expect his estate to be in the courts for years to come.  Back to celebrity spending..

The things that made or make celebrities go broke are the same things that make everybody go broke:

1.      Ex-wifes or husbands who are getting alimony.  In this category we can add child support as well because you have to take care of the kids until they are at the age of taking care of themselves.

2.      Bad business decisions.  Some of their business deals may not have turned out as well as they thought.  Perhaps things like proposals for Michael Jackson Hot Chicken Wings didn’t turn out as well as he might have liked if he invested in something like that.

3.      Theft from people who you trusted.  There are lots of bad managers, agents, family members and friends who take advantage of people who are good natured who have money.  Sometimes it is a great idea to have a thick skin and cut people off after you loan them that first thousand dollars that they don’t pay you back.

4.      Bad, expensive habits.  Michael Jackson loved to collect things (no jokes please).  He reached a point when he had money that when he wanted something, anything, he would buy it and then if he didn’t want it later on, would just return it.  He use to do that with coin-operated video games back in the day when they were hot.  We all have something that we do that costs us money.  The difference between going broke and enjoying the hobby is knowing when to curtail spending on it.

What about celebs wanting loans because they are celebs?

When celebrities were extended credit at first, the lenders got some publicity.  Banks got tired of that real fast just like they do with you and I when they weren’t getting the loans repaid.  I have seen superstars get their lines of credit chopped like you and I if they are out of work and not repaying their debt.

This is a good place to also remind you if you have families to please check your life insurance policies, make sure your medical premiums are paid up and you have a will in place for somebody to carry out your wishes after you join our departed celebrity friends in whatever Afterlife lets you get in without a press pass or a five drink minimum.

Please have a safe, healthy, happy weekend.

Jun 26 2009

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Celebrity Debt, Your Debt and Michael Jackson

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Posted in Business | 5 Comments »

Governor Snuggling Sanford and Trust

June 25th, 2009

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, the reprecussions of bad communications and even worse, getting caught in a lie or hypocrisy will at least for the short term impact one’s trust rating with co-workers and if you are in the public eye, cause some issues taking the morality situation out of it. 

Back when President Clinton was in office and people were trying to throw mud against him for his personal life, his detractors tried to come across as holier than thou.  As the years unfolded, there were a lot of Republicans who were involved in illegal or at least questionable liasons and Governor Sanford is the latest in the rounds of people who are calling the kettle black shouldn’t have burnt hands.

Is Governor Snuggling Sanford any less of a leader or a human being?  Honestly, I am not going to pass any comment on his personal life – that is his business.  The big issue I have is that publically he was caught in a lie and the questions that always surface from that are – as a leader or as a business person, what else are you not telling the truth about?

Are you spending taxpayer or investor’s money on your girl friend and not in the business?  Are you able to clearly separate your personal relationships and keep them from impacting your business decisions?

In the case of public figures, it seems to be my favorite answer (and the most realistic one) – it depends.  In the case of public figures who cause major felonious activity, such as Phil Specter or O.J. Simpson, the net result is that it causes the public to have a backlash and that cuts into endorsement deals, income streams and in the ultimate deal breakers – prison sentences.  In the case of politicians, it depends on how popular you are or were in the first place.

What can one do to recover from a situation like that depends on the severity of the indisgression or crime and the public’s ability to forgive or really forget over time what has happened.  With the short term attention spans of people these days, the latter is almost always the case.  How many people out there even know how or why we got involved in Iraq or even Viet Nam in the first place?  People stop learning or find history boring and the rule of the thumb holds true that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it or at least run into bad relationships or having leaders make the same bad choices they have been making all their lives.

In the case of affairs, Governor Sanford probably will not have any long term fall out with the exception that it might put the kabosh on any Presidential  race plans he has if he is looking for money for backing from the conservatives out there in the Republican party.  Maybe not.  Overall, not living in the state of South Caroling (though I love to visit there), I can’t speak for how this will impact the daily operations of the government.  Honestly, most states run great whether the Governors are there or not.  The problems are in the funding and the mismanagement of resources and generally those types of problems tend to run cumulative over years if not decades and it is tough to blame things on just one administration.

