The Tax Man

Well it’s tax time again. All across America people are collecting receipts, gathering W-2s and 1099s and getting ready to make their monthly pilgrimage to the tax preparer, CPA or Kitchen table.
In honor of this time of year today’s blog is about getting taxes ready.
I recently found out about a great article for writers about receipts and deductions specifically for writers. Here is the link:

http://www.artstaxinfo.com/WRITERS/WRITER~3.PDF

Some of these deductions available surprised me. I’d suggest you print this off and keep it with your receipts for 2009 so you are ready next year when the tax man come.

That’s all for today. I have taxes to prepare.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.

Making money when the magazines aren't buying

So, I imagine that one of the goals for you guys would be earning some money. What are you going to do in Feb. to make that happen? With fewer and fewer magazines buying articles these days it can be really tough to figure out where to start.

One thing I've done is offer additional services. Of course, you need to have some knowledge about the service you're offering. I don't offer medical transcription because I don't know medical jargon. I do offer Newsletters, however.

What made me decide to write and design newsletters for others?

As I was researching on marketing I came to the conclusion that Newsletters are a great way for businesses and non-profits to keep in touch with their readership. E-newsletters are less expensive than traditional newsletters and offer the option of linking directly to a specific blog posting or website. They offer tight copy with click through options. This is what I specialize in. I'm an author. I know how to write in a way that engages readers. That is what I'm doing. I'm taking the skills I've learned in sales and marketing the Writing Career Coach and my own writing to create another stream of income.

What are skills you've developed that you could market to others?

What are some things you've learned to do that you can use to create another stream of income? What need can you meet? We're in a down economy so what skills do you have that can help advance others? Can you earn an income doing this?

What foundations can you lay now for the future?

History shows that some of the greatest fortunes were from people who sowed in a time of lack. What skills can you acquire now? What businesses can you plan? How can you set yourself up for a future with greater success than you now have. What you're doing now is setting the course for future success or failure. What you do today determines your long term results. These are facts, not cliches.

Take this slow down to reassess whether your spending is in line with your goals. Is the way you spend your time going to give you the tools you need? Have you changed what you've been doing? That is the only way you'll change what you get [unless you've already made positive change and you're simply building momentum. In that case, keep going.]

So spend some time finding out what the needs are you can meet. Maybe it is doing some website design? Maybe writing business letters for a few local businesses for $20 each. Or maybe, like me, you've discovered a way to offer a service with high quality but a lower price than what others are currently doing. Larger firms can be locked in to higher prices because of high overhead. You can be nimble. You can adapt.

So find the positive in every change of circumstance. Find the hidden money. Consider writing content for brochures or descriptions of products. All of these can build you financially and create a sphere of influence for the future.

If you'd like to know more about my low cost newsletters email me through my contact page. You'll find that keeping in touch with your clients is less expensive than you thought.


Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.

Making money, now more than ever

You love to write but we all have bills to pay, tummies to feed and charities to support. That means that we can't simply write for the fun of it-unless we have a day job.

Eventually there comes a time where we want and need to earn a living.

I've been doing some reading on this topic and I am preparing a free resource for the readers of my blog. To make this the best it can be I need your help.

I need you to email me questions you have about how to earn money and keep your head above water during these uncomfortable economic times.

Step 1:
Email questions to me through my website no later than December 1. If you have friends who have questions have them submit questions through the website as well.


Step 2: Make sure that you are subscribed to my blog. I will give you the deadline soon but the ONLY way to receive this resource free is as a subscriber to the blog. Last year many of you know that I gave out a free surprise gift to people who were subscribed to the blog. I ended up giving the Writing Career Coach: Intro to the Writer's Life as a free gift [the retail value is $35]. This year I wanted to give you a similar gift which is why I will prepare this report based on my research and your questions. I will email it to EVERY subscriber free of charge, not strings attached, as a thank you for your loyalty. I will then offer it for sale for $15 some time in early 2009. [that will be for people who didn't subscribe].

All you have to do to make sure you get the free full-length report is to subscribe through feedblitz using the link on the right. Encourage your friends as well. I will not limit, I will not spam, I will not do a bait and switch.

If anyone who received the Christmas gift last year wants to attribute to the validity of my sincerity, you may do that in the comments section.

For the rest of you, I look forward to your questions and I hope you will encourage other writers to take advantage of this same offer. And those of you who get this full blog sent to your email box every day, you're already on the list. You'll get the full report, just email your questions.

