Posts Tagged ‘working capital’
Alternatives to the Emergency and Sinking Fund
One of the most common pieces of financial wisdom is to have an emergency fund. Dave Ramsey lists it as his first Baby Step.
Businesses have from the beginning of time required working capital to function as a successful enterprise.
Investment property owners have maintenance accounts and all these groups frequently employee a sinking fund. (A sinking fund is an account segregated for use in replacing a wasting asset such as a car. The maintenance account many landlords keep is really a sinking fund for eventual required expenditures like a new roof or furnace.)
There is a reason the emergency fund — and her close cousins the sinking fund, maintenance account and working capital account — is such a widely held belief. Without the capital needed for extraordinary expenses you risk financial hardship when a large expense arises.
There is another advantage to having these accounts: avoiding the need to borrow at an unexpected times. Business owners understand the advantage of having adequate working capital. They also understand that a financial cushion is more than just a convenience in business. Adequate working capital can remove or eliminate the need to borrow under extreme situations.
The best part of an emergency fund is that you get paid a token amount of interest as you wait for the inevitable versus paying interest because you didn’t plan accordingly. This affects profits.
Good Advice
As good as the advice is to keep a cash cushion for irregular large expenses, one question is rarely answered: Where do you store the money?
For micro-sized accounts most people employee a simple bank account or keep the money in a sock drawer. This creates a set of new problems.
Banks (and credit unions more and more often) don’t look kindly at small accounts. They act as if an account in their computer with $867.12 in it is creating a massive financial burden to their financial institution. Accordingly, they pay almost nothing (sometimes even nothing) in interest to these accounts. Worse, they may charge fees just for having the account!
That forces some people to use the sock drawer. The sock drawer has even more problems. With the money so close at hand it is easier to spend, destroying the best laid plans of. . . ah, you know. If you and everyone in your household has the fortitude to keep their paws off the stash one problem remains: theft. Keeping your emergency fund in cash risks theft or loss in a fire.
And that is where the story usually ends. The advice — keep an emergency fund — is wonderful advice if you were provided options beyond “keep it in the bank or under the mattress.”
Options for Storing your Emergency Funds
What other options are available to store short-term money? The bank is okay when you’re first starting out, but once the balance grows even a little it would be nice if your emergency funds pulled its own weight by earning at least a token amount to mitigate the affects of inflation.
There are actually a large number of tools available for investing your emergency fund, working capital, sinking fund and maintenance account that pay you for saving your money there.
Before we discuss the alternatives we need to set some guidelines on what characteristics our alternatives must have.
- The investment must be liquid.
- The investment must be easily accessible within a few days or sooner. We don’t want the money too easy to access as it might allow temptation to creep in, but not so far away we can’t get it when needed.
- The investment must be safe. Guaranteed accounts are nice, but not required. Still, safety of capital is always the highest priority in such accounts.
- The investment must have a return (reasonable interest rate).
- Should be easy to set up.
- The investment should have low or no minimum balance requirements.
- The investment must have the option to make regular additions in small amounts.
Alternative Emergency Fund Accounts
Following the rules outlined above, here is a list of alternative investments for storing your emergency funds and similar monies:
Treasury Direct
A decade ago this was my go-to account for working capital in my tax practice. I couldn’t get a higher safe return anywhere else. That has changed, but is now swinging back onto the radar.
When the Fed lowered interest rates to zero it was hard to justify using Treasury Direct. However, with short-term Treasuries now sporting over 2% it might be an alternative worth exploring.
Treasuries are the safest investment on the planet. Not many investments can say they are guaranteed. Treasury securities, some insurance and bank products are the only investments that can claim they are “guaranteed”. And U.S banks and insurance companies are insured by the government so it’s back to Treasuries providing the only real guarantee out there.
The U.S. government has put considerable effort into providing a powerful cash management tool. Let’s run down a few of the options available from Treasury Direct:
Savings Bonds
Savings BondsYou can buy Series EE and I savings bonds on Treasury Direct. The Series EE bonds are a poor investment only paying .1%. Maybe they think they are a bank. (All references to yield are from the day of publication: May 5, 2019. Use links to review current yields on investments discussed in this post.)
Series I savings bonds are a different story, however, paying 1.9%. The Series I is an inflation adjusted bond. If inflation picks up, your interest rate increases. (And declines if inflation declines.)
