(bootstrap funding – 5 minutes) So you’re the proud owner of a start-up. Congratulations! You are an outstanding individual with the vision and tenacity to build an amazing enterprise! You’ve got an amazing idea and you’ve taken the first steps to building your own business. Now, about the money needed to start the business… Bootstrap funding: The Basics Ok, so you need money to start your business. Those are the facts of life. A business is an investment and you need to put money into it before you can get more money out of it. We’re going to take a look at what funding looks like for start ..read more

Written by: Bash Sarmiento Hi accounting fans! Today we have an awesome guest writer, Bash who will be writing about NFTs (what the heck are they anyway??) From A&As and ZBBs in accounting and finance to TGs and FFs in social media, don’t we just love acronyms? They make communication easier and faster, plus they can make us sound all smart and “expert-y.” So, naturally, we just had to add yet another word to the fray – NFT. NFT is one of the latest buzzwords to hit the techie scene. It’s common to hear the byte-obsessed digital blokes discuss NFT alongside trending words such as cryptocur ..read more

(5 minute read – toxic debt) Let’s talk about debt. You see, debt can generally be categorised into two types: Plain old, mildly harmful regular debt, and toxic debt. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a ‘good’ debt. As an accountant, I don’t want to call the opposite of less harmful debt ‘bad debt’ – which basically means money that people owe you which is never going to get paid. No dear reader, in this article, we’re going to take specific aim at toxic debt. But first, let’s talk a bit about debt in general Why take on debt? For one reason. We simply don’t have the money to buy the t ..read more

Rising interest rates are coming. Ever since the reserve bank of NZ announced that inflation is higher than expected, there is a lot of interest surrounding the topic of interest. Remember how interest rates are an economic tool that central banks can use to control inflation? There has been a lot of discussion of how the reserve bank of NZ is going to tackle this situation. Many observers suggest that they will raise the Official Cash Rate (OCR) to bump up average interest levels around the country. For now, it looks like the Reserve Bank will look at tightening lending standards to prevent ..read more

Hi there accounting fans! Let’s talk about inflation and interest rates! No matter where we live in the world, we are suffering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from the obvious health effects, COVID-19 has also affected economies around the world. As countries like Malaysia enter a recession, we enter a new and unpredictable financial era. We will hear more from central banks about inflation and interest in the near future. In the ‘interest’ of keeping things simple for my readers (pun totally intended). Let’s talk about these two fundamental concepts of economics. What are inflat ..read more

So you want to learn more about finance and accounting? Those of you who follow this blog regularly know that I’m quite passionate about building financial confidence in my readers. And while you can find a lot of great information on this blog, I will admit that I only cover a relatively niche topic of accounting and finance for small businesses.  Some resources here are relevant to a personal finance perspective, but it is mainly geared towards small business owners or people who are interested in starting a business. Even if you are a small business owner, there are plenty of other res ..read more

Everyone’s favorite topic – TAXES! Alright, this one is for all of you hard-working, tax paying Kiwis out there. Let’s talk about tax rates first, because boy, oh BOY do lots of folks get this wrong. So first off, let me start off by saying that NZ tax is pretty easy and straightforward. Most folks don’t have to even worry about filing a tax return at the end of each year, since this is taken care of for us thanks to the PAYE (pay-as-you-earn) system. If you are self-employed or have a company, filing your taxes online is stupendously simple and unless you are pressed for time/headspace you ca ..read more

If you are working overseas, do you pay taxes back home? Today let’s tackle an issue which some people are asking about these days: Paying taxes while you are overseas. Now there seems to be a few misconceptions about a person’s tax obligations while they are overseas. The most common misconception is that people working overseas still have to pay taxes to their home country. You actually don’t pay taxes back home if you are working overseas… generally speaking.  But I’ll explain that in a while. For now, let’s start off by answering some common questions about this overseas tax thingy: D ..read more

If you’re gonna schedule – schedule hard!!!! Alright accounting fans! We are back for part 2 of balancing your hustles! Let’s look at the second tip: Tip #2: Schedule relentlessly! Let’s talk about scheduling. Scheduling is arguably one of the least favorite things for me to do. But I still do it anyway. It’s like taking medicine – you don’t really wanna do it but sometimes you just gotta. With that being said, how do you schedule? Here’s what I like to do for myself: 1. Start off with the MUST-do’s on my list. As mentioned in this article – I make sure to get my MUST-do’s done during the week ..read more

Just a quick update! Hi Accounting fans! I’m sure by now most of you would have heard the news that I am teaching full-time at the University of Waikato! This is an exciting new opportunity for me and it is a great way for me to test out some of my ideas about financial and accounting education. But of course this news also implies that I will have to decide how to manage my time in growing my accounting business (which is associated with this blog). So to that end, I’d like to make 2 announcements regarding the accounting services I provide: Announcement 1: I will continue servicing all exist ..read more