I look forward to reading your questions!


Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.

Work from home or on the road

One great benefit for many writers is the ability to work from home. We love being our own boss and sitting is comfortable clothes creating a world that exists only in our mind.

The one draw back is, in the real world, there are bills to be paid and writing income isn't always consistent. We also have things to do: grocery shopping, ballet practice with the kids, and other errands. That means we don't have the luxury of simply sitting in front of a laptop all day. So here are two REALLY exciting things I've discovered [ok, discovered is a bit strong...I just found out about them]. I want to share them with you to see if they will benefit you.

First, Work from home. I found this in the spring but before I told everyone about it I decided to try it for myself. It is called ODesk and it is a place that looks for freelanceers. The great things about this is you can find freelance work AND if you need someone to do a job for you, you can put a job out there and people will bid on it. I took on a job that was going to be a few articles and I'm still writing for them. I love it. It took me about a month or two before I secured my first job but I was only checking every week or two. If you have computer skills-beyond writing-there are many opportunities. I'd encourage all of you to at least sign up and see if you can find some work with them. It is a growing market!! And there are opportunities to learn and gain certifications as well. Click this link for all the details.

The second resource I found is for writers running errands. How many times have you been driving and suddenly you have a book idea or you remember that you need to set the roast out when you get home? A writer in a group I know just told us about Jott. This is a service that you can call on your cellphone and leave a message. It then transcribes the message [I'm assuming using transciption software] and emails it to you. There is a free version but even the paid version is only about $3/month. You are able to send emails to people by dictating them over the phone and telling the system to email it for you.

You can also have it retrieve blogs for you and READ THEM TO YOU as you drive. How cool is that!! I'm a busy mom of 4 girls. I can't risk their safety by writing myself notes but using a hands free phone I can leave myself a note on that great story idea, piece of dialog or thing I need to do. And to listen to all of my blogs just like the radio??? Now that is cool. Check them out at this link.

So there are two things to help you save time and make money!! What a great way to start a Monday!!

Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter

Finances for Writers

Hello

As you know I always teach my readers what it is I have done to reach success. Today I want to talk a bit about finances for a writer.

However, today I'm not going to share with you what I'm currently doing. Unfortunately, my husband was diagnosed with Cancer 3 years ago and it hit our finances pretty hard. We were blessed to have savings when it happened, but only about a month's worth. We are in the process of digging out of that right now. [And he is now 2 years cancer free!!!]

But for those of you who did not have a calamity I read last week something that Randy Ingermanson has done to help get his mortgage paid off. I think it could be a good idea for the right person. He has seen a significant reduction in his debt through the process and I wanted to pass his information along. Thankfully Randy has allowed me to copy this article in its entirety for you to read.

Randy is known for his Snowflake method and his Fiction 101, 201, 301 series. I've seen him at writer's conferences and you'll find his fiction programs among my suggested readings. So today I will allow him to teach you a bit about your finances. And I'm not a financial advisor, just a person who hopes this will help someone out there.

Organizing: The "HELOC Trick"


Several months ago, a friend of mine invited me to come
listen to a talk by one of those debt-reduction people.
The talk would supposedly show us a way to pay down our
mortgages a lot faster. My friend wanted me to tell him
if the math was legit, because it sounded too good to
be true.

I am always skeptical about money games like this. My
experience says that when something sounds too good to
be true, there's a catch somewhere.

I was right, there was a catch, but it turned out that
there was a lot of truth in the idea. I'd like to share
it here, for the simple reason that most writers I know
are often concerned about money. Any idea that can
reduce a writer's pesky money worries is a good idea.

If money is not an issue for you, then skip this
article. Next month, I'll be back to my normal article
on organizing your time or whatever. But just for this
month, I'll be talking about that vile money thing.

Here is my standard caveat: I am not a financial
advisor. I don't give financial advice. Nothing I say
here should be construed as financial advice. I am a
math guy, and I am pretty darn sure that everything I
say here is mathematically correct, but any action you
take is your own decision, not mine.

By the way, in the last 12 months, I've reduced my
total debt by almost exactly 10%. At that rate, I'll be
debt-free in a bit more than six years (because of the
compounding effect).

Now, not everybody believes that it's smart to be
debt-free. There are lots of good folks who think that
debt is terrific and that you should be in debt up to
your eyeballs, as long as it's debt for an investment
(such as a house or a business).

