I wrote this a back in 2006!
Okay okay! The whole truth is keeping my numbers isn’t something I always do very elegantly. It’s a developing practice. And yes, I do try to include logging in my receipts as part of my daily meditation, but…
The truth is I’d gotten way way behind… this has happened before and I know the only thing to do is start getting caught up.
So for about 10 days I spent about 15 minutes daily entering numbers, and the receipt pile lowered… Sunday was the day to really get caught up! Took probably an hour and a half… then I went ahead and entered the check book numbers and the numbers on the 3×5 card I use for keeping track of money I spend and don’t get a receipt for.
I’m now officially caught up, and it feels good.
I’m glad I read this today because I really do record my spending and earning almost every day and it has become a firm practice just like my meditation. It’s worth the effort and it turns out that doing it daily means the effort is quite small.
Love blessings and prosperity,
As a self-employed freelance writer I often generate my own contracts or letters of agreement. I’ve never had any formal legal training, but years in the real estate business and just living life has taught me a surprising amount about contracts that work. Actually, I usually refer to the ones I write as Letters of Agreement.
A Letter of Agreement sounds less intimidating than a Contract. What I want is agreement with my clients, not a document that threatens to throw us into court or arbitration. Here are the elements I include:
- The goal or purpose of the work
- The method we’ll work together. Face-to-face, email, phone, some combination.
- Ownership/copyright
- Confidentiality/non-disclosure
- Cost and way cost is to be paid
- The pace of the work/responsibility of each party
- Escape clause
Perhaps the most difficult for me is figuring out how much I should charge. So often it really boils down to what I think I’m worth. Then I have to add factors like health insurance, a retirement plan, sick and vacation pay, etc. I’ve been told my hourly rate is way too high by prospective clients and that it’s way to low by prospective clients.
One of the techniques I now use is to consult with a couple of people who know my work and know my tendency to under value myself a bit. I can almost always count on at least one of them to suggest I ask for more. They’ve always been right.
Do you use contracts or letters of agreement in your work? What do you include?
Love, blessings and prosperity,
Image from http://www.sxc.hu
I don’t know about you, but the paperwork surrounding money sometimes drives me absolutely nuts. There are times when getting the rent check actually written and mailed is a chore. Here’s how it worked today:
- I noticed I had put pay the rent on my calendar for today.
- After I posted jobs on AboutFreelanceWriting I decided it would be a good time to pay the rent and one other bill.
- I couldn’t find my checkbook. Okay, I know I had it a couple of weeks ago in my purse, but it’s not there. I don’t use checks much any more but for the rent and IRS payments I want a paper path. I was, however, to put my hands on my box of checks and decided an out of order check or two wasn’t the end of the world.
- I opened
Quicken Home & Business 2009, entered the check number only to be told by Quicken it was out of order. Sigh. Fortunately it let me enter it anyway.
- I then filled out both the check and the Quicken check register.
- Next, I got up and got two envelopes, one for the rent and one for the IRS.
- I got the landlord’s check in an envelope, found his address and got that in the proper place as well as my return address.
- I found my stamps and put one on the envelope.
- I repeated the same series of steps for the IRS.
- Finally I was able to take the two properly addressed, stamped envelopes to my mail box where they await the postal service.
I wish I’d timed myself. It felt like just those two checks took hours. It was probably 15 minutes, including looking for the missing checkbook, but it seemed so much longer.
I’d so rather be doing almost anything else.
I did force myself to put everything back in place. That might make it easier next month.
Are you good at paper work? Tell us about it.
Love, blessings, and prosperity,
Image from http://www.sxc.hu
Tags: money, paper work, Under Earning, work at hoe
In the middle of what many consider world around financial chaos there is talk in the U.S. of breaking up the banks. It’s a tempting thought, particularly for someone like me.
I’m old enough to remember when banks were local. The president of the bank knew your name and if he (yeah, it was always a man back then) didn’t know your account it was easy for him to get his secretary to get him the info he wanted.
In fact, I remember when a banking Vice President tried to explain to my father, who was in the real estate business, that he had to sell some property to get current on some other mortgages. My mom had become horribly sick and my father was, to put it simply, rather out of it. The V.P. realizing my father wasn’t tracking well, turned to me to make sure I understood what was needed.
I also remember one kind teller taking close to an hour trying to help me balance my checkbook.
You can’t get that kind of service from a mega-bank. I don’t know if breaking the mega-banks that are in mega-trouble and still not lending much would help. My gut says it probably wouldn’t make things worse, and it might make things better.
therawstory has an article about Keith Olbermann urging such a breakup. The story of how this worked for some Asian countries is interesting.
I suspect if we still had strong anti-trust legislation we wouldn’t have mega-banks the way we do today. But anti-trust has fallen to the conservatives. Of course, they would have you believe only liberals want anti-trust protection and never point out that the so-called Sherman Anti-Trust Act was put in place in 1890. It was named after its author, Senator John Sherman, an Ohio Republican,then chair of the Senate Finance Committee.
It say, in part: ”Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony.”
Some would argue that three auto companies, and a handful of large banks proves there is no monopoly in either industry. When I think or try to think about the current financial meltdown which is apparently because of greed and connivance that isn’t actionable, I wonder.
I somehow doubt if Chuck, the bank V.P. who warned me and my father about our financial situation, would have found derivatives based on risky loans a great investment, and if he had, JJ, the bank founder and president would have set him straight. That’s the sort of unofficial but truly workable check and balance that worked when banks were small. It’s something to think about isn’t it?
What do you think; should the banks be broken up?
