Posts Tagged ‘Kim Isaac Greenblatt’

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Profitable Business Answers Come From Observation

Friday, October 10th, 2008

We are in an economic flux.  That is a fancy way of saying change.  It is driving people to worry too much about money instead of taking a second to step back, look around and determine what to do next.  We hope our leaders in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, etc are doing the same.   The other day there was a massive effort to lower interest rates around the world.  How will our financial leaders know if it works or not?  That is easy, they will do what we should be doing.

We’ll watch the economy.  We will watch what is happening with businesses in our city, our state.  After observaton comes review and analysis.  It shouldn’t be slow or it will hobble our recovery.  Maybe the best course will be to do nothing and continue forward.  At this point everybody is writing about possible scenarios but we all won’t know what will happen until we live through it.

I’ve talked about what things you might want to consider doing in previous posts, and I suggest you write the members of Congress and the candidates to tell them your thoughts.

Today, a store clerk who was bagging groceries and I were talking. He saw that I had a twenty in my hand ready to pay for my groceries. He said to me, “You know I can always tell who is a prepared and a good driver by the way that they pay for their groceries. You must be a good driver.”

“I guess I am okay,” I said.

“I look to see if they are fumbling with their wallets or purses. If they haven’t got their money ready and are waiting to the last minute that tells me that they aren’t going to make a decision till the last minute. That isn’t good driving.”

He was right. Driving courses teach you to plan your trip, we have all sorts of devices to help us. Ultimately, the devices, like the market though aren’t what is planning the trip or reacting if a car comes out of lanes too close to us or the checker in the store says “Next, please” and starts scanning your groceries.

I asked him if he could write a book. He said he has some ideas and I told him to he should write them down! Letting good observations slip away is like leaving the autopilot on in an airplane and not watching if we are coming up too close to a mountain.

We’ve had a lot of things on autopilot and because we were making money, the observation for most people was “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” Hopefully, the takeaway observation these days is, “Change happens and it pays to have money saved for a rainy day.”

It also means we need to watch the economic packages as the unroll and be ready to react to them and change your actions if things don’t get better for us.

Otherwise, like my friend said, we are just potentially bad drivers.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Copyright Kim Isaac Greenblatt, all rights reserved. You may not reproduce or use this without permission from the author and owner.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt talks about profitable business answers coming from observation.

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Inexpensive Marketing Gifts for Trade Shows and Clients

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Ah, the good old days of trade shows where companies would give you t-shirts, teddy bears, inflatable beach balls, designer wines – anything they could engrave or inscribe their name and product on. Because of rising costs, a lot of cool marketing freebies are a thing of the past.

In order to become profitable, it is a sad fact that you almost end up spending money.  One of the ways to attract business is to attend a trade show.  For a lot of people, in the current economic client that may not be a good way to spend your money but it is a great way to network and if you are looking to hit as many potential distributors or customers as you can, it may be money spent profitably.

In the attached video, I touch on the same information that I will talk about here.  I attended a special needs expo in Los Angeles today and they gave out pens and the wristbands that seem to be hot these days.  You know, the elastic plastic bands that mention the cause or company they are supporting.  The pens they were giving out promoted different agencies and had their phone numbers.  Two of the wristbands I received were interesting.  One was from Special Children’s Art, a group being directed by a Rett father who Sharren and I know where he goes out to schools and organizations and has children make murals, etc incorporating special needs children to interact and be part of the creative process.

I also received a wristband that was yellow, green, blue, red and violet promoting eating fruit.  Wild! It actually makes sense because kids will remember to eat one of every different color fruit to get all the different vitamins they need. Great marketing idea!

You basically don’t want to go nuts giving out marketing items for clients even though they could be considered a tax deduction.  Remember you still have to layout the cash to get the items and that is money that is out the door. Longtime readers know also that I am not a fan of running up meaningless deductions because the name of the game is to make money, not concentrate on tax deductions that really aren’t helping at best and raising red flags at worst.

If you are thinking about using flyers to paper car windshields you better check with local zoning first and the same thing with going door-to-door or getting permission to hand out flyers at malls.  If you are lucky you will get 1% sell through and out of that the people who call you may not use your goods or services.  Most of the time the flyers end up on the street aggrevating the parking lot attendants, the mall people but delighting officers who want to cite you for littering.

