Category Archives for Saving Money & Frugal Living
Should I Purchase Pet Health Insurance?
The story below came in from Jim, a subscriber of this blog, who also partcipates in dog fostering.
During a recent visit to the animal emergency hospital (the foster dog was having seizures), the doctor at the hospital informed Jim that it would be at least $2,000 – $4,000 just to stabilize and treat the dog’s condition.
Unfortunately, when the costs are this high to treat a dog’s condition, the question then becomes whether or not the dog should be euthanized. This is a very tough choice to make, especially since that magnitude of money can be used to save many other dogs out there that are being put to sleep each day in shelters around the country.
While dog owners can be argue that it is slightly easier to make this decision with rescue dogs that haven’t been in your family for years and years, it none-the-less got me thinking about the cost of pet health-care.
Previously on this blog, I have covered several aspects/issues involving ownership of dogs, cats, and pets in general. A summary of these topics and links to the articles I have written can be accessed below:
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My Personal Finance Journey Pet-Related Articles
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Pets becoming less of functional “tool” and more of a friend, companion, and part of the family.
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Because of this deeper connection, pet owners are now more likely to fork over large portions of cash to keep their pet alive.
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The rising cost of health care in general.
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Even though there has been a lot of media coverage in recent years about the rising cost of health care and pharmaceuticals, I believe that people tend to forget that these costs have directly carried over to veterinarian clinics as well. In fact, if you look at the parent companies of most of the animal health products, they are the same companies that provide their products to humans.
- Non-lifetime coverage insures the pet for most conditions suffered by their pet during the course of a policy year but, on renewal in a following year, a condition that has been claimed for will be excluded.
- Lifetime coverage covers a pet for ongoing conditions throughout the pet’s lifetime so that, if a condition is claimed for in the first year, it will not be excluded in subsequent years.
- Dog
- Cat
- Birds and exotic pets
- Accidents
- Illnesses
- Lab tests
- Surgeries
- Cancer
- Hospitalization
- Major medical dog insurance policy
- Monthly premium
- $500 deductible, $22 premium
- $250 deductible, $27 premium
- $100 deductible, $31 premium
- Maximum yearly benefit = $14,000
- Routine care amendment to policy
- $22 extra per month. Wow!
- Category A –
- Are the type of person that will feel emotionally destroyed if your pet died from a medical condition that you could not afford to treat.
- Category B –
- Are the type of person that believes that pets should be loved while they are alive, but that if they get hurt, it is just their time.
If you fall in to Category B, I would say that should not buy pet insurance.
If you fall in to Category A, you should think about doing the following steps:
- Examine the list of costs for common health problems at the link below for your pet.
- If you cannot readily afford to pay the costs for severe problems that may come up (like a slipped spinal disc), you should purchase pet insurance.
What are the key things to watch out for?
What Taxes Do You Have To Pay on eBay and Amazon Sales?
In the past, I have featured several articles (shown below) about how to earn a side income selling items on eBay and/or Amazon.
- Comparison of Selling on eBay and Amazon
- Describes the postive and negative aspects of the selling experiences on Amazon and eBay (fees, customer service, user interface/features, etc).
- Unlock Extra Money Around Your House By Selling Your Unused Items on eBay
- Describes several simple steps you can take to ensure your items sell on eBay.
Overall, using the advice in these two articles can get you started and fairly proficient at selling items online.
However, several more advanced question topics were not answered in these posts.
For example, at what level of income from eBay/Amazon sales do you need to go “legit” and report your income to the government/pay taxes? When do you need to pay state-specific taxes?
These questions will be the subjects of today’s post. Let’s get started!
At what level of sales income do you have to report/pay taxes?
In my mind, there are really two categories you will fall in if you are selling items on eBay/Amazon – 1) you will be doing it as a home business and have a state sales tax ID number already (see previous post – My Personal Finance Journey – How to Start a Business – for more information) or 2) you will be doing it on the side, only selling items every-so-often throughout the year.
