I was reading the news on how in 2009 anyone 18 years or older can place up to $5000 annually into what is being dubbed as a Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) here in Canada. From what I gathered, you can essentially earn and withdraw money from these accounts without any worry of being taxed.

It sounds like a great idea to me at this point. I have never been a fan of things like an RRSP personally and this TFSA seems like it would have a more universal appeal to encourage people to save their money. It’s almost like having a regular bank account with some good benefits.

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I have been getting some unexpected amount of money as a result of Chinese New Years and it got me thinking on how I usually treat these types of funds as invisible for the most part. What I mean by that is that I personally don’t consider it as reserved money to make planned purchases with but instead save these types of fund in a safe way such as a savings account.

I guess one reason for this is that like receiving gifts from people, don’t you ever get that extra uneasy feeling if you are mishandling it in some way? Another example would be if you bought something with your own money and decided to sell it you would have less reserve in doing so as oppose to if it was someone else who bought it for you. I personally see gift money in the same way.

Of course, some would say I just value the generosity of others a little too much. Although, when I think about it I would do the same even if it was a different scenario such as winning a lot of money. Not that I am a gambler, but if I say started to play the lottery while spending $5 and won say $1000, I would be inclined to just save $995 of it.

Unless the amount is truly ridiculous to the point where it would be silly not to say do something active with it (Like say ten million dollars), for the most part I have found that saving unexpected funds can be a good way to discipline your money management efforts and making you appreciate every dollar that you have.

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There are a lot of people that decide in preparing their taxes right now and one topic that came up was how people can save money by creating an incorporated company to enable themselves to write off a lot of expenses while receiving more tax breaks.

I actually had an unrelated conversation with a person recently about setting up an incorporated company as I wondered why he didn’t register his company that way instead. His answer was a pretty common one where he thought it was only for large companies that generate say millions of dollars a month while costing thousands to do so.

While you should consult with a professional, creating an incorporated business can be a very straight forward process. Some examples of people incorporating themselves even though they are the only person are photographers or even say actors.

The money then earned goes to this corporation that you created and can be retained with tax benefits. Afterwards, you can either pay yourself a wage or say dividends. People usually only do this if they have an excess amount of funds to handle as the paper work and accounting can get a little redundant if you don’t exactly save a lot of money.

Everyone’s situation is different though, so you should definitely research thoroughly beforehand.

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There was a piece of news that happened here recently in regards to the celebrity chef Rob Feenie who ran an upscale restaurant here called Lumiere. For various reasons, there has been a fallout and he is no longer with the restaurant.

In the article I was reading it talked about how he started the restaurant and his accomplishments as a chef. It also had some information such as how about two years ago his restaurant business had a debt in the range of almost $350,000. He apparently mentioned how he was a chef and not an accountant to show that finance wasn’t exactly something he personally focused on too much. Eventually, some investors came in which saved the business financially and of course as a result he didn’t own as much of the business as before.

I think this is actually a very common topic that is great to think about. Many times people say they don’t care about the money side of things when it comes to a business as it should be about the passion that you have for whatever it is that you do. That’s definitely true I’d say in terms of having a good attitude to persist in making something successful.

At the same time, you definitely need to consider what is necessary financially as well to make sure that you can continue to do what it is that you do. It’s kind of like times where people are willing to teach you things that require a lot of time for free because they love it so much, but you know it is killing them financially. So in those cases, you insist that they take something. There definitely needs to be balance.

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So with $105.54 to work with for this idea, the first thing I need to do is to register the domain name. I did just that yesterday as I initiated the order. This is actually a good example in terms of when you are looking to purchase some kind of service, do you go for the cheapest option or pay a little extra to get something more reliable? For this, my requirements were that I wanted to register the domain for one year to start off along with the ability to register the domain privately to help prevent spammers from accessing the site’s contact information.

If this was for a regular business I would opt to pay a little more to go with a company that I was confident with. Normally, I would have to pay about $15 a year to get what I want. It would usually be almost instantaneous as well as once I place my order I notice that the domain is then fully registered fairly quickly. After thinking about it for a bit, in the end the web hosting usually plays the main role when it comes to the performance of a web site, which I will be pickier with, and so I decided to be more frugal in the budget for registering a domain.

The result, to save money I decided to go with a company that charged $5.99 as it was one of the cheaper options for what I wanted. As expected, the service isn’t as prompt as I registered it yesterday and as of now I am still waiting for a confirmation that it has been successfully registered. In general though, assuming everything goes through, the trade off is that I went from needing to spend about 15% of initial my funds to about 6%. Those numbers are off a bit as my funds are in Canadian currency while the bill is using US currency.

Hopefully it goes through okay. I still have to brainstorm everything anyhow, so the wait doesn’t affect me too much.

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