Magnets work great – they stick on the fridge and most people will remember you at tax time.  Calendars work well except after the year is over, some people toss the magnet or they start ignoring what is on it and it gets used to hold up their kid’s spelling test results.

Here is the video that goes along with this post.  Hope you enjoy it!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFV0qzb3JcU
Kim Isaac Greenblatt

You are reading Kim Isaac Greenblatt’s blog, profitable, and checking out inexpensive marketing gifts for customers and trade shows.

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AMT-Alternative Minimum Tax, The Invisible Tax System

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Possibly by the time you are reading this article, the AMT system, the Alternative Minimum Tax system may be fixed for the so-called middle class.   Personally I think if there is a middle class it has, as a friend of mine has said from her sociology class, been shrunk to the size of a bottleneck between the rich and the poor.  But I digress.

What is the AMT Tax?  It was an attempt at trying to get people who didn’t pay taxes to pay them.

It was enacted as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 to target the rich.   Sadly, the Congressional leaders that implemented this forgot to adjust for inflation!  Okay, you ask, but inflation is DOWN now, so how can it affect me?  Well, it really isn’t down.  Without adjustments, each year, the alternative minimum tax affects people who make less and less money.  Once, it was set for people who made “a lot of money”.  Now, it can affect people in some cases from $75,000 and up!

The Alternative Minimum Tax was built as an invisible tax system that runs parallel with the calculated federal income tax and checks it to ensure that that the people in higher tax bracket don’t evade paying any taxes through loopholes.

That means that most tax deductions are disallowed.  I will say it again – that means that most tax deductions are disallowed.  So that means things that you might take for granted on your Schedule A may be limited or disallowed entirely.  In some cases exemptions may be limited.  Some examples that come to mind are:

If you claimed the standard deduction for regular tax purposes, the deduction is disregarded when figuring AMT liability. You also must disregard the personal exemptions claimed for regular tax purposes.

Mortgage interest and property taxes are also capped if not disallowed.

I haven’t even started with Medical deductions.

It is not pretty and for the middle class in some cases, it just isn’t fair nor profitable.

Back in 1969, the minimum tax was a 10 percent flat rate.  AMT has mutated over the years to include corporate AMT, and it has continued to grow.

AMT was originally introduced to help fund the Viet Nam war.  It was implemented because in 1967 there were around 155 people who had incomes over $200,000 who did not pay ANY federal income taxes.   Around twenty of them were considered millionaires.  They basically used every legal loophole they could and the media caught on.  The public went crazy.    It took from the Johnson administration (the closing years) into the Nixon administration to implement AMT.  Over the years it was reformed and reformed again.

For the last few years, Congress has been putting a temporary band-aid by imposing stop measures that froze AMT from hitting more people.  Hopefully they will address it head on by the time you are reading this post. 

Remember that the government makes a lot of money from calculating AMT.  I am not entirely sure how it will be “fixed” and at the same time help keep income coming to keep our government and the infrastructure.  Can an individual still be profitable and pay a reasonable amount of taxes?  I think so but we need to think it through.

 

UPDATE AS OF OCT 1 2008 1:06 PM PACIFIC TIME from the AP:

The tax plan passed the Senate last week on a 93-2 vote. It included AMT relief, $8 billion in tax relief for those hit by natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana, and some $78 billion in renewable energy incentives and extensions of expiring tax breaks. All told, it would cost about $112 billion over five years. In a compromise worked out with Republicans, the bill does not pay for the AMT and disaster provisions, but does have revenue offsets for part of the energy and extension measures.  

So it sounds like the House of Representatives has to vote on it.

Er, how are we going to cover the shortfall for the AMT and disaster provisions?  Maybe there will be more news later!

Any thoughts or comments, dear readers?

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

 

Kim Greenblatt, in his blog, profitable, talks more on AMT.

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Old School Money Management Software Techniques

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Let us start the Jewish New Year with a return to the thrilling days of Old School Money Management software techniques.  You don’t need websites to up and download transactions for you.  You don’t need fancy software to track your purchases.

Does it help?  Yes it does but you can do the same thing and get more of a hands up approach for only a couple minutes a day or week.  The reason I am suggesting that some people opt for a more tactile approach is because just because the software does some calculations for you, it doesn’t do you a lot of good if you don’t update your records or ignore the information that is being collected.

