About 2 months have gone by since I left the corporate grind. Amazing. Time has flown by. So far, so good. My fears proved to be wrong, and I am surpassing my expectations for generating business. I have some really supportive clients and new referrals and have started a part time gig as well for an ecommerce firm in Denver. I actually have more work than I probably should for the true balance that I am looking for in my life. So the key for me now is making sure to take time for other important things. It’s not all roses, as I am really working hard, but its so much more rewarding and I am learning and growing every day.

I haven’t been updating this blog as much lately and that is for two main reasons:

1. I’ve created a new blog that I intend to spend more professional writing time on for my re-branded business leadonlinemarketing.com
2. I am stuck at the investing stage of finding financial freedom

Investing overwhelms me. It seems the more I learn, the more choices there are. There is always a lot of risk. Take my 401K rollover for instance. I was so proud of myself that I managed it so well and got some nice mutual funds at Vanguard. Without knowing what I was doing, I ended up ‘buying high’ and losing about 800 in value in 1 week with the dip in the market last week. Awesome. I am so disillusioned with the stock market. I already was, but time and time again I continue to be. I’m sure its great for the really well educated investor, but for me, who only has SO much time to devote to finances a week, its hard. I try to dedicate at least 1-2 hours a week since I began my journey towards improving on and/or working at our finances. There are so many directions that this goes.

Overall, the main barriers for me for my next step in this journey are being able to make truly WISE investment decisions, and learning when to pay off debt, when to take out debt and when to save. It seems to be a constant balancing act.

There are 3 TO DOs are on my list of financial matters in the coming months:

1. Finalize a will / power of attorney / living will
2. Get life insurance coverage for myself since I am self-employed
3. Setup automatic transfers for new retirement vehicle (though I’m not sure I want it to be in a mutual fund!)

Related Posts

• December 6, 2009 -- Why You Might Want to Start a Brick and Mortar Business

Rolling Over a Traditional and Roth 401K Plan

I have 2 types of accounts in my 401k from my previous employer – a tranditional 401k and a Roth 401K. After doing some research and weighing my options, I have decided to roll over my 401k into  Vanguard due to the lower fees and a variety of investment choices. I still do not feel educated enough to trust my 401k funds to a fully self-managed account with individual stocks and bonds, so the fund option is still appealing to me at this stage in life. Hopefully, one day I will have the time and knowledge to invest more specifically and strategically. For now, I plan to put some research into the  funds, diversify wisely and monitor my investments.

How a Roth 401 Works

Some organizations allow you to invest all or a portion of your “after-tax” dollars in to a Roth IRA type of 401K, called a Roth 401K. This can be good for some investors because the earnings will not be taxed at withdrawal. The withdrawal rules can get tricky, with options such as the 5-year rule, but I do not plan to withdraw (or otherwise called a distribution) any time soon.  There are many more things to consider to fully understand the Roth 401K, and it does vary in rules from the Roth IRA. I recommend going to Roth401KInfo.com as a starting point for information or consulting your financial advisor. Another interesting point is that employer matching funds cannot be contributed to the Roth 401k – they have to go to your traditional 401k. I didn’t even realize this. Apparently the laws allowing Roth 401Ks will be re-evaluated in 2011, so they may not be available forever.

Here Are My Steps to a Complicated 401k Rollover

1. In order to roll over my 401k, I had to sign up for 2 new accounts at  Vanguard, both a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. The folks at Vanguard were quite helpful on the phone.
2. I then had I believe 3 different phone conversations with someone at Fidelity discussing the process of rolling over my Roth 401K. At one point, he was convinced that the earnings on my Roth 401k would have tax implications because of my rollover. He said because I didn’t have the account open for at least 5 years, the earnings could be taxed. This made absolutely no sense to me as the whole point of a Roth 401K or Roth IRA for that matter are that you put after tax dollars into them in order to NOT have to pay taxes on the earnings in the future. Or at least that is MY understanding of them. A rollover should still be a tax-sheltered process and should not count as a distribution. After much debate, he agreed with me and initiated the request.
3. Mailed documents have been sent to me that I now have to send to my former employer for approval. I find this odd since I no longer work there, why would they care about my rollover?
4. After these documents have been processed they go back to Fidelity and then Fidelity will cut me checks for the rollovers addressed to my Vanguard account.
5. I have to send the checks with a cover letter and instructions that I create to Vanguard in order to process the funds.
6. I then will have my money in a Money Market fund temporarily that earns basically nothing until I figure out what funds to invest in.
7. I invest my funds into a new portfolio, in 2 different accounts, the Traditional IRA and the Roth IRA.
8. Then, now that I am self employed, I figure out if I want to contribute to my new Vanguard accounts on a regular basis or find out more about SEP and Keough plans.
9. Pass out from exhaustion.