In a personal or corporate business relationship the results will be less than profitable and often times that would mean severing ties.  In the case of O.J., a lot of sponsors yanked their sponsorship because they didn’t want to be associated with a felonious person.  In the case of spouses, they may feel that their trust has been violated and they want a divorce.  If there is money involved expect huge divorce settlements.

What do I think about it in terms of being a mediator?  What advice could I give Governor Sanford?

Time is usually the best thing to mend broken trust and that is only if both sides are willing to go along with it.  Generally the injured party will watch the person who commited the crime or indiscretion like a hawk.  If there is a willingness to still want to keep the business or relationship connection, there should be an eventual point in the future where the person who commited the bad act will be back in good graces with the family/company/business partner.

In the Clintons case I suspect that Hillary Clinton knew what Bill was doing over the years and chose to go along with it because their love and business sense worked well as a couple.  The fact that they both are in the public limelight and working in politics tends to support that assertion.

I don’t know enough about Governor Sanford to know how things will be with his family at home though the fact that nobody could find him tells me he will have as the late Ricky Ricardo use to say on the ancient “I Love Lucy” shows that “Have some ’splain’ to do, Lucy.”

All kidding aside I wish Governor Sanford and his family the best in trying to resolve the issues and as a mediator offer my services to the family if they want or need somebody to figure out where they go from there.  Obviously there were issues that needed to be worked out and it is always an act of the universe that needs to be dealt with when “the heart wants what it wants”.

The important thing is to make sure that the heart doesn’t crush the wallet or purse in the heart’s pursuit of trying to get what it wants.

June 25 2009

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Governor Snuggling Sanford and Trust

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Posted in Business | 4 Comments »

Management Communication Snafus

June 24th, 2009

With the Governor of South Carolina vanishing for days without telling his security detail, his family and on Father’s Day no less to go hiking to clear his head, many people might wonder what the heck was he doing?  Some illicit affair or scandal?  The irony would be that had he just said, “I am going camping, yeah, I know it is Father’s Day, I just feel crappy and I need time to figure out what is going,” his aides and family might have been disappointed but would have said, “Sure, no problem, see you later Governor/Dad/etc.”

That is the springboard for today’s topic, boys and girls.  It is important that if you are running the business, the chief operating officer or the supervisor in charge of the assembly line or even head bottlewasher that your team know where you are and what you want them to do.

Some managers run their businesses in a micro-management style.  They arae very hands on and they watch their team members and review everything that they are doing.  In some environments that works especially where redundancy checks are important like quality control or nuclear fission labs.

In other jobs, say sales over a region like the Western United States or even all of Western Europe you need to have a little more freedom with your staff to let them do their jobs.  Each type of job is different and requires different management techniques and styles.  The one thing that all of them require is communication.  As our good friend the Governor of South Carolina discovered, communication is very important in the chain of command.

 In the corporate setting, the communication lines can be something as simple as an email setting stating that you will be out of the office for a week or a voice message on your phone.  You can even just have the boss pop his head into your cubicle or down the assembly line and say that he will be out for his daughter’s graduation the next day.

The importance of that is to make sure that the business keeps running and any issues or concerns (read that as problems) get resolved or that mechanisms are put in place to prevent problems from becoming serious show-stoppers.

Communication is also important to keep track of processing flows where somebody needs to do some kind of work and perhaps pass a file, a product or even an email to somebody else and there may need some sort of intervention of review.  If somebody is out sick, you need to make sure that the contingency plan is in place so you have coverage.

Some managers feel that if they tell one person, that is enough and that will make it through the organization.  That works fine if your company is three people and you are one of them.  For other going concerns you need to communicate that you will be out, from what time to when, who to contact if there is an emergency and are you still reachable for those rare questions that demand a command decision that only you can give.

If you hold weekly team meetings, talk about vacation or days off then if you can so everybody else can plan accordingly and adjust their workload and expectations.  Generally speaking, if somebody is out of the office, the work is shouldered by other people and sometimes that slows things down.  If you are working for a firm that already has gone through several rounds of layoffs and are already multi-tasking your brains out you know what I am speaking of.

