Category Archives: Planning

• Celebrities Behaving Badly

  Posted on 07/25/2017 in Planning, Taxes

  One day back in March, 2002, Us Weekly editor Bonnie Fuller spotted a photo of actress Drew Barrymore bending over to pick a coin off the ground. A light bulb flipped on over her head, and on April 1, her magazine debuted a brand-new photo feature that changed the paparazzi game forever. We’re talking, of course, about “Stars — They’re Just Like Us.” (Of course, they’re still not quite just like us . . . how many photographers are fighting to catch pictures of us picking up our dry cleaning, filling up our gas tanks, or trying to pick the ripest avocado at Whole Foods?) Here’s something else the stars share with us. They don’t want to waste money on taxes they don’t have to pay. And since they tend to make more money than we do, they tend to owe more taxes. So that pain over unnecessary tax is greater for them than it is for us! (Who says money solves all your problems?) But sometimes they go a little too far to pay less. And that’s when they discover our friends at the IRS lying in wait. Here’s the problem: the IRS doesn’t have nearly enough money to…

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• Cash Cushion

  Posted on 07/19/2017 in Business, Planning

  There is an old saying that Cash is King.  I remember watching a movie once where one of characters said I believe in the Golden Rule – He who has the Gold Rules. Cash for a business is like oxygen for us humans.  Without cash a business will start to suffocate and soon die.  In order to keep a business alive cash should be constantly coming in so the business can breathe.  A business cannot be healthy without a steady stream of cash. Most businesses experience some seasonality in they income and expenses.  Realtors will tend to be more busy during the summer months when there are more people buying and selling their homes.  Retail businesses may be busier in November and December when people are buying gifts for Christmas. Let’s look at a retail business as an example.  The business needs to increase its inventory at the end of October so that it can benefit from increased customer demand during the November and December busy season.  In order to purchase the extra inventory, the business has to two options: Purchase inventory with existing cash Borrow the money Borrowing has the benefit of enabling one to get the funds so…

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• Accountants Behaving Badly

  Posted on 07/11/2017 in Planning

  Actress Alyssa Milano first gained fame playing Tony Danza’s daughter on the television sitcom Who’s the Boss. The show ran for eight seasons, snagged ten Emmy and five Golden Globe nominations (winning one of each), and established Milano as a bone fide teen idol. While her star has dimmed since then, she continues to work in Hollywood and seems to be one of the few child stars in recent memory to grow into adulthood without well-publicized trips to rehab or jail. Today, Milano is as busy as a bumblebee. So she and her husband, agent David Bugliari, employed a business manager to handle “the details.” Usually those relationships proceed without trouble. But that’s not the case with Milano, who just sued her manager, CPA Kenneth Hellie, for $10 million. Milano says the relationship first soured with “a home improvement debacle.” She and her husband bought their Ventura County home in 2013 with plans to spend $1.1 million remodeling it. They wound up spending $5 million on the house which is now worth $3 million. (That odd math may not sound implausible to anyone else who’s done a gut rehab!) But Milano soon discovered that Hellie had made eight late mortgage…

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