Start a spreadsheet for all your income and for your expenses.  It doesn’t have to be fancy.  You can go through your checkbook and credit card transactions yourself and see what you have been spending.  If you have the time to do web exports from the bank sites, great.  It can save you time but it doesn’t take too long, if you keep a running balance in your check book as to what your assets are or your liabilities.

You can set your spreadsheet to show what your net income is at the end of the month and you can see and even project whether you are up or down in terms of money.    Just remember your basic accounting (if you haven’t taken it, look for free web classes or go to the library and get a book) and show income coming in as an addition to the spreadsheet and money going out as a subtraction.

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

I have a lot of clients who live by “checkbook accounting”.  They know exactly their totals for expenses, income, home improvements, etc and that is because they log everything into their checkbooks.  That is another great way to track everything and again, some export their bank statements into accounting software and some don’t.

It doesn’t matter whether you use software, pen and paper (that is SO last century!), or an abacus (that is SO hip!).  What matters is you take the time to track your income and expenses and plan for future expenses that will hit when you least expect it.

Some of them are:

Insurance payments for vehicles

Unexpected medical outlays for cash

Emergency cash

You get the idea.  Make sure you have some sort of pad and plan for emergencies and making your payments before you are in a situation where you realize that you are out of control.

 

And being in control is a great and profitable way to start this New Year and any New Year that you celebrate!  May you be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise wherever you are and whatever you celebrate!

 Kim Isaac Greenblatt

 

You are in reading Kim Greenblatt’s blog, profitable, and his article, Old School Money Management Software Techniques.

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Ten Things To Do While The Global Economy Works Itself Out

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

1.   Find an economist who is around from the 1970s and 80s and get him to advise us what to do.  We haven’t had an economy with stagflation since then and the current economists so far don’t have a clue as to what to do.

2.  Write your Congressmen and the candidates and tell them to give US $4-7000 directly to each taxpayer.  Let the money trickle up to the businesses in reverse trickle up economics.  Giving the billions to the banks didn’t work before and it doesn’t look like it will work now if the money isn’t getting to the people, not the businesses, that need it.

3.    Stay profitable by avoiding any investment where there is too much change for the immediate future.  If you are in something stable and happy, we envy you.  If you are in a stock or commodity that is all over the map, you may want to park your money for a bit, at least a few months – maybe longer till we see what happens.

4.   Be nice to people who can’t help themselves.  I am talking about people with special needs, the elderly, your relatives who can’t take care of themselves.  You don’t have to go nuts but remember that they need help and you could be worse off than you are right now. 

5.    Explain to your kids and anybody else who doesn’t quite understand what is going, what is going on.  This may be the turning point for a lot of people in terms of waking up financially and getting their acts together and they in turn can pass these values onto their kids.

6.   Hang onto cash and gold (actual gold if you have it).  Cash is more than king and if you remember the cliche, “Money talks”, you will be happy to know that the cliche is wrong.  Money doesn’t talk, it screams. See if you can get discounts with some merchants if you pay cash instead of credit cards. This won’t work with chain stores but maybe with some other stores or with business suppliers. Work on eliminating your debt in case interest rates start going up and to get you back to some position of financial stability if you don’t have one already.

7.   Keep your house or apartment clean. Clutter may keep your house warm but you will be pleasantly surprised at how psychologically your thinking will get cleaned up if your surrounding living space is clean. It will also be easier to find important financial documents, statements, tax information or anything else that you need or are looking for.

8.   Stay healthy and make sure your family and friends are healthy. Without your health, you will not be able to keep your spirits happy through the upcoming financial readjustments.

9. Ask questions about finances and keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t rely only on the internet alone for financial information. Everybody parrots everybody else and at this point in the world, nobody has the answers as to what we should do and where we are going.

10.   Get a copy of my book.  It will help you get and stay on track financially!

Anything else to say or add?  Post a comment or drop me an email!

Good luck everybody!

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

 

Kim Isaac Greenblatt has ten things for you to do while the global economy works itself out.

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Second Carnival of Special Needs and Money Coming Up

Friday, September 26th, 2008

The dead line is approaching for my second carnival of special needs and money. My first carnival was a little on the light side in terms of content, so if you have a blog that is relevant to autism, Rett Syndrome, CP or any other special needs issue or something that deals with money and special needs, please send the listing through the Blog Carnival.