If you find this of interest, here’s a few resources on Roth IRAs and 401K rollovers:

• http://www.roth401kinfo.com
• http://banking.about.com
• http://www.investopedia.com

Random Posts

• August 19, 2010 -- My Most Important Asset
• January 29, 2010 -- Having a Clear Life Vision
• October 26, 2010 -- 365 Days Marks 1 Year in My Journey Towards Financial Freedom
• March 4, 2010 -- How to Save Money Dying Your Own Hair
• November 8, 2009 -- Best Kept Secrets of How to be a Millionaire & Other Trust Buster Phrases

Well, its official. I have turned in my two week notice at my current position and I am pursuing other options. We have enough of a padding to last long enough for me to sort this out. (My fear is talking there)

I’m very happy about this first decision and I have lots of options. Nonetheless, I am very much struggling with this life decision. The lucky part is that I can actually make this choice with the career path that I have in web design and online marketing. Here are my options:

Option 1: Accept a FT Corporate Job - The “Logical” Choice

Pros

• Steady income to support my family, benefits (health, dental, paid time off)
• Opportunity for learning from others and new environment
• Career growth potential
• Escape from the cubicle and florescent lighting

Cons

• Not enough time to do my freelance work, be a mom, take care of the house, etc
• Potential to be ‘more of the same’ in terms of politics and personalities
• 401 K hasn’t been a reliable investment vehicle for retirement

Option 2: Accept PT Work + Freelance/Businesses - The “Tempting” Choice

Pros

• Flexible hours, variation in work
• Ability to pursue many projects and avenues (web, businesses, writing)
• Pontenial to be happier by feeding my creative outlets, feeling of acomplishment
• Ability to help many small businesses and increase networking
• Ability to be there for my daughter more, especially when she is sick

Cons

•  Inconsistent income, no protection from month to month, no paid time off
• Have to work at ensuring I have additional work
• Location of jobs may vary, though remote is very possible in my industry
• Administrative duties increase, have to take care of own taxes, health, investments
• Might be lonely working alone majority of the time

I want to live every day as if it was my last. I want this thing called life to matter. And I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to do that if I can’t do more of the things that I want to do with my time. Having a little 2 year old means that I don’t have any ‘down time’. The time I have is absolutely precious.

But whether I’m following my heart and whether I’m taking care of my responsibilities might be two separate things. I am the sole bread winner right now in our household. Is this just a timing issue or is it the right time to make the leap?

I’ve made a hard choice which is to quit my job to start to really craft the life that I want to lead. But now I need to get more specific and really play out what my life will look like depending on what path I choose.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it is that there are no black and white answers. I’ve  also learned that people are willing to be flexible working with you if they truly value what you offer.

Often times its fear that prevents us from taking a leap. If I can get past the fear, what choices would I make?
Option 2 hands down. Can and should I overcome this fear?

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• December 27, 2009 -- Free Timeline Template for Mac iWork Pages or Microsoft Office Word
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com

In my pursuit towards financial freedom, I have been able to narrow down my goals and realize key elements that I want to focus on for my career and life style.

I have now managed to categorize and budget my expenses, long term and short term savings accounts, and I have begun to understand tax rules and how they affect investment accounts and options.

Nonetheless, I still find it difficult to determine the order and priority to assign to saving, paying off debts, investing, and business start ups.

There are so many competing philosophies on this topic, and I believe that there truly is not any one answer. Most advisors and financial ‘gurus’ will base their recommendations for you based on your risk tolerance, age and stage in life, and other factors. Lately, many advisors are much more conservative in their recommendation that you save and save and save your money for emergencies.

