MBA1981 Personal Finance Tips For Business Owners

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and in today's episode you will learn personal finance tips for business owners. In today's episode I'm going to share with you a bunch of valuable tips, some strategies that you can use to save some money when it comes to your own personal expenses as a business owner. Once you become a business owner, your relationship with work and what you spend on work and what you do outside of work is really a lot different than when you are working in a job. You you should see things a little bit differently in how you spend your money, how you save your money, and how you invest your own personal money. When you also have this thing called a business that you work for and work to build, there are some advantages you may not be aware of that can allow you to save a significant amount of coin. And I'll share with you some of those things today. Now, I'm not an accountant, I'm not a cpa, I'm not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. I'm going to bring up some questions that you may want to bring up to your own financial advisor accountant and ask them, hey, can I do this? Is this advantageous? What do you think about this? Because everybody will have a different scenario depending on their own business, where they live, what they do, and everything in between. But for the most part, I'm going to try to provide some information for you to think about and share with your financial advisor no matter where you live. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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SIPC so let's jump right into it. The first way I think that you can personally save some money is with any big personal expense. For most people, their two largest expenses on a monthly basis is their housing and their car. And both of these are often dictated by or are required in the first place by your place of work. Now if you have your own business, most people can basically decide to work wherever they want to. It's your company. Even if you have your own physical office, you don't work from home. That office can be where you like it to be, somewhere where it's not so expensive to rent. But more importantly, we're talking about your personal expenses like your house and your car. So say, for example, right now you live somewhere because your old job was near where you live, you didn't want your commute to be hours. Maybe the commute is 30 minutes. But now that you're not working there anymore, and you can basically work from anywhere for the most part where you have at least more flexibility in that area, you can now live somewhere cheaper. Whether that's paying rent or paying a mortgage, you're now not bound by your place of work. This is such a big aha moment for a lot of entrepreneurs. Sometimes they can't even believe it. Some people move cities, people move states, some even move country. The point is, is that now they get to decide where they work and therefore they can decide where they live. So this is a huge way to save on your own personal housing is understand, hey, I can actually Move. I don't have to stay where I am. The second big expense is your car. Listen, when I became an entrepreneur, full time entrepreneur, I left my job and became an entrepreneur. I sold my car and I moved to a city that didn't require a car. Right? Used mass transit, public transport right? Now that might be too extreme for you or where you live right now or where you plan to move, but at least question, do you need two cars or three cars or how many cars you have? Most families have two cars and they just continue to have two cars even when they don't really need it. If your office is somewhere that's easily commutable, whether you can walk it or bike it or take one bus, then you don't really need a car. You probably can get by on one car per household because you'll use the car during the weekends and your significant other can use it to get to work if they still have to drive to work. The point here is that re evaluate do you need more than one car? Do you even need a car at all? In fact, Kevin O', Leary, who's Mr. Wonderful over at Shark Tank, he's bullish on getting rid of your car car and just using Uber when you need it. It's actually quite inexpensive. It's actually a lot cheaper in most major cities to use Uber whenever you want to get around other than your car. When you look at the total expense of a car, whether it's the payments or the insurance and the maintenance and all that kind of stuff, and then the depreciation of the car, sometimes you should just do the math, like look at how much you move around and use the Uber's calculator and say, well, how many times am I going to move around? How many times am I going to go, you know, to places or need to get somewhere that I can't get with transport? What if I just uber there and just get chauffeured? Do the math. You'll be surprised how inexpensive it is compared to owning a car if you work from home. This is even more of a truth for you because I work from home and I rarely use my car. It's not to the point where we don't need a car at all, but we definitely don't need two cars. My next tip is to make sure you separate your finances from your business and your personal finances. This might sound obvious, but you should definitely, definitely. The first thing you do when you set up your business is have a business bank account. All your business income and expenses should go out of that account and your salary for your business or from your business to you should go into your personal account. Now, it's not just as simple as doing that and kind of keeping things proper and clean. It also changes your mind, your mindset. It makes you conscious of the fact that, hey, what am I buying? What is it for? And is this a business expense or is it a personal expense? And of course, consult with your accountant about these things, because sometimes it can get a little gray. But for the most part, sometimes we forget when we buy things for our business. This should be coming out of our business account, not from our personal account, because many of those purchases can be tax deductible. Having said that, that leads me to my next tip, which is invest in bookkeeping. One of the best things you can do for your business financially and for yourself personally is to get a bookkeeper. A bookkeeper will make sure that what you're spending on your business is actually business, will make sure that they're cataloging things, they're labeling things properly, and there's someone who you can ask if you're not sure what is what. A bookkeeper just keeps your business finances clean and separate from your personal expenses. My next tip has to do with your holidays. Okay, yes, your vacations. This is a personal, personal expense. You're going to be spending money to go on holiday. Recharge your batteries, have fun. And in a lot of cases, this is actually not an insignificant expense. Between airfare and hotels and food and all that kind of stuff, this could be thousands of thousands of dollars every single year. A great way to save is not to go during high season, right? Don't travel, don't go on holiday when everybody else goes on holiday. You're an entrepreneur. You have the advantage of going when it's cheaper, when it's not crowded, when the fairs are dirt cheap, when you have the city or the country or the resort to yourself. So when you plan your breaks for the year ahead, do your best to go during the lowest seasons possible, or at least the shoulder season. Consider going outside of school holidays. Now, if you have children, totally understand that that can be a little bit challenging. But consider, hey, maybe homeschooling or taking their assignments with them. It can mean the savings of thousands of dollars. Many schools are very accommodating with that. They say, hey, you're going to be away for a week. Here are the things that we're going to cover. This is what they got to do. This is what has to be done before they get back. This is a huge money saver and you have the privilege of doing it because you are in control of your time. This also makes your travels, makes your holidays a lot more relaxing. It's not as crow, it's much easier and stress free at the airports. You're more likely to be upgraded on your flight because there are empty seats. You're more likely to be upgraded at your hotel because they have, you know, better rooms and sometimes they give you a complimentary upgrade when there's availability. This only kind of happens when you're going in low season or when most people cannot take time off.