I am trying to get relevant articles up that deal with coping with special needs situations and of course, trying to keep an income stream, leave alone trying to stay profitable. Anything that makes sense (or even venting) is welcome. No spam, ads for inappropriate items (you are smart enough to know what I mean), junk mail or something that really doesn’t belong in the submission.

Please keep writing your political representatives and the candidates to keep funding for special needs programs. Our particular group tends to not get heard in politics unless we are screaming with everybody else, so keep the screaming up.

I especially would like to see Rett Syndrome blogs or articles for the next carnival if you have them.

Keep the faith and this is a short post!

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

You are reading Kim Greenblatt’s blog, profitable and his request for entries for his Second Carnvial of Special Needs and Money that is coming up.

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Thinking Poor but Happy

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

What is a great way to force yourself to save money?  Whether you have money or not, pretend that you don’t have money.  That means, whenever you find you have the urge to go get a cup of coffee from the Starbucks or need to go to Walmart or Target “just to window shop” you don’t because you don’t have the money.

Folks, one of the reasons we are in the situation we are in is because the entire world has been driven by marketing people telling us that we “have to” have this or “have to” have that. Other than food, clothing, shelter, the rest is just embellishment!

Seriously, you don’t have to go over the top. Just start thinking about taking the money that you would have spent on extra coffee, comic books, magazines, clothes, snacks you don’t need to eat, and anything else and put that into a jar. Keep the jar away from your family. Unless they are putting money into that jar I suggest that you hide it. With all the banks going under, maybe under your mattress may be lumpy, so try a shelf in your closet.

A lot of people live their entire lives without anything other than food, clothing and shelter. If you judge being profitable by happiness, the chances are that they are much more profitable than you or I.

Am I asking you to become completely spendfree? Of course not. You may not be able to do it but at least you are pointing yourself on the right track for savings. Thinking poor is the first step to getting rich. Save, save and save and treat yourself as if you don’t have money. We all need to work on developing better money management attitudes.

If you are in debt, that may not be an easy thing to do and I applaud you for working through your debt. Keep at it but try and soak away some money for savings as well. It is profitable in case something happens and you need a doctor, a new car, or an emergency trip somewhere. You will need money for that. If something happens with your kids or relatives, you can be in a position to help out – though don’t make it a habit.

Try and think back as to when you were really happy. Sure, a lot of the times you may have had money or gotten something material that you really wanted. How about some other things that were not depending on cash? Ever feel happy just being alive? How about walking along the beach? Thanking the universe that you are healthy and able to walk, run, wheel, think, have working bodily functions? You don’t need to spend money to be happy. It does help at times but you need to search yourself – and you don’t have to be spiritual or psycho-babbling to do it.

Start small by pretending that you don’t have excess cash and see how creative you can get. Try and see what things you can do for you and your family that will keep you all happy and not cost money.

Drop me a line as to how that is working out as well!

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Kim Isaac Greenblatt in his blog, profitable suggests you think poor to be happy.

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Financial Recovery isn’t an overnight thing

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

With all the bailouts going on with AIG, our banking system, the freezing of the ability of investors to short financial institutions, it would be easy to say “happy days are here again.” Judging by the mini bounces in the stock market, some investors think that the future is rosier than before. Without meaning to shatter their worldview, we still have a long way to go to get back on track as a country and as individuals.

People are losing their homes, they are being thrown out of their apartments for not paying rent and they are getting clobbered with the rising costs of food. We are on track for stagflation and we need to do something collectively now as a county and as individuals.

As an individual, you can help your country by writing, emailing, visiting our Congressional leaders, our state leaders and Presidential candidates. Tell them that we need work. Tell them that we need inexpensive medical care. Tell them we need to get some programs going where people can work and make an honest living wage out of it. It is getting too expensive to have a decent quality of life in this country. The number one that should be on everybody’s mind is we need something constant in our country and it means we need to stop paying lip service to energy plans and develop some concrete programs with solar, wind and other reusable energy sources. As an individual you need to work on your savings and paying off your bills. Stay healthy and watch what you are eating and drinking. We all need to live longer and healthier lives to enjoy the advances in technology and hopefully positive changes that we can introduce into our society.

I submit that we tell our local, national and international leaders that we need to work on infrastructure. Build new bridges, rebuild the old ones, shore up broken dams, waterways, highways. There is no shortage of things broken down, there is a shortage of good ways to get people working and earning money so they can save and spend some of it. Again, basic economics put into action.

We are going to be entering a world where money will be tighter (I always harp on this) and we need to take care of our special needs people, our elderly and people who need help. In order to do this and do it the right way, we need to get social security working. We need to get some programs that will actually help people and generate income for the country at the same time. Maybe since we own AIG we can do something where we can get trades in goods and services from some countries like commodities that will help us.

Any ideas that you want to share with us? Remember to let your leaders know as well!

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

You are reading the profitable blog by Kim Isaac Greenblatt and getting a license to think!

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California DE-4 Withholding Calculator Oh Boy!

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

I found a nice little web page on the Franchise Tax Board website for California taxpayers. This page, has the links to BOTH the Calfiornia DE-4 and the Fed W-4 withholding calculators.

Just a heads up that the California one is in Excel format, so you will need the spreadsheet program to make your calculations. The Fed calculator is fill-in right on the internet.

It is very profitable to take a quarterly check up to make sure that you are having enough taxes taken out of your pay stub. Sometimes Human Resource Departments make mistakes! Sometimes numbers get transposed and even worse, sometimes software table updates with new tax rates don’t get loaded properly into payroll systems! I’ve seen it all…

My clients always come to me and ask if they are taking enough out of their pay, too much and how can they “guesstimate” what they need to have taken out so they are either even at the end of year for both the Fed and State of California or so they only owe a little. I either do the forecasting myself for the clients that don’t like to work with numbers or send the self-acting clients directly to this link. They can go ahead and calculate what they plan on their withholding to be. They may have changes like a relative coming to move in with them and they can adjust the withholding accordingly. Maybe you are getting married.

Now if you are a good tax professional, you should be doing your own questioning and guesstimating along with them to see if what they are having taken out is reasonable. Reasonableness is a big word to me and to the taxing authorities because if something looks out of kilter, the chances are that it might get a closer look. I always look twice and then ask a client if there is anything weird when I get their W-2s to make sure things were taken out properly.

I strongly urge you, dear reader, to always look at your pay stubs throughout the year if you are working for somebody and check to make sure that a reasonable amount of tax money (what you should be paying) is being taken out. Both the Fed and State of California respect the “pay as you go” plan.

For more detailed questions, drop me an email or check with your tax pro.

I am never one to “withhold” my experience with you, dear readers!

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

You are reading Kim Isaac Greenblatt’s blog, profitable, and where to find the DE-4.

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Timing Markets

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

A lot of people think that they can time the market for introducing a new product and service.  If you can, more power to you because as the cliche goes, “Timing is everything.”  The reality though is that despite the best efforts at timing, products or services sell if there is a demand for it no matter what the economy is or how deep a person is in debt.  If the person has no money and still wants to get it, they will try and get it.

Take video game systems for instance.  People use to spend hundreds of dollars for a gaming system and games if it were the latest and greatest and they felt they had to have it.  There was a reason that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft tried to time the release of their gaming systems at Christmas or at the latest, January.  People’s minds are already primed for spending and being on the self-indulgent side.

Alas, for the near future I think those days are gone.  People don’t have the money that use to and with large companies needing to be bailed out by governments, jobs being on the line, timing the release of products may not make a difference overall.

Movie producers and distributors have some success with timing releases in order to prevent film piracy.  What could we do as business people to be more profitable and is there any hope in trying to time a release of product or introduction of a service?

The best thing to do is to start writing about what you are trying to sell and see if there is a market for it. If you are getting any kind of response and you have market penetration where people can actually read your press releases, your stories, your upcoming events, then you have a decent forum to see if there is any interest in the item.

You can also just go ahead and get the product on the market as soon as possible. If you have the budget to advertise the heck out of the product (say the latest and greatest iPod type of hand held music player) you may get some sales.

One of the reasons we are internationally in such a mess financially is that companies with their preprogrammed software trading tried to “time the market”. The problem is that everybody is trying to time the market so conventional wisdom as to when to buy or sell stock, commodities or even when to start selling stuffed teddy bears doesn’t quite work anymore.

So back to basics.

Have a good product, something that you think there will be a demand for, price it reasonably and get your distribution chain in place so you can start taking orders. All in all, once you get the details straightened out (not an easy thing to do obviously), it is easier than trying to time a market!

Kim Greenblatt

Kim Greenblatt, in his blog, profitable talks about timing markets.

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