The best part is you can invest with as little as $25 and increase your investment by any amount above that.
There are no fees for using Treasury Direct or buying and selling on Treasury Direct.
Treasury Bills, Bonds and Notes
We should differentiate between these types of Treasury instruments before continuing:
- Treasury Bills are very short-term instruments with a one-year or shorter maturity. Since we are discussing emergency funds, this may be the most appropriate use for the accounts we are discussing. Bills are sold at a discount and pay in full at maturity. (Example: a Treasury bill with a one-year maturity and slightly more than a 2% return will sell for $980 and pay out the full $1,000 at maturity, which includes the interest.)
- Treasury Notes have a 2 – 10 years maturity date from issuance. Landlords with maintenance accounts may find Treasury notes a powerful tool in planning for long-dated maintenance and improvements. Example: a roof with 10 years of life left can be slowly funded first with Treasury notes and finally with T-bills. The interest on the notes will pay out every six months and can be reinvested.
- Treasury Bonds have a maturity date in excess of 10 years from the issuance date. While these long-dated instruments are excellent tools for many investment goals, the T-bond is not the most appropriate tool for emergency funds or working capital. (And also carry the greatest risk of loss if you need to sell the bond prior to maturity. If interest rates climb, long-dated bonds decline in value. They pay in full at maturity, but selling prior to maturity does not guarantee a gain.)
For our discussion Treasury bills will be the most used. T-bills can have a maturity date as short as a few days. You can keep rolling the investment for as long as you want. Your money is only a few days from maturity and easy access at any time.
You can also ladder your emergency fund or maintenance account. I used T-bills in the past to manage working capital in my firm. High revenue in spring was invested with some maturing rapidly and some maturing later in the year when revenue was low and year-end expenses climbed. This allowed for a maximum return on my liquid funds.
T-notes and T-bonds also have low entry points, being purchased in $100 increments with $100 as the minimum.
There is one last Treasury to consider: TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities). As the name indicates, these Treasuries provide protection from increasing inflation. As inflation (not to be confused with interest rate changes) changes, so do TIPS. TIPS pay a set interest rate for the life of the bond, but the bond increases in value by the recent inflation rate (they are guaranteed to never decline if there is deflation). This means your interest earned keeps climbing as the value of your bond grows over time. At maturity TIPS pay out the entire inflated value of the bond. (Note: Interest paid out and inflation increases accrued to the bond’s value are all currently reported interest income for tax purposes.)
TIPS come in 5, 10 and 30 year maturities and pay out interest every six months.
Money-Market Accounts
It wasn’t long ago when money market accounts paid about what banks did: nothing. With the Fed Funds rate at 2.5% things have changed.
I use Vanguard’s Prime Money Market Fund for personal and business cash management needs currently. It is easy to use and funds are always accessible. The rate as of this writing is 2.47% compounded annually.
The biggest issue for some people is the $3,000 minimum to start. (I allowed my account to drop below $3,000 after opening without issue.) You can add and withdraw almost any amount at any time once you meet the minimum to open the account.
If your emergency fund is really small Treasury Direct might be the best option. For everyone else, the ease of using Vanguard trumps the very, very small interest increase from using Treasury Direct.
Capital One 360, Discover Savings and Similar Accounts
For a while Capital One 360 and Discover Savings paid better than just about anything else. Now Vanguard’s Prime MM Fund is better.
Keep these options in the back of your mind in case things change (and they always do).
There are several additional similar style accounts. I’ve noticed several advertise on this blog whenever I discuss such topics. Always do your due diligence before committing. The highest rate only makes sense if it serves your needs safely.
Thinking Outside the Box Options
Back in the old days there was a guy called Charles Givens. He was the financial guru circa 1990. (I have an autographed book of his on my bookshelf.) One of his claims to fame was to reduce your insurance to save money and use credit cards if you had a loss. He was sued for that advice according to Wikipedia and a certain accountant’s memory.
As bad as the advice was, it still had a kernel of truth behind it. Over-insuring is expensive and damaging to your wealth. Having a high deductible on your car insurance is worth considering. Credit cards today have cash-back rewards and bonuses. Properly structured, some readers may find value in the old strategy.
As much fun as this strategy sounds, I’m not the biggest fan of using credit cards as your emergency fund. It just sends a shiver up my spine. I would rather use sound financial principles to reduce and eliminate debt.
