Income Report for August 2024

0:00Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation, JLD here. And guess what? We are back for another income report. This is August of 2024. And again, this is going to be our second in a row of just a laid back casual income report. It's just going to be a little extra bonus, a little extra double coming at you because we've been traveling since July 27th. We don't actually return to Puerto Rico until October 12th. So the next income report We'll be in the more traditional side of things, but until then, we're just having some fun. And our August 2024 income at a glance, the gross income for August was$143 ,642.

0:42Our total expenses were$9 ,584 for a total net profit of$134 ,058, which was a$24 ,000 decrease from July, but still a solid month. with our percentage of net profit, overall gross revenue of a cool 93%. We have some really fun things to talk about today. I'll be talking about the interview of the month. We'll be talking about our time in Maine. Kate has always had some value bombs that she'll be dropping. But first, we're going to be talking to Mr. CPA on fire himself, Ron. He is going to be breaking down understanding tax deadlines and extensions. These are things, Fire Nation, that you want to know because penalties can come for not understanding these deadlines and properly using extensions.

1:34So Ron, say what's up to Fire Nation and take it away. Hello, John, and hello, Fire Nation. This is Ron Parisi with CPA on Fire for your August 2024 tax and accounting tip. Hey, Fire Nation, great to be back with you. I know some of you out there may have not filed your 2023 tax returns yet. And that's the topic for this month. It's kind of a dual topic. One is extensions. What happens when you file for an extension? Whether that changes when you need to pay your taxes? And then I also want to talk about the kickoff of your tax planning season. And I'm not talking about 2024. I'm talking about next year.

2:19Big proponent for long-term tax planning, strategy, analysis, and planning. So let's get off with it here. So basically, again, let's review deadlines. If you filed an extension this past spring, a partnership or an S-corp, those returns now are due September 15th. and if you're a C-Corp or your individual returns are due October 15th and you needed to file those extensions by six months earlier than those dates so March 15th for S-Corps and partnerships and then by April 15th for C-Corps and your personal returns your 1040s. Just a quick reminder sidebar when are taxes due right the actual payment of taxes Obviously, it depends on what type of entity you are, what you have going on, how much you paid in taxes last year.

3:19But essentially, if you are an entrepreneur, if you're a business owner, most likely you need to be paying quarterly taxes. So that means four times a year, starting on April 15th. and then what happens is by the end of the following April 15th you need to make your last payment so that means that April 15th in 2024 you need to make your last payment meaning you need to pay your entire tax bill for 2023 and what I call the double whammy and then you also have to pay your Q1 tax for 2024 by you filing an extension this is a very important point that a lot of people misconstrue is by you filing an extension that doesn't give you an extension to pay.

4:08That only gives you an extension to file your tax returns. So here we are in mid-September, right? Those of us with S-Corps and partnerships, right? The deadline's coming up September 15th, and then our personal returns and NAC Corps are due on extension by October 15th. So, And in my mind, hopefully that clears up when your tax returns need to be filed, when your extensions need to be filed, and when your taxes need to be paid. But for me, coming up October 15th, that's usually a signal for me to start planning with my clients. And like I mentioned, not this year. Yes, we're wrapping up. you know, what is our strategies, our planning for 2024, making sure kind of we land a plane, right?

5:03Making sure that we have the extension or the quarterly payments figured out, whether we're doing an accountable plan, retirement plan, figuring out potential bonuses to be paid by the end of the year, right? Just again, just trying to land the plane for our 2024 tax strategies. But this time of year and starting in October, early November, we really start looking at, okay, what did your company, how did you guys do this year, right, in 2024? And what are we looking to do in 2025? And then what strategies, you know, based on volume, profitability, you know, maybe different ventures that you have going on.

5:49what are sort of the strategies that we're going to implement in 2025 and beyond. And this is the right time, right, to really be looking at that. And because there's what I call a little, you know, I always talk about levers, right, pulling certain levers for tax strategy. But there's also a little pull, you know, give and take as we come down to the end of the year and what strategies do we take advantage of this year compared to next year, what deductions, looking for investment, potentially harvesting some losses, if we're looking to take some gains this year, depending on what your view on the market is, if there's some risks that you want to eliminate or hedge against.