Here’s a look at what our short term plan is to balance all of these categories:

Save

Short Term Savings for Spending: I am doing a better job of setting aside small amounts towards short term savings goals including a wedding gift fund, a car maintenance fund and a tuition fund for my husband’s college.

Long Term Savings: We also are saving towards longer term savings goals such as our contingency fund, software business expenses and my daughter’s education fund.

Pay Off / Reduce Debt

We are selling out house in an effort to reduce our debts and get to a level where we are more comfortable with our savings options. It hasn’t sold yet though (bummer!). I’m also looking forward to renting and not owning for a while so that we have a bit more flexibility with where we live.

Besides this, I used some of our tax refund to go towards our car loan. One of our goals is to pay off our 7 year car loan in 1.5 years. That will involve some aggressive payments. According to the calculator I used something like paying $150/month more than what we owe. I am considering setting up a bi-weekly payment also for this to help reduce the balance and interest paid. This will allow us to begin paying off our new student loans for my husband’s college expenses. They aren’t huge, but we’d like to be able to make that transition. So, paying off the car loan debt is definitely a focus for us.

Invest

I invest in my 401k, but it mostly depresses me to follow it. No matter how I allocate it, it vastly under peforms the S&P 500 index fund.

Beyond that, I am in the process of transitioning my Traditional IRA to an online brokerage. I also am opening up a Roth IRA, but realistically won’t be able to contribute to it until our home is sold.

I’ll be moving my daughter’s certificate to a 529 College Invest plan in April.

Building Businesses

I don’t plan on building just one business, I plan on having multiple, including the consulting business that I already operate. I want to focus my efforts on business opportunities but once they are developed and running well, I would like to diversify and branch into other businesses (hopefully product based) for multiple income streams. This is not an overnight thing, but I firmly believe that this is possibly the most valuable thing I could be spending my time and some amount of investment on. Plus, I think this is what America needs right now. More start up small businesses, more entrepreneurs to get things moving.

As much as I am happy to be making efforts in many financially-savvy categories, I do still struggle with balancing and prioritizing them. I’d love your insight on this.

photo by calliope

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• January 10, 2010 -- Truly Free eBooks for Wealth, Inspiration and Education
• January 6, 2010 -- 5 Steps to Happiness with a Personal Finance Twist

Since I began this blog I have narrowed down my focus towards determining that I want to start more businesses that are product rather than service based. I have now taken that leap with my new, still working out the kinks website; ontimelines.com.

Based on the wonderful feedback from this website, I have realized an area that I really want to focus on further and offer help to others: Planning and organizing. I love the simplicity that a time line can offer for planning and visualizing your goals.

In the short term, this site will offer custom, beautiful templates for PC and Mac office tools for everything from wedding planning to childhood milestones to fitness scheduling. The site will include packages of timelines, checklists and plans for every day use. My long term goal is to offer an online tool as well.

So, you may notice a slight decrease in my blogging on this site, but it is not because I am not working on my journey to financial freedom, I am just redirecting some of my efforts into action!

If you have suggestions on what to do or add, I’m happy to hear them.

Happy planning!

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• October 26, 2009 -- 365 Days to Financial Freedom

I had the privilege of listening to a thoughtful free webinar by “conscious” entrepreneur Max Simon in which he interviewed Vishen Lakhiani on the concepts of creating a wealthy mind. He also spoke about how to turn a business from performing so-so to really reaching a ‘turning point’.

Some of the most insightful points of the audio (available for free below) were the following:

• The biggest mistake that most marketers make is that they have a lack of understanding of what Eugene Schwartz says is called “Market Sophistication”. Market Sophistication is the not the same as the buyers life cycle. The traditional marketing concepts that I was taught in my marketing undergraduate work was regarding reaching your customers at certain stages in the buyer life cycle: awareness, interest, preference, adoption. Instead, Market Sophistication refers to the stage that the buyer is at in terms of their awareness of the types of messages already available for a particular product. If it is a relatively new product, your message needs to be much different than a message for an much more saturated market. For a saturated market, you will have to offer much more to differentiate yourself. I love this concept and it gives me a lot to ponder in my marketing efforts.
• Succeeding in life, whether it be in wealth, health, relationships, etc is really all about your MINDSET. We all know this, yet it is entirely different to consciously, day in and day out, make sure our mind is in the right place. It is so easy to let it veer off in the direction of doubt, uncertainty and loss of focus.
• By setting a clear purpose and vision for what you want to do with your business, you will be able to focus your efforts and achieve much better results. Seems obvious? Large businesses do this, but you can apply this concept to your small business OR your personal life, and achieve great results as well. (Goal tracking tools help with this)

