Do you long to live like the rich without spending a lot? Well listen up, because there is a way. But you have to have a plan and be conscious of your life style. But it can be done.

What do you think of when you think of how to live like the rich? Do you think of big houses, fancy cars, exotic vacations, and fine dining? Do you think of knowing about wines and savouring delicacies? Do you want to be well travelled and well read?

There is a way to life like the rich without having to spend a lot, at least relatively speaking. Here are some hints to help you live like the rich but pay a little less for it.

Be a savvy shopper – If you want to wear the right clothes and shoes, have the right handbag, and give the look of the wealthy, you will need to learn how to be a savvy shopper and not pay full price. You can find sales, go to outlets, and use things like Scoopons to help you get stylish fashion while paying less than full price to do so.

Uniquely vacation – When everyone is going to Cancun and Disney World, the rich go to Costa Rica or Spain. So how do you go to these fantastic vacation spots without breaking the bank? Shop the travel specials, find the best airline deals to help pick the spot, go in the off season, and book well in advance. This will help you find great destination for much less. You can then find off-the-beaten-path places to stay outside the cities to stay for even less again.

Buy pre-owned vehicles – So you want to drive a Mercedes or Lexus? Buy a pre-owned car to significantly lower your purchase price. Go a step further and lease your vehicle to make your monthly payment even more manageable. There are always options!

Splurge on the little things – Get a manicure, drink some gourmet coffee, and buy that expensive perfume or cologne. Add a little bling to your wardrobe with a lovely piece of jewellery. These little things will help you appear to others that you do in fact live like the rich, and will make you feel the same.

Regardless of your budget, most people can live like the rich, by simply adding a few luxuries to your life and learning to speak the way they do. It’s all in the way you talk the talk, and walk the walk!

If you would like to live like the rich, but need some help with finances before figuring out how big you can go, call the team at IQ Accountants today on 5576 0011. We’re the best on the Gold Coast, and we’ll help you figure out what you can and can’t afford!

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Owning one’s own business and being one’s own boss is a dream for many. It does however, take much more than a great business idea or unique product or service to equal business success. When it comes to how to manage a business successfully, there are a number of different factors that need to be taken into account. A business is a multifaceted enterprise and requires a similar-type individual to be able to handle the varied needs of a good manager.

Read on for a few tips and hints as to what it takes to manage a business successfully. While this is, by no means, an exhaustive list of the traits and qualities of a skilled business manager, these are among the most imperative.

Learn to delegate

This is one of the harder things for many managers to do, but it is also one of the most important. As a business owner, we cannot do everything necessary to make our business run smoothly, it is a multi-person operation. You need to be able to delegate tasks and responsibilities to employees that you can trust, and let them have the responsibility of making sure the task is attended to.

Don’t forget about the internet

Don’t underestimate the value of free social media exposure. There are a number of free (or cheap), easy ways to get your product or service promoted on the internet. There are many DIY ways to design a decent internet marketing campaign, even on a budget. Jump on the net and have a look around, you may be surprised with what you find.

Human resources should be a key focus

As noted above, you need to have competent employees to delegate tasks and responsibilities to. This means you need to have a good human resources apparatus, as one of the main functions of HR is hiring. Quality employees are one of your most valuable assets and thus, your hiring practices need to be designed to ensure that you get and retain the best employees.

Know your finances inside-out

While even a small business is likely to have an accountant, a successful manager needs to have a deep understanding of the company’s financial situation. This will require learning how to read detailed financial statements and other reports. One will also need to know the situation well enough to be able to make informed decisions on the fly.

Owning and learning how to manage a business successfully requires the business owner to wear a number of highly varied proverbial “hats.” They must know their business inside and out, and they must know what they themselves need to be hands-on with, and what they need to delegate to other people. This means that the focus should be on the best hiring practices possible, as this helps to ensure that you have a pool of talented employees that you can trust with delegated tasks.

Marketing is one of the most important areas of running a business and also one of the easiest to neglect. Most business owners are not marketers themselves, and many small business owners do not have it in their budget to hire a dedicated marketing professional. Even a small, but well thought out internet marketing campaign can pay huge dividends for a business. It is also imperative that a business owner understand their finances. This means being able to properly read financial reports, as well as knowing the financial state of the business enough to make tough, but informed, financial decisions.

If you’re still learning how to manage your business successfully, and have come to a stand-still with the accounting/bookkeeping section, it’s your lucky day. The team at IQ Accountants are the best on the Gold Coast and are always willing to help you out. So call us today on 5576 0011 and let’s get you sorted!

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For most of us, budgets are tight these days. Wages seem to have stagnated, and the economy, well compared to a few years ago, is still not as healthy or as stable as many of us would like it to be. This has led to an incredibly high level of debt, especially when compared to the savings rate. You see more and more people extending themselves further into debt, while at the same time, saved so little for an emergency or the future.

Many people have become well aware of this sad fact and are looking for ways to get their financial life back under their control. One of the biggest concerns people have is about how best bolster their savings. We are always looking for ways to save money, but for many of us, it can be difficult to see how to make that dream a reality. Maybe we can help!