If you believe debt is wonderful, then that's fine, I
won't argue with you, but this column is not for you;
skip on down to the next column. If you e-mail me
telling me that I should love my mortgage because I'm
using other people's money to get rich in real estate,
I won't even bother to answer you. I don't love my
mortgage anymore. If you love your mortgage, go ahead
and kiss it, marry it, live happily ever after with it.
I want to burn mine.

Let's get back to the story. My friend took me to hear
this guy talk about debt-reduction. To my astonishment,
I saw right away that the plan would actually work. The
math was completely legit and it had some nice
psychological advantages that would help even more.

The problem was that the speaker was selling a $3500
software product to "help you do the math." To be
blunt, I didn't think the product was worth that kind
of money, when I could easily "do the math" with a
pocket calculator in one minute. I'd have been happy to
pay fifty bucks for the idea, but not three and a half
Big Boys.

For that reason, I won't give the name of the product
or the company that sells it. You can easily find it
with a search engine after you've read this article.
You'll see that a lot of financial advisors think the
product is a load of hooey.

But the idea is rather clever and I was incensed that
I'd never thought of it myself, because it's obvious to
any math guy. I call it "the HELOC Trick."

OK, so how does "the HELOC Trick" work?

Before I answer that, I'll talk about what problem
we're trying to solve. After all, as any of those
financial advisors will tell you, the way to get out of
debt is to spend less than you earn and apply the
difference to your debt. If you do that, you'll
eventually fry your mortgage. Duh, right?

Yes, that's pretty obvious, but most people don't do
it. I had a mortgage on my last house for 12 years, but
I hardly ever applied any extra money to my mortgage.
Why not? Two main reasons:

* I knew that if I paid extra money on my mortgage, I
wouldn't be able to get that money back out. Those
meanies at the bank won't give it back once you pay it
in.

* When I had extra money, I put it in savings in case
of an "emergency." When the savings got big enough, I
started feeling "rich" and spent the money on something
I didn't need.

So after 12 years of paying my mortgage, I had paid the
bank MORE than the original value of the house and had
actually paid down ALMOST a quarter of the value of the
house. Pretty sweet deal, eh? Sweet for the bank,
anyway.

Fact is, I made money on the house when I sold it,
because house prices were skyrocketing in those days.
But house prices aren't skyrocketing right now. Not in
most places. For sure not where I live. I don't really
want to pay for this new house 2 or 3 times over. I'd
be happy with paying for it only once. I'm funny that
way.

So here's what I've done in the last several months to
start knocking down my debt. When I started this game,
I had two debts: a mortgage on my house at 6.25% and a
car loan at 6.4%.

a) I went to my bank and opened a Home Equity Line Of
Credit (a HELOC). You can take money out of a HELOC any
time you want, but you can also put money in any time
you want. They charge you interest daily based on the
amount you owe that day. The bank didn't charge me
anything for my HELOC, and they gave me quite a big
credit line -- a LOT more than I needed to make this
plan work. At that time, the interest rate was 7.19%.
It has since dropped to 4.94%.

b) I used the HELOC to pay off my car loan completely.
(It always makes sense to pay down the debt with the
highest interest rate first. If I'd had credit card
debts at the typical usury rates, I'd have paid those
off first.)

c) Right after my next paycheck, I took almost all the
money in my checking account and paid it into the
HELOC, leaving only a few hundred bucks in the checking
account. This also reduced my HELOC debt to a
comfortably small number. And it reduced my daily
interest charge to a very small amount.

d) Throughout the next month, I paid bills by writing
checks out of the HELOC account. So the debt in my
HELOC gradually increased throughout the month from a
small amount to a larger amount.

e) Every month since then, I've repeated steps (c) and
(d). Right after I get paid, I move most of the money
in my checking account into the HELOC. Whenever I get
any extra cash (tax refund or whatever), I move it
straight into the HELOC. At the beginning of each
month, I do a simple calculation and then pay some
extra money out of the HELOC against the principal in
my mortgage.

What is that "simple calculation?" I have a target
amount that I want to owe on my HELOC after paying the
mortgage. I look at how much I owe and subtract it from
the target amount. I pay the difference on my mortgage.

For example, if my target HELOC debt was $10k and I
owed $8k on the HELOC on the day my mortgage was due,
then I'd take $2k out of the HELOC and pay it to my
mortgage company. If I only owed $5k on the HELOC on
that day, then I'd take $5k out of the HELOC and apply
it to the mortgage. If I owed $10k on the HELOC, I'd
pay the mortgage payment but no more than that.