No matter what business you are in, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you can’t avoid needing to also learn the tricks of the trade of marketing. Personally, I love the ever changing dynamic of the marketing world, and the endless possibilities that are presented by the concept of reaching your market in the best, fastest and most efficient ways.

In my opinion, much of the laws of attraction and success can be boiled down to these 3 things: Confidence, Purpose & Marketing.

1) Confidence: Free your mind from doubt, fear and worry. Doubt is the #1 thing getting in your way towards success. Hold true to your intuition, but do not let doubt cloud your belief in yourself.
2) Purpose: Define and hold true to your purpose and vision for yourself and your business efforts
3) Marketing: Brand yourself first, your business second. Your personal brand will get you farther than all the efforts you can put into your business. Start with yourself, then build from there.

Listen to the recorded webinar, and let me know your thoughts.
The audio is also available here: http://www.getselfcentered.com/turningpoint/replay.html

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• January 12, 2010 -- Does Opportunity Come to You or Do You Have to Create It?

We are in the age of the next .com era. There is practically limitless opportunity with the internet for business success. You “just” have to find your niche, and break a few rules in terms of doing something unique.

Initially, since I started this journey, I’ve been very interested in the concept of doing an online business further than what I have done so far with my consulting and job. That is what I have been mulling over and researching.

Look the Other Way

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized something. More and more people are doing as much shopping as they can online. The trend will only continue that way. So, the natural progression is for people to offer online offerings. So, what if, during the time that everyone is looking one way, you, the new business starter, look the other way?

What if in the future “brick and mortar” is going to be a key area of opportunity for the RIGHT products because everyone else is so focused online for everything else?

Its obvious why you would want to start up a business online as your up front costs are much less, overhead and ongoing costs are significantly less, etc.

But I’m not actually interested in doing something easy or cheap. Of course those factors affect me, a lot. But what I’m more interested in is finding a path for my life that would involve doing something worthwhile. I want to live a life with out regrets. And for me that means finding and starting a business that is good for me and my values as well as something that will be wildly successful.

Online Still Matters

I plan to have an online element to my business, as every successful business these days has to have many channels and offerings that it serves. However, for what I want to do, online is not the best option. In fact, the business model I have in mind is focused on in person options, sort of like Starbucks is.

Now, I’m not going to blog about what my business is going to be, as I don’t want to speak to soon. As soon as I actually launch the business and get my t’s crossed and i’s dotted, I will blog about it. However, I have come up with a few ideas, and the general area of where we want to focus our efforts. I can say, though, that its a product. Probably no surprise there.

What’s Next

My next steps are product development and business education. I’ll be starting an LLC or a Corporation of some sort, and I want to make sure I do it right. I want to take the right precautions, ask the right questions and follow the right steps. At the moment, I have a huntch, but I don’t really know, so I’ve bought some books on how to start a business. I reserved my domain name, and checked the trademarks on the name that I’ve come up with. I’m not 100% certain that I have the exact idea nailed down yet, but its helpful to think about the idea itself to keep motivated and excited.

I already have a business right now, its a sole proprietor business though. I’ve heard that LLC’s are great, but I’m not certain that that is right for us without reading up.

This is not an immediate plan, but it something that me and my husband are excited about and committed to, and that was missing in my life up until now. I didn’t have something to motivate me for the future that I could latch onto. It feels good to have a general direction. I know that it will change in one way or another, as my life always does, but that’s okay as long as I focus on my ultimate goals. I didn’t use to believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do now and finding this new idea is part of that reason.

The difference between who I was before and who I am now is that I am determined to use the direction and ideas of my life to move to action, rather than just thinking, “What If?”

Is there a business that you want to start? What’s stopping you?

photo by wit

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• May 11, 2010 -- 2 Months Later – A Look at Non-Corporate Life