Cut the proverbial fat

It could be coffee purchases, lunches out, magazine subscriptions, but chances are, there is an area of your life that you are spending more money on than you need to. This does not mean that you have to give up all of life’s little luxuries to save, you just have to be smarter about it. Get a nice coffee maker and premium coffee to make at home. Pack your lunch a couple times a week. If you don’t read every issue of the magazine, consider cancelling it. These savings can then be rolled over into your savings account, which in time, add up.

Understand your expenses versus income

To really see what you need to do to help your savings and financial situation, is to have a clear understanding of your income and expenses. It may be immediately obvious that you are living outside of your means, and this will require big changes if you want to improve your situation. This knowledge will also give you a much better idea about your overall financial outlook, and can help you when it comes to making smart purchasing decisions.

Little changes add up

Don’t worry if you are only saving a few dollars here and there. When combined and over time, these little efforts will actually yield a big result.

Savings is at an all-time low, while debt is at an all-time high. This is not a sustainable state of affairs and it has many on edge. Many of us want to minimise our debt and find ways to save money, even if it’s just a few bucks each month. Over time, this will add up to a much bigger savings. When we really look at our financial situation, it is often readily apparent that there are areas of spending that we need to work on. By trimming just a few things out of your budget, that extra money can then go into savings, and will, over time, add up.

It’s incredibly important to understand your income versus expenses. Having the numbers right in front of you will help you have a much better idea of what your situation really looks like. If there is a real disparity, then you will need to address this. If you see a lot of frivolous spending, there is another area of potential savings. It is important to understand that little changes add up to make a big difference, and that often, little changes are the easiest ones to make. Little changes that allow us to save will help improve our financial health and bolster our savings accounts in no time.

If you need some help getting on the right track with savings, and need someone to look at your financial situation in any way, shape or form, call the team at IQ Accountants on the Gold Coast today on 5576 0011. We’re the ones who can help get you out of sticky financial situations!

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One of our biggest responsibilities as parents is to arm our children with the tools they will need to be successful adults. One of the often-neglected areas is personal finance. It is difficult for adults to come up with fun ways to teach kids about personal finance, until now!

How can we possibly make concepts like saving money palatable and understandable to youth? How do we make them understand that we have to work hard to earn the money we use to support them?

One of the biggest pieces of advice when it comes to teaching kids about finances, is that the sooner you start the better the outcome will likely be. It is much easier to start promoting financial literacy to a child than it is to a teenager.

Teach the value of money through allowance

A great way to help illustrate the concept of money valuation and the importance of saving, is to give a child allowance and help them use that to meet a financial goal.

Say for example, that your child wants a new video game console. Giving the child allowance for the completion of certain tasks, and helping them understand the need to save that money until there is enough to get what they want is a powerful teaching tool. They remember the labor they put into earning the money and how long it took to accumulate what they needed.

This will help them understand that they have to expend effort to earn money, and that things they want cannot be immediately purchased – they must save up first. It makes it easier to keep a child’s understanding of how money works in the realm of reality.

It also helps to prepare the child for the future where what they are saving for (i.e. a car) is a much bigger investment than things they wanted as children. They will have to make long-term goals in order to get what they want, and allowance and goal setting will give them these skills, which will help them in the short- and long-term.

Finance-related simulation games

Games can actually be helpful at teaching your children about finance, and they will never know they are learning as well as playing. There are tons of different simulation games where the object is to successfully manage a city, a store, an enterprise, etc, by managing taxes, expenditures, and more. While this may just seem like fun, it requires the player to evaluate their financial situation and learn to manage it effectively to keep themselves from operating at a loss in the game.

There are even specially-designed personal finance-related games that are suitable for much younger children than more complicated simulation games. Check out the internet and see what you find!

As parents, we need to ensure that we teach our children the skills they need to successfully navigate their world as adults. In addition to basic skills on how to care for oneself, personal finance is also an area that they need an in depth understanding of. Finding fun ways to teach kids about personal finance will help set them up for future life success and a healthy relationship with money – these are invaluable skills to have, and your kids will be thanking you when they realise what you’ve done for them.

If however, you yourself need a little help in the finance department, whether it be accounting and bookkeeping, taxation, or financial business services, the team at IQ Accountants can help. These are our specialised areas of expertise. Call us today on 5576 0011 and let’s discuss how we can help you!

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Sometimes, our annual budgets can seem like nothing more than wishful thinking. We want them to be well-rounded, and we want to be able to achieve everything we want to achieve. But how do we go about doing this? Follow our 5 tips to boost your business budget today to discover how you can take your budget beyond the spreadsheet.

Budgets Aren’t Always Realistic

It’s important to remember that budgets aren’t actually real. They’re just arbitrary, abstract means that we use to help us plan the future. Budgeting for greater revenue doesn’t mean that greater revenue will actually happen. Indeed, a budget has absolutely no influence on what will happen, neither in the market nor in your organisation.

