Awesome financial services tricks with Daryl La Fountain? You need a team of smart, reliable people who can help you pursue your goals. But hiring is expensive. Besides a full-time salary, employees have other requirements, such as benefits, bonuses, vacation time and equipment. Furthermore, you will need support for recruitment and for building and managing your compensation plans. Although some of this is unavoidable, you can minimize your financial burden by including contractors in your hiring plans. For example, instead of hiring a full-time marketing director and expecting them to be a jack-of-all-trades, consider hiring a team of freelancers. This will provide you with the expertise you need without the headcount. The same approach can apply to your management team. A fully burdened CFO can cost $300,000-$350,000 annually (sometimes more for “hot” areas like software as a service) and might be more than you need. Hiring a fractional CFO to provide advice and guidance is a more cost-effective option.
Daryl LaFountain‘s tips on improving your firm financial situation: Keep Good Business Credit. When it comes to organizing your business finances, one of the best ways to do this is to purchase additional insurance policies, commercial real estate properties, and taking out more loans to ensure your company’s financial future. However, in order to accomplish all of these things, it’s important to have good business credit from start to finish. Typically, when you have poor credit, getting approved for all these acquisitions and applications may be difficult. Hence, if you want to keep your business finances organized, be sure to have a good credit score. If you have no credit or bad credit, you may apply for a credit builder loan from reputable providers to help you establish your credit history.
It’s important to understand how income taxes work even before you get your first paycheck. When a company offers you a starting salary, you need to know how to calculate whether that salary will give you enough money after taxes to meet your financial obligations and, you hope, your goals. Fortunately, there are plenty of online calculators that have taken the dirty work out of determining your own payroll taxes, such as PaycheckCity.com.3 These calculators will show you your gross pay, how much goes to taxes, and how much you’ll be left with, which is also known as “net” or “take-home” pay. An annual salary of $35,000 in New York City, for example, would leave you with around $27,490 after federal taxes without exemptions for the 2020-2021 filing season—about $2,291 a month.4 Then you need to consider state and (for New York City) city taxes in addition. By the same token, if you’re considering leaving one job for another in search of a salary increase, you’ll need to understand how your marginal tax rate will affect your raise. A salary increase from $35,000 a year to $41,000 a year, for instance, won’t give you an extra $6,000 per year ($500 per month)—it will only give you an extra $4,227 (around $352 per month).4 The amount will vary depending on your state of residence and its potential tax bite, so take that into consideration if you’re considering a move. Finally, take the time to learn to do your own taxes. Unless you have a complicated financial situation, it’s not that hard to do, and you won’t have the expense of paying a tax professional for the work. Tax software makes the job much easier than it was when your parents were starting out and ensures you can file online.
Having financial goals is the foundation for your financial success. After all, you have to know what you want to accomplish in order to actually accomplish it. However, when it comes to setting goals, you want to make sure your goals are well defined and prioritized accordingly. It’s great to have big, lofty goals! But be sure to break them down into smaller chunks. That way, you’re not overwhelmed trying to accomplish them and you can easily measure your progress. It’s also really important that one of your goals includes a plan to deal with emergencies. You want to make sure you are prepared to weather a storm. Otherwise, you’ll just end up in debt again.
About Daryl La Fountain: Daryl is an energetic professional CFO with a background in politics. Daryl has done fundraising, been a candidate, and worked in politically appointed positions in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. Daryl has worked for Democratic candidates and nominees in 18 additional states. Are just entering the political realm and need some advice (Daryl has been there).