Love, blessings and prosperity,
Image from http://www.sxc.hu
Tags: banking, break up the banks, too big to fail
The only way to get out of vagueness around money is to keep track of everything that comes in and everything that goes out. If you want realy clarity that means you’ll develop a way to track every single penny. It’s worth figuring out how to do it. Here’s how I keep track:
- Every day I save my receipts.
- I carry a 3 x 5 card to record spending I don’t get a receipt for.
- Every morning except Saturday, I enter yesterday’s income and expenses in Quicken
- it’s easy to learn; so is MSN’s Money. Some people use a spreadsheet and others keep it all on paper in expense books they buy at the stationer’s.
- Every week, on Sunday, I reconcile my two checkbooks and, in a spending plan spreadsheet enter my actual expenses.
Once I got going on a six-day-a-week pattern, I find I spend no more than 15 minutes a day, and usually no more than 15 or 20 minutes to reconcile my checkbooks.
Why do I take Saturday off? As it happens, my Saturday’s usuall start about 7 a.m. I also beleve we’re all entitled to a day or two off from work. Saturday and often Sunday afternoon’s are my predictable time-outs, but it could be any day. The magic is taking a day off from this system, but no more than a day.
Try it for a month and see how you feel about your money at the end of that time.
Tags: earning, expenses, keeping numbers, quicken, reconcile, spending, tracking expenses
Before I cleaned up my money act, the mail used to scare me half to death. I could recognize a bill or a collection notice at 100 paces. I knew what color the ulitilty bill would be just before they turned me off.
One of the signs of my increasing health around money is not only that I have money in the bank, but I (usually) open my mail the day it comes. I say usually, well let me tell you.
When I moved I transfered my phone and internet service from a phone company to a cable company. I got the cable company’s first bill, opened it and it was significantly more than I expected. Plus there was a $40 charge I didn’t understand. My intention was to call them and ask about it. I didn’t; I don’t remember why now.
Time passed as it did, and I got a cold. Mail came in from the cable company and my hunch was it was a delinquency notice of some sort. I ignored it. In fact I igored that one and two more until yesterday when, after about two weeks I was feeling better.
Sure enough, it was a notice they were going to turn me off - yikes! - three days ago!
I called, paid and wondered why I put myself through that nonsense. Denial can strike at any time. Vagueness is out to get me 
I’m grateful I opened the envelope before my phone and internet were turned off and I look forward to opening today’s mail.
Clarity works,
Tags: tracking money, underearning
As I usually do on Sunday mornings, yesterday I entered my numbers for the last couple of days in Quicken. I then downloaded the information from my two checking accounts and came close to balancing my checkbook.
Next, I transferred some money into my ing account.
Finally, I updated my spending plan actuals so I know what I spent on groceries and everything else this week. My spending plan also contains an income category and I was delighted to discover that I’d had almost enough income to cover everything. I knew my billings were down and had already transferred some money from my prudent reserve. I almost didn’t need to do that.
I am grateful!
Tags: balance, checkbook, recconcile
Mid-month I wrote about Getting Out Of Vagueness, Again. I talked about how I wasn’t doing my morning meditation and wasn’t entering my numbers, which I consider part of my spiritual practice.
Well, I didn’t do it then, or at least not consistently. A major excuse was I was first trying to find a new place to live and then once I did, packing and moving. There’s an additional truth and that’s I was also having a difficult time spritiually accepting something that had happened to some cats I knew.
Now I’m moved and this morning I did some spiritual reading and sat in mediation for about 12 minutes - a start.
Time passes, numbers entered, bank accounts downloaded, and I’ve got reconciliation confusion. So I’ve posted on the Quicken forum and now I’ve had enough of numbers at the moment. At least I know how much the bank says I have at the moment.
Sign,
Now I’m working on my numbers. I stashed a fistful of un-entered receipts and packed them somewhere I was sure I’d be able to find. Wrong, at least not yet. I also have receipts from the last eight days. Since I can’t find the former, I’m entering those on the theory that’s better than nothing. It’s amazing how much fear I’m feeling. Vagueness around numbers is a killer for me.
One of the ways I’ve started to earn what I deserve is by keeping my numbers. That means tracking every single penny I spend. I do this by keeping receipts and keeping a 3 x 5 card in my purse to write down expenditures I don’t get a receipt for.
Then, at least in theory, Sunday through Friday I enter those numbers in my Quicken Home and Business every morning as part of my spiritual practice. After all, G*d is in the numbers.
Recently, however, I’ve not been doing my morning meditation and I’ve been sporadic on keeping my numbers. Sure I’ve got excuses, like packing to move, etc. etc. etc. But the truth is, I’m back in vagueness again.
The only solution is to get caught up on my numbers. I’ll use this post as the first half of a bookend.
I’m also a freelance writer - my writing blog is now at www.aboutfreelancewriting.com - which means my income is uncertain. I have savings that help smooth that out nicely. Even so, I get confused!
I need to move and I thought I had a cool studio with a separate office, and a yard, complete with fountain lined up. The rent was super low and my thought was to live there a year or two and save like mad so I can buy something. It fell through.
I’d been considering a two-bedroom I like, but felt uneasy about the amount I’d be paying. While I probably won’t find something as cheap as the studio, I can find something close to what I’m paying now, rather than going for a big increase.
I’ve been stewing. And just now I got clear. A one bedroom with a great outdoor area would allow me to pay the rent I want. I’d keep my office in the living room and use the computer as both my radio often, and my DVD player. I don’t have TV so that’s a good solution.
Sometimes we just have to mentally pace before the solution appears.