But this does bring up another outside-the-box idea to maximize your emergency fund returns.
This idea only works if you have debt and you own your home. The goal is to reduce debt whenever possible.
Instead of having an emergency fund (working capital account, maintenance fund, sinking fund, et cetera), plow the amount destined for the emergency fund into paying down your mortgage. When you need the funds back, use a line of credit (HELOC).
Let me illustrate:
You start with a mortgage of $100,000 (or whatever amount your situation dictates). You plow emergency fund and similar monies into reducing your mortgage.
You open a home equity line of credit so the money is available when or if needed. If you draw from the HELOC you now divert your regular emergency fund investments from paying off the mortgage faster to paying off the HELOC.
Since your mortgage and HELOC probably have a higher interest rate than the options I listed above you are better off using your debt as a tool to reduce your debt faster.
Of course, this all assumes you qualify for a HELOC and is based on your mortgage and HELOC interest rates. You also want to consider the HELOC rate further. If the rate is lower than your regular mortgage you might want to move some of the regular mortgage to the HELOC to benefit from the lower interest, depositing emergency fund money to the HELOC, freeing credit limit for emergency uses.
Caveat: HELOC interest rates float. This means the interest rate can change from month to month. The HELOC is not the replacement for the traditional mortgage.
Coda
There are choices outside of banks for storing your short-term capital. It doesn’t always have to be an emergency fund either. Keeping some powder dry for an investment opportunity is a smart move. Getting something while you wait isn’t bad either.
More Wealth Building Resources
Credit Cards can be a powerful money management tool when used correctly. Use this link to find a listing of the best credit card offers. You can expand your search to maximize cash and travel rewards.
Personal Capital is an incredible tool to manage all your investments in one place. You can watch your net worth grow as you reach toward financial independence and beyond. Did I mention Personal Capital is free?
Side Hustle Selling tradelines yields a high return compared to time invested, as much as $1,000 per hour. The tradeline company I use is Tradeline Supply Company. Let Darren know you are from The Wealthy Accountant. Call 888-844-8910, email Darren@TradelineSupply.com or read my review.
Medi-Share is a low cost way to manage health care costs. As health insurance premiums continue to sky rocket, there is an alternative preserving the wealth of families all over America. Here is my review of Medi-Share and additional resources to bring health care under control in your household.
QuickBooks is a daily part of life in my office. Managing a business requires accurate books without wasting time. QuickBooks is an excellent tool for managing your business, rental properties, side hustle and personal finances.
A cost segregation study can reduce taxes $100,000 for income property owners. Here is my review of how cost segregation studies work and how to get one yourself.
Worthy Financial offers a flat 5% on their investment. You can read my review here.
The Benefits of Having a Mortgage
Paying off the mortgage is the American Dream and the first step toward retirement; it’s harder to retire with a mortgage payment blowing a hole through a fixed budget. Owning your home is the foundation of any vibrant financial plan. Until your home is unencumbered (without a mortgage) the bank still owns it in a manner of speaking (and they’ll remind you of it if you miss a payment).
Still, a home mortgage has its benefits. The traditional reasons to carry mortgage debt are bad reasons to carry the liability, but there are still a few good reasons.
We will review the traditional reasons for borrowing against your home and why the benefit is perceived rather than real. We will finish with the three reasons a mortgage can help you build wealth.
Revolving Mortgage
The debate is legend: should I pay off the mortgage faster or invest the extra instead? I recently finished that personal debate permanently.
In Accounting 101 they teach students how leverage (borrowed money) spikes investment returns. It all makes sense. If I pay cash for a $100,000 home and it increases in price by $3,000 the first year I managed a meager 3% return on my investment (assuming you feel your primary residence is an investment). If instead you borrowed $90,000 and only invested $10,000 of your own money, the gain jumps to 30% ($3,000 increase in value divided by the investment of $10,000).
A mortgage is a powerful financial tool to build wealth. It also carries risks that can harm.
They also teach of the risks of leverage in the classroom, but it doesn’t feel as real as the real world will make it. Leverage is wonderful animal when your assets are increasing in value. When the inevitable decline happens real pain begins.
In our above example the 30% gain is an illusion. If you have a mortgage against your home you will pay interest and that reduces the actual gain. Let’s assume a 5% interest rate on your mortgage. This equals $4,500 in interest the first year without consideration for the principle payments on each monthly payment. Your 30% gain went south darn fast, taking a $3,000 gain and turning it negative!
But if I invested the $90,000 (assuming I didn’t need a mortgage) and earned a return there I once again should be popping some mouth-watering returns. Maybe.
We’ll return to this in a moment.
Understanding how leverage can spike investment returns, I always subscribed to holding a mortgage. I bought my first home in 1986 and had a loan against it. It was paid off when the home was sold. (I’m embarrassed to say it was a mobile home, but in my defense I was single and enjoying life to the max. I was retired at the time (turned out to be gap years only) and immersing myself in an endless supply of books.)
From the mobile home I moved into a three bedroom ranch in town (1989); full mortgage in place. Opting to invest every dollar I had, the mortgage was never paid a penny sooner. Then I bought the farm (sounds morbid, doesn’t it?).
The farm is my final resting place and — embarrassed as I am to say it — was used as an ATM since 1995 when I took ownership. The farmhouse was unlivable, but I wanted a traditional barn and the 10 acres also appealed to me. I coughed up a $120,000 hairball with a $100,000 mortgage. I handled some remodeling on my own to make the farmhouse livable until I was ready to seriously remodel with an addition.
A few years later (somewhere around the year 2000) the mortgage was down to $40,000. It was time for a serious upgrade.
My 900 square foot farmhouse swelled to 3,000 square feet and cost close to $200,000 to remodel and expand. (I still swallow hard when I think of that. Not to be outdone, the bank (Farm Credit; they have awesome terms and interest rates for farmers) allowed me to borrow 80% of the value of the finished home; $400,000. That means I was able to grab another 80 grand and drop it into the market.
By 2008 the farm mortgage was under $100,000 again as I paid extra in spurts. The market tanked and good credit came to the rescue; I was able to take another quarter million. Into the market it went.
Of course I look like a hero because the timing of my remortgages coincided with market declines. This wasn’t an accident. When the market died I wanted to add to the account and the ATM was cheap money. (You can read the prior article linked above for more. The ends do NOT justify the means so the increase in investment value is a poor reason to toot my horn.)
I tell you this story for a reason. I struggled with paying off the mortgage for decades as many readers also do. I had the funds to retire the debt a long time ago, but chose to keep the mortgage anyway. Until last month.
At the beginning of this year I had whittled down the mortgage to ~$100,000. I didn’t want to sell assets/investments to pay the mortgage, causing a taxable event. Hyper-frugality set in. By June the mortgage was down to $57,000 and the sickness set in. It was time to kill the mortgage forever!
And I did it! On October 5th I made a special trip to the bank to put the final nail in the mortgage. (Mrs. Accountant came with to experience the magical moment. Either that or she didn’t trust me and was worried I might chicken out and drop it all in an index fund.)
Traditional Benefits of a Mortgage
Mortgages have been touted for a variety of reasons with promises of helping the economy, providing liquidity to the housing market and offering tax advantages to some. We’ll now run down many of the most popular traditional mortgage advantages and why it’s best to avoid the boondoggle.
Real estate is a known way to create and build wealth. Turn your property into a cash cow using the right financial tools.
1.) Tax Advantages. This is the most popular reason given for having a larger mortgage. Banks and other financial institutions have a vested interest (pun intended) to get you to borrow more. You know the advertisements: Mortgage interest may be tax deductible. Consult your tax professional. Rarely do people consult with their tax professional and the bank is counting on it. All people hear is mortgage interest is tax deductible.
Why this is bad advice.
Every lie has a grain of truth to it. Mortgage interest is deductible. Unfortunately many will not benefit from the deductibility of the mortgage interest they pay because they don’t itemize. Also, paying the bank $10,000 in interest just so the IRS might give you up to $3,000 back is a really stupid move.
2.) You can afford more house. Yes, the more you borrow the more house you can buy. If every home was required to be purchased with cash the price of homes would drop precipitously.
Why this is bad advice.
Just because you can dig a deeper hole doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Dig a deep enough hole and it’s called a grave.
3.) You can invest the difference for a higher rate of return. Fair enough. If you borrow the maximum you free up capital for other investments.
Why this is bad advice.
This concept is fine as long as you don’t take on more house than you can afford. And you have to actually invest the difference. After 35 years in the tax profession I can count on one hand with fingers left over of people who invested money earmarked for additional mortgage payments into an investment account. Sure, some may have invested the money without a formal accounting. But my suspicion (gathered from decades of experience) is that people tend not to save the money; they just increase lifestyle spending. All is fine until storm clouds appear.
7 ways to use your mortgage to build wealth.
4.) You don’t have to sell assets triggering a tax event to put more down on the house. Once again, fair enough. I used the same philosophy when paying my home off faster (fast!). Selling assets to put more down on a property can cause a serious tax issue. A larger mortgage (temporarily) makes a lot of financial sense.
Why this is bad advice.
The larger the mortgage (the more leverage) the larger the risk something can go wrong. The investments you didn’t sell could decline in value. Selling to have a reduced mortgage means you forgo future gains on the sold investment. By keeping the asset and acquiring a larger mortgage you take on market risk while paying additional interest to boot.
5.) Investment gains. I hear it all the time, “The market goes up 10% a year while I’m only paying 5% interest.” It is true the market averages gains of about 10% per year on average. Some years the market increases more; other times the market gets cut in half!
Why this is bad advice.
As we noted at the beginning of this article, leverage seems like a great idea. . . until you look under the hood. It might be easier to see with an income property.
The choice is to pay cash for the property or mortgage it to the hilt. If you mortgage the property you can invest the difference.
Let’s assume you purchase a $120,000 property for cash. If the value increases 3% the first year your net worth has increased $3,600, plus any profits from renting the property. Sound good, but the real estate agent introduced you to his banker friend and he says you can borrow $100,000. This means you can buy more properties (now you know why the agent recommended his banker) or keep the money in an index fund or other investment.
A good banker can make the numbers look compelling and this banker is gooood. You decide to borrow $100,000 for 15 years at a fixed 5%. We’ll use simple interest to keep this easy to follow. The value increased the same 3% as above (and also a common annual increase in value for real estate). The value of the property increased $3,600; the mortgage interest amounted to $5,000!
Yikes! You actually lost on the deal!
Maybe not. The property in a vacuum with the mortgage appears to have lost $1,400 the first year. Hopefully you didn’t invest in 5 more properties with the same mortgage deal because then you are hurting. The $100,000 you left invested earned, let’s say, the average 10%, or $10,000. Added together you made $8,600. It seems the mortgage was a good deal after all.
Buuuut. . . You have to assume a good market (or a pretty good return on whatever investment you made) to justify the out-sized mortgage. If the investment under-performed, or, {gulp!} declined in value, you not only suffered a loss on the investment, the property has interest expenses in excess of the gain in value, increasing the total loss from the investment.
The above traditional advantages are not bad in and of themselves. Most people don’t decide between paying cash or a mortgage; they don’t have the money to pay cash so a mortgage is the only choice. Home ownership, especially as you begin your financial journey, almost always requires a mortgage.
Now we turn to non-traditional reasons to have a mortgage; reasons that might actually make sense.
text-align: center;”>Good Reasons to Have a Mortgage
Real, or good, reasons to have a mortgage are few. The risks of leverage are higher than most people anticipate. The odds are virtually 100% the economy will decline one or more times during the lifetime of a mortgage. Job loss or disability further add to mortgage risks. Rare is the person who doesn’t have a few times when the mortgage payment is a challenge.
All the negatives of the mortgage doesn’t mean the liability is totally worthless. There area a few reasons I can think of to have a mortgage, reasons worth their weight in gold.
There are good reasons to have a mortgage. Tax benefits are the smallest benefit. A mortgage can do a whole lot more when used properly.
1.) Free up capital. Leverage entails risk; no working capital can be a greater risk! If you pay cash for a property and have no working capital to deal with maintenance, insurance, property taxes or other expenses you can find yourself in just as deep as if you have a large mortgage.
Landlords should be acutely aware of this issue. Vacancies early in property ownership can cause serious financial harm. Without a mortgage the landlord should have a really good cash flow. But, you need a maintenance fund and resources to cover insurance and taxes should the property refuse to rent early in the ownership cycle.
The same can be said for those buying a primary residence. Without any emergency fund, a minor unexpected expense can create hardship.
Solutions to potential problems.
Up till now I’ve used the all-or-none approach. Taking out a small mortgage can free up capital to deal with any of the problems listed above.
Another very low-cost solution is a home equity line of credit (HELOC). For a couple hundred dollars you can secure a line of credit against the property. If things go well you have no additional mortgage expenses; if cash gets tight you have a resource to manage the bumps.
