Adopt These 9 Money Habits to Increase Your Net Worth
The approach of a new year tends to inspire the best intentions. We indulge over the holidays while resolving to be better, healthier, more financially disciplined etc as soon as the year is over. Unfortunately, resolutions tend to fade away as the year progresses and other stresses start to whittle down our willpower.
One way to make our resolutions a bit stickier is to celebrate small wins. If you eat slightly less junk food or exercise a bit more, you can count it as an accomplishment. The positive reinforcement helps to make us feel better, inspire confidence and slowly build habits that makes reaching our goals a bit easier. This is particularly true with financial discipline. It is important to recognize that, like any habit, it is a process that takes time. The good news is that there are tangible metrics to measure your success i.e. your increasing net worth.
9 Tips for Building a Sales Forecast
Having a dynamic, regularly updated sales forecast can be essential to the success of a small business. By forecasting your sales revenue you are helping to control for its unpredictability, an inherent risk in any business venture, and prepare for the decisions that are essential to your business profitability. Whether your sales are increasing, decreasing or static, it is always better when decisions are made proactively rather than reactively.
Building your small business sales forecast can be as simple as you want it to be and does not require an accounting degree , particularly when your business is in the early and/or startup stages. Below are some tips to help you create your sales forecast:
How to Prepare a Business Budget
One of the primary challenges facing a small business owner is uncertainty about the future. (It is also what makes entrepreneurship exciting). We may have an amazing product or service, but we can’t be sure whether this will actually translate into a profitable business model. A budget is an excellent tool to manage uncertainty and, contrary to popular belief, can actually be fairly straightforward to prepare, particularly for small businesses that do not have to worry about different departments, product lines and geographic areas .
A budget, very simply, is a tool that helps you predict your sales, expenses and profitability as well as your cash flow needs. It is based on estimates, which in turn are based on a combination of experience, history and industry knowledge. In terms of presentation, a budget should essentially mirror your financial statements and will include the following main categories:
Consider These Financial and Tax Implications When Buying a Home
The Canadian real estate market has been a good place to invest in recent years, although comparisons to the US real estate bubble, which finally culminated in 2008, are continuing to intensify. Potential homeowners often find themselves seduced by their vision of the perfect home in the perfect neighbourhood and end up in a difficult situation, referred to as “house poor”, where the majority of their disposable income goes to paying down their mortgages. This can be avoided by ensuring that you realistically assess what you can afford and being financially responsible.
10 Year End Financial and Tax Tips for Your Small Business
As the end of the year approaches, some of us find ourselves overwhelmed by top 10 lists, the shopping masses and endless renditions of Christmas Music. Businesses tend to experience a slowdown, which makes it the perfect time for small business owners to take a closer look at their overall business, financial and tax situation. When you are not buying gifts for your customers, family and friends, a review and analysis of your business will allow you to optimize your current financial situation, implement some beneficial changes that can help avoid last minute tax preparation stress and also prepare for the future.