6:38So there's a lot of different strategies as we come to the end of the year and we look at what's available for us in 2024 and what's available for us in 2025 and beyond. So just for you guys, Fire Nation, not only, hey, this is the tax filing season, but it also brings about the tax planning season. So keep that in mind when you're talking with your tax professionals. And if you're looking for a really good one, CPA on fire is there as well. Hopefully this was an informative session for you, Fire Nation. Always a pleasure being with you. until next time, wish you the best and I'll see you on the other side.

7:19Thank you. As always, Ron, thank you for rocking the mic for Fire Nation. And please, Fire Nation, if you have any accounting needs, any needs at all in this department, just go to cpaonfire.com. Check out what they have going on there. Email Ron directly, ron at cpaonfire.com. He is here for you, for Fire Nation, to help you as we navigate these waters. Now, let's talk about the interview of the month. I interviewed Michael Kaufman. He's actually a fellow Palmas Del Mar resident, so I loved that aspect of it. I've gotten to know Michael pretty well over the last year or so, and to have him on the show was really cool.

7:58And we talked about building an unbreachable brand fortress through power warranty marketing. Kind of sounds like a mouthful, but man, this was such a powerful interview for so many reasons. One of the value bombs was when you build something of true value, someone else is almost always going to try to topple down your kingdom. It's just true, Fire Nation. Build something that's not just valuable, but that's also formidable. I'm always talking about that moat, Fire Nation. How the higher the barrier, the lower the competition. Such cool and important stuff to think about. Another value bomb was how it's not worth offering the warranty if it's not effective.

8:33You really need a warranty and a business model that is staggeringly impressive, but also from a profit protective stance. Something really key to think about. And the third thing is that there is a cost to the warranty, but what's the cost on the other side of not fulfilling the warranty properly? You're losing way more on that end than you're gaining by making that process difficult and having them as part of that process. So Fire Nation, some of this may not make 100 % sense in this context, but as we go through the whole interview with Michael, he just breaks it down beautifully. And these are key things that we need to be thinking about for our business.

9:13Now we're going to talk about our month in Maine. It was an absolute joy. It was an absolute delight to go back to the state of my birth, which is a town called Alfred and Lyman, Maine. I grew up in both of those towns, which are right next to Kennebunk, Maine, which a lot of people have heard of. I specifically grew up on Kennebunk Pond. So my parents have a really cool lake house there that we get to enjoy while we're visiting Maine. And it was Bo's first time in Maine, which was a really cool experience to take him back to the place of my youth, of my origin, and get to show him around the lakes, the mountains, the oceans, and everything else that Maine has to offer.

9:53But I'm going to pass over to Kate now so that she can take our Maine month away. What's up, Fire Nation? Excited to be on the mic again with you. and wow, all the way in September already. I cannot believe I'm starting to see Halloween stuff in the stores. John, speaking of which, we need to figure out what our costume's going to be for Halloween. John never wants to do partner costumes with me, but I told him now that we have a son that we have to do something that is related. So stay tuned for that. But yes, in August, our travels in Maine continued. Last month in our income report, we shared a few snaps and a quick recap of what we had been up to in Maine.

10:38And August brought more fun in the sun. We spent, as John said, a lot of time at the lake. We visited a couple of different beaches, Wells Beach and also a Gunkwit Beach. And Bo definitely loved the sand. He was very much digging being out in the cool air, but he wasn't a huge fan of the ocean, even though he loves the water so much. He's splashing around in the lake like crazy, but it's either the temperature or the waves. We're not really sure which one. It could have been a combination of both, but we still had a great time. We spent the first couple of weeks pretty stationed at the lake house, enjoyed our morning walks, our daily dips in the lake, afternoon trips to the park.

