Keeping Financial Records

Filing taxes should be considered an illegal form of torture. It seems to just get worse and worse every year. I spent years struggling to file them myself and I was never sure that I did them correctly. Since I have switched over to professional accountants, I have never been happier.

I have been trying to keep close track of all of the expenses that we have had for this property, because we will need to file soon. I wanted to make sure that I was organized ahead of the game to save time. Of course, the accountant will be filing for us, but we are the ones that will be supplying him with all of the numbers that he needs. We used this same accountant for the past few years. When we were filing last year, and knew then that we would be buying an investment, I should have asked him how he wanted the information organized. I have it all in a excel file now, so sorting it into different views will be relatively easy. I know a lot of people use Quicken, or other similar software, but I have never found the need. A few spreadsheets have been easy enough to set up to keep all of the records that I have.

I have one spreadsheet for expenses that are not directly related to the property that we bought, but that we still might be able to use as a deduction. There are phone and internet expenses, FedEx bills for some of the bidding and closing paperwork that we needed to send overnight, and just some general office supplies. I do not yet know how much of these things we can use as deductions, but I have them all on my list anyway.

Then I have a sheet for the expenses that directly relate to the property in Dallas. On this sheet I have separated the closing costs from the operating costs. Linked to this sheet is one for the income the property generates. I have it broken down by apartment numbers, that I transferred from the monthly statements from the property managers. But I also just have the monthly totals that then are linked back to the operating costs page to give a running total of the profits.

Once we meet with our accountant I will know how good or bad my record keeping has been. Then I will come back and share any insights into better record keeping.

My goals for the New Year

1-Buy a second real estate investment
2-Create information products related to investing
3-Have more blog content and expand the information on it
4-Start a second website with other information products as source of income (topic not yet determined)
5-Write a business plan and create prototype for one new product (item not yet determined)

Those are the basics of my business and financial goals for the year. I also have certain goals for the one investment property that we now one, but I will review that separately.

1-Buy a second real estate investment. There is a lot more to this than just this one sentence. Our first property we bought rather conventionally. This was a unique experience that taught us a lot. But for our next investment, we are going to try to purchase it with different methods.

2- Create information products related to investing. I have so much information inside me, and I just keep picking up more. I want to put it all down on paper and see if it will sell. Secondary sources of income are also essential to my overall goals of becoming wealthy. A lot of the information will come from my personal experiences and opinions, as well as market and general information. I want to go beyond the “rah rah-you can do it” that is currently on the market.

3- Have more blog content and expand the information on it. This is pretty self-explanatory. I feel guilty about not writing on my blog as much as I should. I have re-prioritized my time to allow for more time to create content. I also have more time to research and learn about different investment topics that I want to share with the world.

4- Start a second website with other information products as source of income. This is sort of a vague goal at this point, and I have yet to decide what the service is that I will offer. I have some other interests in my life that I am passionate about. The site may be an interactive community of sorts, or a reseller of a niche product or something entirely different. My first step is to take my top two or three ideas for this site and do a little bit of market research to see if how plausible the idea is. Then I will develop a marketing plan for promoting the site, and set up a simple site to launch it.

5- Write a business plan and create prototype for one new product. My husband and I are big fans of the show “The Big Idea”. The Donny Deutsche show features entrepreneurs who have had simple ideas and made them into million dollar businesses. A lot of the ideas come out of simple frustrations in daily life. So, we have examined our daily lives and come up with a few new products. We understand that bringing a product to market can take more than a year. So my goals for this year are simply to pick one of the products that seems most feasible, write a business and marketing plan for it, and create a prototype. That sentence makes it all sound so simple, but it will actually be a lot of work.

Now, not only in my list of goals written with pen and paper, posted on my desk, but the whole world can now read about it. I am not getting away from this now!

A NEW YEAR!!!!!!

I will be the first to admit that I have been delinquent in my blog writing duties. But since it is a new year, I have been reviewing my goals not only for the year, but for my entire future. The good news is that I still plan on becoming wealthy.

Every January gyms across the country are loaded with new people trying to keep their New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight. By early spring, most of those people will not go to the gym again until next January when they make the same resolution.

Setting goals is a daunting task for me that I have never enjoyed. I always have the ideas in my head, but I have never been comfortable putting pen to paper to document it. The fear for me has always been having the proof at the end of the year that I have not accomplished the goals. Once I put pen to paper I become accountable for those goals. But last year I bought my first real estate investment and it has changed my perspective quite a lot. A lot of the fear that I one felt is gone. I am now officially accountable for every single one of the goals on my list.

The first few items are personal items that will not directly affect my financial future. After living in my house for two years I need to make a decision about how the living room should be furnished before another year goes by. I think it is important to have personal, family and business goals on the same list. We can all define ourselves in more than one way. All the aspects of life need to be tended to in order for us to grow as a whole. Too often we spend so much time and effort on one thing in life that all of the secondary and tertiary roles get lost.

Be reasonable when you make your list. If you think there is not enough time to accomplish an item on the list, then break it down into smaller components and set the goal for just the beginning steps. I don’t mean to tell anyone that they cannot accomplish anything they set their minds to do. I am just advising to keep in mind that some things are harder to accomplish over night then others. Time is also a limiting factor for all of these things that we do. Hours in the day are limited, and I tend to lose functioning after a certain hour of the night.