Finance: How To Get An Instant Pay Raise

How To Get An Instant Pay Raise

Written by Leo J Quinn Jr

As a gentleman was leaving my class recently, he wanted me to clarify something I had said. He was making sure that he should take his four or five thousand dollar tax refund and pay off debt.

I was stunned. This money represented $400-$500 that could have been in his pocket every month. A survey of my friends this week revealed one who was getting back $2800 and one getting $3300 back this year.

Getting a large tax refund (over $500) means you are having too much money withheld from your check every pay period.

Many people use this as a forced saving plan and it does not make any sense. You are loaning repparttar government YOUR money, interest free. Every $1200 in refund is an extra $100 per month you could have used to eliminate debt or invest for your future.

I 'd venture to say that most people who do get large refunds could use this money every month to ease their debt burden. This burden frequently leads to late charges and higher interest rates. Instead, they like repparttar 111721 feeling of getting that big check in repparttar 111722 mail and figuring out how to spend that chunk of money.

The ONE Law You Should Be Breaking

Written by Leo J Quinn Jr

There is a law all smart people break.

Parkinson's law.

Parkinson's law states that "work expands so as to fill repparttar time available for its completion." It was first coined by C. Northcote Parkinson in repparttar 111720 book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress.

A common derivation of that is "expenses rise to meet your level of income." Has that happened to you? It happened to me in 1991 and I'm particularly aware that it could happen to me again in 2005.

In 1991 I took my BS in finance and started a carpet cleaning business...like most finance majors, of course! I learned repparttar 111721 business for a couple months and was earning a whopping $200-$300 per week working for someone else.

When I left that company and went out on my own, repparttar 111722 ad I used FLOODED me with business. I had 15 calls by 10:30AM repparttar 111723 day repparttar 111724 small ad first ran. The answering service told me every "little old lady in Saratoga was calling".

So almost immediately I went from making $200-$300 a week to making upwards of $1000 per week. WOW...23 years old and making that much money WORKING FOR MYSELF was great fun...had a great boss!

I don't remember what I spent all repparttar 111725 money on other than one of those nationwide pagers but my spending rose dramatically. But guess what? At $7.95 per room for carpet cleaning it doesn't take a math major to figure out I was working very hard to earn $1000 a week. So, of course I got tired and lazy and slowed down. My income level dropped to some level probably near $500 per week but my lifestyle didn't and you can figure out repparttar 111726 rest.

If, while earning $1000 per week I was living like I made $400-$500 per week I would have been sitting pretty... or whatever repparttar 111727 male equivalent of sitting pretty is! :>)

Recently in a workshop I had a woman relate her story. Her husband had been out of work because of injury for about a year. They had been living on only her income for that time. Before his injury they had been living on two incomes and usually had just enough money to meet all their expenses.

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