11:25As John said, it was pretty cool to take Bo to this park because this is a park that John grew up going to. So that was really neat. And mid August, we packed our bags, we headed to Portland for four nights. That was also really great because not only did John and I live in the old port there, but that is actually the birthplace of entrepreneurs on fire. That was really cool to kind of revisit our stomping grounds there. We walked around a ton, took Bo on a bunch of walks. We did a fun night out, actually. We had a date night with John's sister and her husband. That was very fun. And yeah, then we did our agunquot trip.

12:07We got together with a bunch of John's college buddies and their families. So gosh, I think we had about 14 or 15 kiddos all gathered together for a barbecue and pool day. And Bo absolutely loved that. If there's one thing that he loves more than anything, it's watching other kids play. and he got to do that all day long. And then our stay in Agunqua Beach was great. We have a ton of pictures of us hanging out at the beach, walking around Portland, visiting Kennebunk Port. Beau is the best travel partner. He has been so great on this trip, such a champ and we are just having a blast. We are now here in September in San Diego but we'll talk more about that in next month's income report.

12:53and we hope that you're enjoying following along our travels. One question that we get asked a lot when we talk about traveling for an extended period of time is managing work while traveling and that is definitely a great topic. It's something that we work really hard at because our location independence and lifestyle freedom is definitely a top priority for us. So I did do just kind of a little breakdown in the income report of how we manage work while we're traveling. So if you want to check that out, definitely head over to the income report, eofire.com forward slash income 132. There's also a ton of great pictures from our travels over there.

13:35So definitely check that out. Kate, as always, thank you for rocking the mic. And as we're speaking right now, we're actually enjoying the next 33 day adventure of our trip here in San Diego, specifically Mission Beach. And we're right in the bay. We're having some fun. So the next income report. We'll have some great pictures of that, but you need to look at these pictures that Kay's posted at eofire.com slash income132. They are so fun. They're so epic. We got beach, we got lake, we got a lot of cool things, city vibes. I mean, Bo is just all over the place having fun. So what is our 2024 income breakdown for August?

14:11Well, our products and service income brought in$141 ,184. We did 45 total sales of our journals. We also did over$4 ,000 in Podcasters Paradise. Our podcast sponsorships brought in$835 ,000. Our affiliate income was over$2 ,400. And that was just a great month for all of those things. For a total gross income of$143 ,642. Now, our expenses were there as always, but we have continued to work on trimming those down to just what we actually need to bring it to a total of$9 ,584. And we list all of our expenses at eofire.com slash income 132. And as I'm looking at some of these things, I'm actually thinking, you know what, Kate, we need to sit down and maybe trim down a couple other things because, hey, why not always be trimming when possible?

15:05So our net profit was$134 ,058. And I am going to say, what a month. As we traveled, our business was still humming along. Thanks to you, Fire Nation. So we hope that we're continuing to add value to what you're doing. And I'll let Kate take this home with her biggest lesson learned, regrets in business. The biggest lesson learned for this month, as John said, regrets in business. So I was thinking of this because I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about business. And she was talking about things that she wished she had done earlier on, and things that maybe could have helped her grow her business better or faster.

15:42And my immediate response was, well, that's not really fair for you to be regretting these things because what you know now, you never would have known back then. So you can't really beat yourself up or get down on yourself for things that you know now because you wouldn't have known them had you not learned those lessons. and I know that it's easy to look back and wish that you had done things differently. I've been there many, many times but I also think that when you do look back, it's so important to see how things could have played out differently because it reminds us of the lessons that we've learned and some of those lessons come as a result of us making mistakes and maybe because we took risks and leaps of faith without knowing how things would turn out.

16:30That's how we learn, that's how we grow. So bottom line, those lessons learned should help empower you to make better decisions moving forward, not have regrets about the way that you've done things, because everything is one step forward on our journey. Everything's bringing us one step closer to where we're supposed to be, us realizing our path, us finding out what that next step on our journey is. So just a little reframe for anyone out there who's maybe feeling like they could have done something differently. Go ahead and use that information and move forward. No looking back, just moving forward with those lessons that you've learned.

17:07And Fire Nation, thank you so much for joining us for another income report. Again, lots of great stuff over at eofire.com forward slash income 132. Until next month, keep your fire burning.