2.) Working capital. In business, investment properties and even your personal life, working capital is necessary to achieve your financial goals. Being property rich and cash poor means you have to pass on obvious opportunities for financial gain.
Solutions.
When I bought my office building I didn’t want a mortgage. Profits are really nice when you don’t owe anyone anything. However, the seller wanted to spread his taxes out so I accepted a land contract (7 year amortization; seller allowed me to make a final lump sum in the fifth year).
But owning my office building requires ~ $200,000 of my net worth to be tied up in real estate. If an opportunity comes along I might have to pass and that would bother me. (It really would!) So I’ve always had a line of credit in my business. Originally it was attached to the building; now I have an unsecured line of credit. This allows me to smooth out the lumpiness of my business income (spring is good; year-end not so much).
I haven’t used the LOC for a few years so the only cost in $150 per year. Still, if I ever needed funds I can dip into the LOC for a very short term. This allows me to invest excess capital more quickly without fear I’ll need it before the good times return the following tax season.
3,) Motivation. This is the reason I wrote this post. I knew from the beginning if I ever paid off my mortgage, to be totally debt-free top to bottom, I would no longer have a financial motivation to get out of bed. And just as I predicted, I’m feeling the slump.
Financially I had the money to pay the house off decades ago without even a minor hardship. My logic was that I invested the extra money I borrowed so it was okay to keep the spur of a mortgage in my shorts.
Don’t worry too much, kind readers. I still roll out of bed around noon and put in an hour or two before calling it a day. (I’m joking, guys!)
Financial independence is different from debt-free! A mortgage always focused my attention. It helped me push my frugality (defense) while encouraging more income growth (offense). The frugal part has been good since the mortgage is gone; good habits continue on.
However, I find myself thinking more and more about how much I don’t have to do now that I’m mortgage free. I need $2,000 a month to live without a mortgage payment (a bit more during the winter heating season; a bit less in the summer). The nice thing about a mortgage is I needed lots of income to fully fund retirement accounts, add to non-qualified accounts and then pay extra on the mortgage. Without the mortgage money is no longer a driving force even on a minor scale!
And this is where we stop for now. My next post will deal with finding motivation when money is no longer an issue. Debt creates (or at least should) a crisis environment. As my good friend Mr. Money Mustache says, “It’s not a debt emergency; it’s a DEBT EMERGENCY!!!
I used a DEBT EMERGENCY to prod me in the past. Now I need to grow up and find motivation from other places. While debt can focus one’s attention, it is a poor way to achieve a goal! I used it way too long.
Debt is a tool with serious risks. Debt in and of itself isn’t bad, but it can create the illusion it is making things better when all it is really doing is increasing risk. We can do better than that.
Paying off my last liability has been liberating. I’m glad I did it. There are many ways to refocus attention so you can continue to create value in the world around you and in your life.
I think you’ll enjoy the answers I publish next week.
Happy Thanksgiving, American readers!
More Wealth Building Resources
Credit Cards can be a powerful money management tool when used correctly. Use this link to find a listing of the best credit card offers. You can expand your search to maximize cash and travel rewards.
Personal Capital is an incredible tool to manage all your investments in one place. You can watch your net worth grow as you reach toward financial independence and beyond. Did I mention Personal Capital is free?
Side Hustle Selling tradelines yields a high return compared to time invested, as much as $1,000 per hour. The tradeline company I use is Tradeline Supply Company. Let Darren know you are from The Wealthy Accountant. Call 888-844-8910, email Darren@TradelineSupply.com or read my review.
Medi-Share is a low cost way to manage health care costs. As health insurance premiums continue to sky rocket, there is an alternative preserving the wealth of families all over America. Here is my review of Medi-Share and additional resources to bring health care under control in your household.
PeerSteet is an alternative way to invest in the real estate market without the hassle of management. Investing in mortgages has never been easier. 7-12% historical APRs. Here is my review of PeerStreet.
QuickBooks is a daily part of life in my office. Managing a business requires accurate books without wasting time. QuickBooks is an excellent tool for managing your business, rental properties, side hustle and personal finances.
A cost segregation study can reduce taxes $100,000 for income property owners. Here is my review of how cost segregations studies work and how to get one yourself.
Worthy Financial offers a flat 5% on their investment. You can read my review here.