To-Do & Oil Slicks

Making a To-Do-List that MIGHT work for you.
Many people each Monday morning make a To-Do-List that will follow them around during the week like a whiney kid you want to ignore. Often the problem with a list is it mixes goals, projects and tasks. So, here are my definitions to start with - feel free to tweak to meet your needs.

Goal: Time sensitive, realistic, graph able, and usually a big picture item - i.e. achieve 10% increase in new business during 2010.

Project: This will support a goal (don't do it please, if it doesn't help you get to your goals). A project usually will have a shorter time-line than a goal and will have a clearly defined deadline. i.e. Get a $15,000 line of credit (LOC) needed to do the marketing campaign to get the 10% increase in new business.

Tasks: Tasks are always very specific. The should be actionable and simple. Also, each task should be the next strategic action to support a goal or project. If it goes on the list, it should start with a verb and be a one step action. i.e. Call Sam at Bank of Lotsamoney about LOC.

With that said, the only thing that is added to a To-Do-List are TASKS! That alone should save you huge amounts of time.

Keeping track - some people love a physical paper list they can cross off with flourish, others; computer tracking. Whatever you chose, it needs to be managed daily. If something stays on your active list for more than two weeks, it either needs to be re-dated; removed; re-evaluated or maybe deleted. Things left on a list too long become part of the background noise and in my world lead to the ignoring of the list altogether because we have allowed to the list to become the whiny child!

Digital ideas:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ free for simple version
ZenBe Lists - http://itunes.apple.com/  store $2.99
Outlook - Microsoft software $109.00 http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/outlook
Google Calendar - free www.google.com/calendar

Copyright 2010 Linda Fayerweather
Changing Lanes LLC
419-897-0528
http://www.changinglanes.biz/

Oil Slicks and Business

Open any newspaper or turn on any television news program and you'll see how the oil from a blown well in the Gulf of Mexico is drifting towards beaches and marshlands. Gulf residents feel helpless in the face of the growing slick. Federal authorities have spread miles of booms to contain it, dropped "surfactants" to break it up, and even lit portions on fire to disperse it in the atmosphere. But beaches and fisheries have already closed, and some economists estimate the disaster's cost will total billions.

Tax increases can be like oil slicks too. Why? Because you can see them drifting towards you from miles away!

We already know that taxes are rising on January 1, 2011. That's because tax cuts passed during the Bush administration automatically expire unless Washington renews them. Now comes word that last month, the Congressional Budget Committee passed a fiscal 2011 budget resolution calling for elimination of the preferential rate on dividends. Plus, the recently-passed health care reform act adds a new 3.8% Medicare tax on "investment income" for families earning over $250,000 per year.

Fortunately, like federal authorities fighting the oil slick, you have your own tax "booms" and "surfactants" to head off the tax creep. For example, you can hold dividend-paying stocks in tax-sheltered umbrellas like IRAs and qualified plans.

Proactive planning is the key to minimizing damage when oil wells leak. It may be too late for miles of threatened coastland. But proactive planning is the key to minimizing damage from tax changes. It is not "too late" to protect yourself from coming tax hikes. Are you ready for a tax "disaster" plan of your own? Give us a call.

Tim Pinkelman, CPA
Accounting Center & Tax Services, Inc.
419-882-9255 or 734-847-0400
http://www.accounting-centers.com/