By following this strategy, I always owe roughly the
same amount on my HELOC, and any "extra" money goes to
pay down my mortgage.

Notice that my total debt is the sum of my mortgage
plus my HELOC debt, so that "simple calculation" above
doesn't have to be very precise. It really doesn't
matter who I owe that money to; I owe it to somebody.
My goal is to reduce the total as fast as possible.
That's why every spare dime I get goes into the HELOC
right away.

That's pretty much it. It sounds like a shell game,
doesn't it? How could it possibly work? What does it
cost, and what does it gain me?

a) Opening a HELOC cost me nothing. Some banks charge a
fee to open one, but my bank paid the fee because they
wanted to earn interest from me.

b) Paying off the car loan with the HELOC didn't change
my total debt. I still owed the same amount. This cost
me nothing and saved me nothing.

c) Moving most of my money from my checking account
into the HELOC immediately began saving me interest. My
checking account earns no interest. The HELOC costs me
interest, but the interest is computed on the daily
balance. Mathematically, moving my money into the HELOC
means that I am now earning interest on all the money
that WAS in my checking account.

d) As I pay bills out of the HELOC throughout the
month, I gradually increase my debt. The bank will
charge me interest on this debt, but they charge it
each day on the daily balance. Early in the month, that
daily balance is low. Near the end of the month, the
debt rises back to almost its original level. (Since I
spend less than I earn, the debt doesn't quite reach
the original level.)

e) Whenever I get any extra cash, that money goes
immediately into the HELOC, and I effectively save the
interest I would have paid on that money throughout the
month.

As any financial advisor can tell you, the above
hocus-pocus will earn you a few hundred bucks per year.
Many advisors will tell you that it isn't worth your
time to do this. In a world where people act with pure
mathematical logic, they would be right.

However, in the real world I live in, hardly anybody
acts with pure mathematical logic. Very few people
floss daily, for example, even though it's one of the
cheapest and easiest things you can do for your health.

The reason the above hocus-pocus has led me to reduce
my debt so sharply is that it has changed my entire way
of thinking.

I used to think: "I have money in my checking account,
so I might as well spend it."

Now, I think: "I have almost no money in my checking
account! I have this huge debt that I have to pay off
someday! I'm not going to spend any money unless I have
to.

I used to think: "If I get extra cash, I'd better save
it in case of an emergency."

Now, I think: "If I get extra cash, I'll put it in the
HELOC and save some interest. If an emergency does come
along, I'll take it back out of the HELOC. In the
meantime, I'll have saved some interest."

This change in thinking is what makes the whole thing
work. If you were to buy that un-named $3500 product
that I mentioned earlier, the sales-droid ought to tell
you that this psychological shift is what makes it all
fly.

The sales-droid will likely instead tell you that it's
the "debt-cancellation effect" that makes it fly. Um,
sorta. There is a smallish "debt-cancellation effect"
thanks to the fact that interest on a HELOC is computed
daily. It's a few hundred bucks a year, and so "the
math works."

But "debt-cancellation" is a small effect. The main
thing has been to change my thinking. If I want to pay
off my enormous debt, I need to get that enormous
number in front of my face every time I spend money. I
had to quit thinking I'm "rich," when in reality I owe
tons and tons of money.

Now it should be obvious that none of this would work at
all for me if ANY of the following were true:

* I don't have a mortgage
* I don't want to eliminate my debt
* I have no equity in my house
* I spend more than I earn
* I don't want to do the calculation every month

If any of the above were true, then the "HELOC Trick"
wouldn't work.

People often get over-excited about the "HELOC Trick"
and think that it will solve all their problems right
away. Nope, sorry. For that there is a faster but much
riskier solution called "winning the lottery." The
"HELOC Trick" works for me because it helped me change
from a "spend the extra" mentality to a "save the
extra" mentality.

The "HELOC Trick" helped me grow myself a spine. That's
all. But it's enough.

Once again, you are a thinking, autonomous, intelligent
human with the ability to make your own decisions. I
make no recommendations here. I give no advice. I have
put a bug in your ear; what you do with the bug is your
business.

If you're in town six years from now, you're invited to
my mortgage-burning party.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the
Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 12,000 readers, every month. If
you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction,
AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND
have FUN doing it, visit
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing
and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.


Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter