How to Avoid Credit Card Late Fees – Mortgage
How to Avoid Credit Card Late Fees
Daryl Flagg
Everyone hates late fees and being late will cost you dearly these days. For some credit cards today, if you are late, you will have to shell out as much as $40 each time. This can put a nice sized hole in your pocket really quick.
Below, I will provide you with some tips and strategies on how to steer clear of those monstrous late fees. This will not only save you a lot of money in the long run, but it will also keep those money-hungry credit card companies, I won
How To Realistically Set Your Fees – Part 3 – Real Estate
How To Realistically Set Your Fees - Part 3
Sue and Chuck DeFiore
Effect of Benefits
We have previously examined realistic billable hours and the effect of business expenses on your hourly rate. Now well look at the effect of benefits.
Once upon at time, when we were employed, we received a benefits package from our employer. This usually included health, life and disability insurance. Many firms also had available pension programs, profit sharing, dental and vision coverage. In addition, one-half of your social security was paid by your employer.
As self-employed individuals, we have to provide these benefits for ourselves. This means an additional boast to the hourly rate weve calculated so far. For the sake of argument, lets figure a standard benefits package consisting of health, life, disability, pension and profit sharing. Lets figure health insurance costs at $300 per month; life at $50 per month; disability at $150 per month; pension a SEP-IRA at $500 per month and about 10% for a profit margin.
If we total these up we get a yearly figure of $12,000. Now keep in mind, that most of these will be paid for in after tax dollars. So, we need to add approximately an additional 30% to this number, for a true total of about $15,600 per year. The 30% represents the amount of taxes you need to pay to end up with the net amount of money needed to pay for your benefits package. Keep in mind that I chose 30% as a completely arbitrary number. Your own tax situation may be higher or lower.
How does this effect our hourly rate, lets see. Last article we left off at $56 per hour. This represented a yearly salary of $42,000 plus annual business expenses of $15,000. If we take the $15,600 in benefit costs and divide by our billable hours of 1100 per year, we get approximately $14 per hour. This brings our total hourly rate to $70 per hour.
Now, we need to factor in our profit sharing percentage. Once again, I choose 10% as a representative number. Your targeted profit could be higher or lower. If you take your $70 per hour rate, multiply by 10%, you end up with $7 per hour. Your total hourly rate comes to $77 per hour.
This is the amount you need to charge to cover all we discussed so far.
Compare this to the approximately $20 per hour you would need to get paid by an employer to earn our hypothetical $42,000 per year. And yes, I know today many employers require a co-payment on their benefits package. I stated it this way for simplicity sake.
So, you need to charge almost 4 times what you would earn in salary to end up at the same place. Dont be discouraged, there are many people out there that are charging a lot more than this and getting all the business they can handle. Remember, these numbers are hypothetical, your situation may be much different.
Copyright 2003, DeFiore Enterprises
About The Author
Interested in having your own successful, home based creative real estate investing business Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 17 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses. No time to visit the site Subscribe to our FREE "how to" Home Business Solutions Digest, its like having your own personal coach: mailto:subscribeHBS@homebusinesssolutions.com
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Lawyers And Their Fees – Auto
Lawyers And Their Fees
Dan Baldyga
Every individual who violates the personal or property rights of another is financially responsible for the damages cause by his or her act. To collect money for this civil wrong there must be damages or injury; without one or both, there can be no recovery of money.
If you have a claim that has a complicated set of circumstances or evidence, one which obviously demands legal advice, than you need a lawyer.
If you hired Attorney I. M. Sharp and he had to burn the midnight oil for you and/or even win your case, there can be no objection to his collecting his fee. But, far too often, in cases of a completely uncontestable claim, one finds themselves handing over a huge percentage of that recover to a lawyer for doing minus-zip!
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