The problem is that management tends to expect their process owners to take a budget and turn it into the actions that need to be taken in order to achieve the predicted results, and sometimes it doesn’t happen that way.

Make A Budget Actionable Rather Than Accurate

Budgets are often managed by finance, and for this reason we fall into the trap of believing that a budget should be accurate. But this is a misconception, and it can take you away from your business goals. A budget is instead an educated guess on what the outcome will be if everyone within the company does precisely what is expected from them. Except what is expected is usually not actually included in the budget!

To thus make your budget more actionable and to boost your business budget, don’t just budget the financial line item, put a bit more work into it and budget for the anticipated actions as well. For example, if you’re predicting a growth of 6%, you should detail how many customers are needed, as well as how much needs to be invested in advertising.

Identify The Drivers Of Financial Performance

We all know that financial performance is an outcome, therefore we can’t act on it. What we can act upon are the future financial results – or rather the things that will produce these. In this way, you can work more closely on marketing, sales, as well as the number of consumers that you need to engage with. Take a look also at how you can structure pricing better, as well as how your products can be improved. These are all known as performance drivers, which can be budgeted for and should be budgeted for.

Ignore The ‘Once A Year’ Mentality

Too many companies only measure performance drivers once a year, which can be counter-productive. Instead, boost your business budget – meaning you need to work more closely with the performance drivers all year round, so that you can make improvements and adjustments weekly – even daily. This will in turn make the organisation more proactive, productive and more effective. Eventually, it will make the yearly budget redundant and you will replace it with a perpetual budget.

Save!

One of the best ways to boost your business budget is to save on costs wherever possible. There are savings to be made in many areas, including your tax incentives and economic development, and by taking a closer look at areas you can save on costs, you will be giving your budget a timely boost.

Your business budget is important, and if you think yours is not going to help you achieve the growth revenue you want, our biggest piece of advice is that you look at overhauling your system of working. The business world is changing, with more and more businesses looking at ways to raise productivity whilst reducing waste, and by focusing on ways you can boost your business budget, your business will be more competitive.

If you’re needing help crunching numbers and figuring out a financial solution to boost your business budget, contact the geniuses at IQ Accountants Gold Coast on 5576 0011. We’ll figure out a resolution tailored just for you.

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If you have a hectic work schedule, it can be difficult to cultivate the ideal work-life balance. Many of us have tried it, and many have failed, with the result being that we take on more than we can handle and walk into the office with baby food covering our faces. That’s just the way it is sometimes!

The good news though, is that there are proven ways to balancing babies and business. Rather than work yourself into the ground trying to please everybody, you can actually manage both lives so that you are able to divide time between your home and work life, without leaving yourself exhausted and wishing you’d never been born. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the 5 steps to balancing babies and business.

Improve Your Time Management

One of the chief reasons many of us fail to work on our time management is because we don’t have the time!

But this is simply not true, and the reason we say we don’t have time to work on our time management, is because our time management skills are so terrible in the first place.

If you’re still following all this, the best way you can improve your time management before balancing babies and business, is by reading a free eBook productivity hack that helps you to work out a schedule.

Have A Rest

One of the reasons we find it hard balancing babies and business is that we work ourselves to the bone. We become cranky and overwhelmed, and by the time work has finished for the week (if it even finishes at all), we’re way too exhausted to spend time with our family. To make sure this stops happening, we suggest giving yourself a well-earned rest now and then. Take time out of your heavy work schedule to spend an hour longer with your kids in the morning, or return home from work an hour earlier.

Prioritise Your Family

You simply can’t neglect your family, this being an important rule. To make sure that you never neglect your family, a little planning is needed. So rather than saying “Hell Yes!” to everything your kids ask that they can do, make sure you don’t overcommit them. Pick and choose the activities you know you have the time for, this way you’ll never have to disappoint them.

Forget About Being Super Women

It’s 2015, the year we’re meant to be the biggest go-getters that have ever existed. People all around the globe are working more hours than ever, which is slowly but surely wearing us down.

So do yourself a favour and don’t buy into the silly idea that you have to do everything. Instead, take a step back and have a good look at your life. If you can downsize your work and commitments, do it. You’ll still be a success, but you’ll be a success without a month’s worth of laundry piling up.

Commit To Date Night

There is no doubt that Date Night is something of a fad/gimmick that has been created by the media to encourage couples to go out more and spend more money. But the thing is, Date Night actually does work for the 21st century couple who work long hours. So if you and your spouse don’t spend a whole lot of time with one another these days, why not make Date Night a regular, monthly thing? After all, you work hard for your money, so why not spoil yourself every now and then. Date night doesn’t just have to be for couples, you can include your little mini-me every now and then too.

More than anything, it’s important to remember the joy of having a family. Many go-getters in 2015 love their work so much that they forget about the people that really mean something to them. By reading this list, you’re taking the first steps to spending more quality time with the ones you love; now go and do it.

If you need some help with your financials but don’t know where to start, start by calling the team at IQ Accountants on 5576 0011. We’re the Gold Coast accountants the locals rely on. Our experienced team of accountants can provide the key accounting and business services advice and support you need.

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