Taxable income equals the portion of your earnings the government is allowed to tax. Most income is taxable, so if you have a job, odds are that whatever money you make at that job counts as taxable income.
Things that are tax-deductible, like most charitable donations, reduce the amount of your taxable income and so may reduce your tax bill.
A whistleblower is someone who finds out that a person or organization is doing something wrong and reports it to the authorities.
For example, if you’re working at a coffee shop, and you see your co-worker stealing from the cash register, telling your boss about it would make you a whistleblower. There are laws that say that you can’t be fired for being a whistleblower – so even if you get someone really important (like your boss) in trouble, they can’t fire you for telling the truth.
An investment vehicle is basically any structure or place where you put your money to try to make more money. Some examples of investment vehicles are stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
A director is someone who makes blockbuster hits, true, but the kind of director we’re talking about is someone who helps run a company. A company or organization normally has a board of directors, which is a group of men and women who are elected by shareholders or other members of the organization to oversee its activities and make major decisions about how it operates. A director is one of those board members.
The word is used in a lot of different ways, though, and it can also refer to someone at the management level in charge of… directing things!
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If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a kid with a horse and a dream and a billion dollar inheritance, now’s your chance to find out. Georgina Bloomberg, the 28-year-old daughter of the mayor of New York City, has just published a young adult book that is technically a work of fiction, but clearly based on her life in the inner circle of Manhattan heiresses.
While it’s not fair to read too far into Georgina’s life based on her book, there are some interesting themes – mostly around the unwanted fame that comes with wealth and good old arguments with dad. What do you do when your father’s fortune allows you to excel at an expensive sport – horse riding – but his business sensibility dismisses it as a career because it doesn’t pay?
It’s kind of nice to see that the tension between parents who want the best for their children and the children who want to follow their bliss is pretty much universal. No matter what your net worth.
Still trying to find your bliss? Watch our interviews with Pretty Young Professional or Ron from CareerCore to get started!
(photo: Lazurite on flickr)
Remember those frigid winter mornings when Dad would tell you to quit whining already and put on a sweater if you were so cold? Well if you haven’t figured it out by now (which, duh), he was trying to save energy (i.e. money) by keeping the thermostat low.
Today, the Japanese government is doing essentially the same thing. But… kookier.
They’re pushing a new program called “Super Cool Biz.” Participating companies are encouraged to save energy by keeping their thermostats set to 82 degrees Fahrenheit this summer. After all, the nation is still trying to manage with reduced energy availability after some of its nuclear power plants were destroyed in the tsunami. But a nice side effect will be lower electricity bills for participating companies and a smaller carbon footprint for the entire nation.
The super cool part? Shorts, sandals, and Hawaiian t-shirts are all suddenly upgraded to “business casual.” We want pictures of super cool board meetings.
How are you staying cool this summer without contributing to a scorched earth?
Welcome to American Philanthropy! The charity scene has changed quite a bit in the past 100 years – from the elite ranks of oil barons to the democracy of text donations. Learning a little about the history of philanthropy in the U.S. will help you understand the present and future – and make you a smarter philanthropist.
(credit: mandolin davis)
Your spending habits have changed in the past month, haven’t they? If you’re in the Northern hemisphere, you’re probably entering something called “summer,” which is a sure sign that wallets are creaking open after a long winter. Why? Well, basically, the days are longer, the sun is shinier, the calendar is overflowing with vacation days, and people are just generally having more fun. Which means more ways to spend that cash!
But it’s not just summer that has us pulling out our credit cards like a bunch of capitalist lemmings – the entire world economy changes with the seasons, and your money habits are a bigger part of that than you may think.
So here’s how it usually goes:
Besides the obvious expenses, like vacations and the new clothes you need now that you’re actually leaving your house in broad daylight, the warm-weather months just seem to tap into a spendy part of our brains. At least one study suggests that consumers consume more when they’re exposed to more hours of sunlight. Because they’re happier. And happy people like to buy stuff.
More specifically, Summer = sell stock & go on vacation; Fall & Winter = buy stock & hope it performs
There’s a saying on Wall Street – “Sell in May and Go Away.” It refers to a pattern of higher stock market returns from November to April and lower returns from May to October. So if your stock has done well all winter and you’re pretty sure it’s going to dip in the spring, you want to sell while it’s still high. And if you think the price is going to skyrocket again around Thanksgiving, you’ll want to snatch it up while it’s still low. Get it? Interestingly, no one can explain this pattern. (Though plenty of people are trying.)
December is hands-down the biggest fundraising month for charities. Not only are people swept up in the generous holiday spirit (and probably feeling a little guilty about all the money they’re spending on pie and presents), but December is the last time to make tax-deductible donations for the year. And since many people don’t give much (or at all) during the rest of the year, the last week of December is when nonprofits see most of their donations pour in.
Everyone has a different reason for giving in winter, but a common one is that donors are busy going on vacation and spending money on themselves in the spring and summer. And who knows? Maybe there’s something about the bitterness of winter that makes people think more about world suffering.
Do you see your own money behavior in any of these trends? More importantly, do you want to make your financial decisions based on the weather? After all, charities depend on donations year-round, and we all know you can’t really time the market.
If you’ve been unconsciously following the crowd, ask yourself: is this how you want to spend (grow, and give) your summer?