If you also get wind of a vendor or business partner that will be out of the office or not available by e-mail, please tell your associates if they have business with him on a regular basis as well.  It has been my experience that you will save waiting time and grief even if they did remember to set up their e-mail to send back an out of the office response.

Remember to also spell out what you want in either voice mail, e-mail or speaking to your team.  Despite the desire to keep things Twitter short, some business decisions and communications are greater than a few hundred words and your big contract may depend on following the client’s explicit instructions down to the final letter.

Make sure that if you have a business that is set up with e-mail that you have for the internal staff somewhere you can see the vacation and out of the office dates of everybody in the team.  That way you can plan vacations and know who is where and you shouldn’t have frantic telephone calls from your bodyguards asking you why you chose Father’s Day to make a getaway and go for a hike in the woods.

June 24 2009

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Management Communication Snafus

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Posted in Business | 1 Comment »

Do You Still Beat Your Kids Buddy

June 23rd, 2009

Question from a reader:”Help, Kim!  I am in survival mode and need to know what bills to pay.  I am working with some people who are helping me get out of debt but I am going nuts and I don’t like some of the answers I am getting from them or using search engines.”

My answer is sometimes you get questions that you can’t like the answers to like “Do you still beat your kids?”  If you answer, “yes”, you are endangering your kids and you are scum.  If you answer “no”, you were endangering your youngsters and were scum.  The correct answer is sometimes to answer “I never touched my children in a harmful way” but sometimes life throws things at us that only offer yes/no or binary choices (that means two).

If you don’t like the answers that you are getting you need to first see if the advice you are getting is something that will get you out of the situation you are in or at least help you survive.  If the person or agency you are working with is asking for money up front or money to get you out of the situation you are in, that sounds like it is fraudulent and you need to report them to the authorities and find somebody who can help you that is on the level.

If the questions that are being asked require sacrifice and major lifestyle changes, that is another situation entirely.  When you are in survival mode you are interested in the basics.  Each paycheck or payment needs to be able to tackle the following items first:

1.   Food

2.  Required or Mandatory Medical Bills/Payments or anything that keeps you or your loved ones alive.

3.  Utility bills were gas or electricity needs to be provided so you can have light, possibly heat or air conditioning wherever you are living.  You can also think clearer about what steps to take when your blood isn’t freezing or boiling.  If you aren’t taking care of your environment, you risk getting sick and adding incidents that will require item number two above.

4.   Child support if you are taking care of your children.  They aren’t responsible for what is happening around you and they need their parent to help them out so they can have the basics they need to have a healthy life growing up.

If you have money leftover from those items you want to keep paying down the financial chain as follows:

5.   Car payments (if any) should be made so you have wheels so you can work or get to a job interview so you can keep climbing out of the survival situation that you are in.

6.   Gasoline money – with gas prices higher now you need to be able to fill the tank or if you don’t have a car, make sure that you have an active bus, subway or train pass so you can get to work.

7.   Car insurance payments are a must.  If you get pulled over without insurance you can lose your vehicle or license in some states and you will need to fall back on public transportation.  Even worse would be if you were in a car accident and you didn’t have your payments current.

8.   Communication utility payments such as phone bills, cell phone (if not land line), cable or dsl to connect to the Internet.  You will need to be able to communicate with the world somehow or make arrangements to go to the library to check your e-mail and send out your resumes.

9.   Credit card debt would go next.  Start paying down the money that you owe and try to make more than the minimum payment that is required to lower your debt. 

10.   Any other unsecured debt should be paid off next like loans, promissary notes or anything else that would be getting the wolves away from your door.

It won’t be an easy process but you are not alone in trying to get out of the situation.  Keep your faith and if you have a family, remember that you are doing it for them.  If you don’t have a family, remember that you are doing it for yourself and you can and will eventually move financially to a sturdier place in your life.  It will just take some time.

Good luck and be safe.  Try to be happy and healthy too while you are at it.

That way if anybody asks you if you still beat your kids you can either say “I never beat my children but I beat back debt and am doing great, thanks for asking” or something along the lines of “Are you kidding?  My kids beat me to the dinner table every night.  That is why I am so broke.” 

June 23 2009

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime. Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Do You Still Beat Your Kids, Buddy?

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Posted in Business | 4 Comments »

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