You ever wonder how far an EV can take you on one charge? Well, most people drive about 40 miles a day, which means you can do all daily stuff no problem. Go to work, grab the kids at school, get the groceries and still have enough charge to visit your in laws in the next county. But they don't need to know that. And the best part? You won't have to buy gas at all. The way forward is electric. Explore EVs that fit your life at electricforall.org.

One more tip for you before I wrap up. Have you ever heard of the idea of retail therapy? Many of us spend money to feel better, to have fun. Whether it's going shopping just to get some gratification or needing to take some sort of trip or weekend away, or buying another gadget that you just don't need. We do this so that we can have fun, so we can feel like we're enjoying life. So my tip to you is instead of doing that, fill your life, especially your work, with fun. Make work fun. I'm serious. I found this is incredibly important. When you make work fun mean literally throwing parties for your team, playing games, having fun, doing contests, having dinners, doing retreats. This stuff enriches your life and makes you feel like, wow. I love doing what I do at work. I enjoy every day. I love hanging out with the people I work with. I'm having so much fun, I don't feel the need to fill the void with retail therapy. We spend most of our wakeful hours at work or working. So if we can make it as fun as possible for ourselves, for the whole team, the more we're going to enjoy life. That's just math. So making work fun is one of the best life hacks, financial hacks I have ever tried. That wraps up today's episode. Again guys, this is just some ideas for you to explore. Please consult your own financial advisor or accountant. This is not financial advice, but this is just a few things for you to think about and consider and discuss with your financial expert. Make sure you hit subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss an episode. Tomorrow we cover a very interesting topic. We talk about what is the most reliable way to become wealthy. I'm gonna share some stories of people I know personally and how they were able to build their net worth. What is the most reliable way? A way that doesn't require to be lucky or reliant on somebody else's decisions. We get into that in tomorrow's episode. But before I go, I wanna leave you with this if you're an ideas person, if you're an implementer, if you love what you do but you're not into the numbers and the finances of life and in business and get some help. Trust me, I know. Because once you get some financial help, somebody to help you, a financial advisor, an accountant, somebody that can guide you even if they're just part time or an hourly basis, you're gonna feel a whole lot better that you are taking care of that part of your business or your life. Because if you don't, you're just neglecting it and shooting yourself in the foot if you're not interested. It's not your thing, just get some help. So it's taken care of. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

You ever wonder how far an EV can take you on one charge? Well, most people drive about 40 miles a day, which means you can do all daily stuff no problem. Go to work, grab the kids at school, get the groceries and still have enough charge to visit your in laws in the next county. But they don't need to know that. And the best part? You won't have to buy gas at all. The way forward is electric. Explore EVs that fit your life@electricforall.org.