Entries Tagged 'Entrepreneurship' ↓

Welcome to the 55th edition of The Carnival of Money Stories. It’s that time of the year again. In Vietnam they are celebrating the national holiday of Gio to Hung Vuong, but here in the United States it is time for all of us to hand in our tax forms. I just begrudgingly mailed out my tax forms with payment, but today’s carnival certainly cheered me up. We have nearly 30 great stories about life and money. Enjoy!

Editor’s Choice

Praveen writes that The IRS Are Humans, Too… at My Simple Trading System. Apparently you don’t have to be freaked out when you receive a letter from the IRS.

Will presents Rogue Debt Collectors Illegally Freeze Debtors’ Accounts posted at Your Finish Rich Plan. This is a scary story of debt collectors who would freeze pension statements.

Silicon Valley Blogger tells us I’ve Left My Job! Tying Up The Loose Ends posted at The Digerati Life. I am so jealous!

Booze Tax

Kyle from Amateur Asset Collector gives us Top 4 Money Wasters in Your 20s. It seems like Kyle paid a bit too much taxes on alcohol when he was in his twenties.

Mr. Cheap presents Cross Border Shopping posted at Quest For Four Pillars. This is Mr. Cheap’s story about the tariffs he had to pay on hard liquor. That will teach him to be a cheap boozehound.

Gas Tax

The rising cost of gas is really cutting into many of our pocketbooks. Here are some stories. about how gas affects people.

MoneyKing presents Ditch That Huge SUV! Blah. Blah ,

Financial Learn presents The Frustration of High Gas Prices posted at Financial Learn.

Business

Mark Butler presents My Big Fat Learning Experience: Vending Machines posted at The Butler Project. We can all learn quite a bit from this story of entrepreneurship.

Career

FFB presents Four Ways I Upgraded Out Of My Raises posted at Free From Broke. More money means more taxes, but it doesn’t have to mean more expenses.

Life. Money. Development. presents The 7 Attributes of Leadership posted at Life. Money. Development.

Credit Cards

FIRE Finance presents UAL Visa Story! posted at FIRE Finance.

Ryan Taylor presents How Much I Make in Cash Back Credit Card Rewards posted at Millionaire Money Habits.

Hank presents The age old question: How many credit cards should I have? posted at My Investing Blog.

Debt

Here are two stories about snowflaking! You can get rid of debt one flake at a time and these two stories illustrate how you can do it, too.

NtJS presents What is: Debt-Snowflaking? posted at not the jet set.

paidtwice presents How I Started Snowflaking at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already….

Investing

Passive Income Investor presents Cheney Betting Against The Dollar posted at LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME.

MoneyNing presents Financial Cost of Being Careless posted at Personal Finance Blog by Money Ning.

The Dough Roller presents Reader Question: Should $15,000 be invested in P2P Lending or in a Better Mortgage? posted at The Dough Roller.

Net Worth

Want to retire early? These stories of people who managed to accumulate a huge net worth at a relatively young age.

PT presents Where Are They Now? Podcast Interview with a Millionaire in the Making: Todd French posted at Prime Time Money.

GBlogger presents Success Stories: $800,000 Net Worth By His Early 40s? posted at CAN I GET RICH ON A SALARY.

Real Estate

Dorian Wales presents How to Successfully Navigate Your Way through Home Renovations: 10 Practical Tips posted at Personal Financier.

Retirement

Amy presents Yale’s Investment Wizard posted at My Daily Dollars.

Saving

FMF presents Do You Buy Things and Never Use Them? posted at Free Money Finance

Other

Chief Family Officer presents Why I Decided Not To Join Revolution MoneyExchange posted at Chief Family Officer. The loose privacy policy prompted Chief Family Officer to not join the new PayPal clone. I haven’t joined either, because I’m just not really into having another financial account.

First Lady Of Poker presents Women Are Naturals At Poker posted at Shopping and Poker Blog. This is an interesting story about why women can beat men at poker.

The Financial Blogger presents We Are Living In A Good Country.

Raymond presents U-Haul Rental Trucks Suck But They Are The Cheapest Around posted at Money Blue Book.

Jeremy Zongker presents All I Really Needed to Know About Managing Money I Learned From Music posted at Debt Advice.

Madison presents Applying the Five Fundamentals of Financial Success posted at My Dollar Plan.

That is all for this edition of the Carnival of Money Stories. Thank you all for participating and a link back to the carnival is always appreciated. If you have more stories you can always submit it to the next carnival which is being held at Can I Get Rich on a Salary. This is a relatively new blog that is very well written. Now if you haven’t already, go out and file your taxes!

Photo Credit: Paul Keleher 

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If I had a nickel for everytime I heard the phrase “if we go IPO…”, I could probably buy a nice video game. I have been working in private companies since I graduated college and everywhere I go engineers are dreaming of their companies going IPO and becoming the next Google. I am sorry to be a party pooper but the fact is that very few companies become public, and even if they do it’s very unlikely that rank and file workerbees like me would become fabulously rich. These are the lessons I have learned about stock options and I would like to list the reasons why most people don’t become rich off them.

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Today I was reading an article about America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs and once again it made me think about starting my own business.

When I think about it, I already have a lot of things that could help me in a business venture. Here’s a list:

• I am young and I could afford to take a bit of risk.
• I have quite a bit of experience working at startups.
• I have a degree in engineering and I am fairly capable with web technologies.
• I am fluent in Chinese and English and could possibly source products and services from China.
• My parents are financial professionals and could help me with the accounting
• I have a good network of contacts in the Silicon Valley through jobs and school.
• I have a hubby that is usually pretty supportive

Then there are the hurdles I need to overcome to actually go ahead and start something:

• I need an idea for a business that could be profitable
• I need to get over the fact that I would probably not make money right away.
• Eventually I need to give up my job and work on my business full time.
• I need to get over my fear of failure since most small businesses fail and I absolutely abhor losing or failing at anything .
• I need to get off my butt and execute my idea once I have one.

I think the biggest hurdles for me are that I may fail and I may lose a stable income while I focus my energy on my own business. Coming up with a business idea isn’t very hard because I firmly understand that I just have to sell a product or service that people want and it really doesn’t have to be a complex “web 2.0″ idea. The business could be as simple as buying useless cheap crap from China and selling it to people here at a markup. In fact, a lot of people and companies make billions of dollars doing this. My business doesn’t have to be huge and glamorous so coming up with an idea is easy. I have dabbled in quite a few “businesses” where I sold very mundane things and I did make small buckets of money. However, I always quit because they became too time consuming and my full time job paid much better. Running a business takes a lot of work and most of the time it is easier just collecting a stable salary. I think my mom also said that she always wants her own business, but after calculating everything she found that collecting a salary is just less of a hassle.

It is hard to convert from a wage-slave to a capitalist, and I think for me that is the hardest part about starting a business. If I did get really serious about having my own business I think I could do very well. The problem is that I may never get started.

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