I posted sometime in the fall that I have made myself into an LLC for the purpose of my assorted part time jobs that are primarily paid to me in cash so I can write off some legit business expenses.
I was wandering around in Staples over the weekend and got a very nice expense tracking book. I should join the 21st century and really use a program like Quick Books, but I don't. I'm a bit of a Luddite when it comes to upgrading myself to new technologies.
I had an envelope full of reciepts screaming out for attention. I sat down, sorted them out by date and sorted out the expenses by weekend. I filled in all the little colums, calculated milage and I am up to date! I know I could input this information into Quick Books, let it export to Turbo Tax next year, spit out nice reports, and save me the "chore" of hand calculating these figures next tax season, but I did not. Perhaps in the future if my grand plan of going to more self employment investing in and using Quick Books may be worth the time and money.
It's the little things that I am relearning and redoing that are making a big difference in my life. When I was in fiscal hell, I did not track as many expenses as I should have, I had overwhelmed myself and it probably cost me at tax time. Keeping track of my business expense for the various part time jobs is one thing I am re-learning to do.
2 comments:
Keeping receipts and entering them later has always been my secret weapon :)
And if I paid in cash without a receipt, I jot it down in my PDA so I don't forget
Fabulously Broke in the City
"Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver."
Sometimes I like doing things myself too. I use mint.com to track expenses, but I don't really feel like I know what is going on until I hand enter them into my own spreadsheet. It just helps to make things "click."
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