If you have a business selling items on eBay and/or Amazon…
If you fall in to this category, the rules are fairly easy.
As can be seen in the link below, you have to report your income / pay taxes if your net profits (so sales – all costs involved) exceed $400 per year. Pretty simple right?
SSA.gov – How Much Do You Have To Earn Before You Have To Pay Taxes If You Are Self-Employed?
If you are just selling items on the side, unofficially…
If you do not have an official business set up, are selling items on eBay/Amazon, and your earnings are slowly beginning to add up, it’s time think about if you need to report your earnings to the IRS.
However, when does it become mandatory? In other words, when do you risk being audited if you do not report that source of income? The answer to this is quite tricky.
Officially, the IRS’s rules are that any and all income, whether personal or business, should be reported as income. However, at what point does the amount of income hit the IRS’s radars?
After looking around on the internet, unfortunately, I have to report that I was not able to find a specific income level at the IRS will penalize you. This is probably due to the fact that they want all income to be reported.
The only guidance I could find was similar to that shown at the link below. Essentially, it states that if you conduct your selling similar to a business (i.e. if you spend signficant time and purchase items specifically for resale on eBay instead of using them yourself), you should report your earnings.
Taxes and eBay Sales – eBay.com
I think this approach does make a lot of sense. For example, back in 2006, I was actively purchasing items from distributors, retailers, and 2nd hand stores only to resell on eBay. It is plainly obvious that this would be a case where you cannot hide the fact that you are making money from eBay. Therefore, I reported my earnings are self-employment income.
Even though I did not find this to be official guidance listed in any source documentation, another thing to think about relates to the amount of the standard deduction and personal exemptions you are allowed to file on your taxes.
For example, if you are single and not listed as a dependent on someone else’s taxes, you get the standard deduction ($5,700) plus your exemption ($3650). This means that you pay no tax on the first $9350 that you make.
What does this mean for eBay/Amazon sellers? It means that your probability of flying under the IRS’s radar increases if your income from your sales is lower than these levels (However, still not totally advisable to do this practice).
When do you have to pay state sales tax?
The answer to this question is much more straight forward, fortunately.
You only have to pay state sales taxes whenever you sell/ship an item to someone in the same state as you.
Proof of this can be seen in looking at a product by any top rated Powerseller on eBay. For example, let’s look at the one I picked at random – BananaRoad, at the link below.
Top Rated eBay Seller – BananaRoad
If you click on one of his/her items and look at the shipping specifics, you can see that the “Seller charges sales tax for items shipped to: OH (6.75%).” What this means is that BananaRoad’s business is based in Ohio, and therefore, has to pay Ohio state sales tax for items bought by people in the same state.
I hope this article clarifies some of the confusion that can result from online selling and gets you thinking about if you need to change your method of tax operations going forward.
Thanks for reading!
How about you all out there? How do you all handle sales on eBay/Amazon and paying taxes? Do you sell items on eBay as a business or just a hobby?
Track Your Spending for 7 Days – Save Big Money
My Personal Finance Journey Homepage
, the author, David Bach introduced the idea of the Smart Couples’ 7-Day Financial Challenge. Since I found this Challenge of value, I wanted to share it with you all tonight.
Background
What is the 7-Day Challenge?
Essentially, the 7-Day Challenge is a personal finance exercise that you can go through where you will religiously track each and every purchase you make for a 7 day period.
The idea is that after you have kept track of your purchases for 7 days, you will then have a good idea about certain areas where you are either 1) spending excessively or 2) can identify as the Latte Factor previously discussed.
My Personal Finance Journey 7-Day Challenge
In his book, David pretty much ends his description of the financial challenge there. However, I feel that several minor modifications can be made to make it a more worthwhile experience.
Since corny phrases are very catchy, we will coin the modified exercise the My Personal Finance 7-Day Challenge.
Steps to complete the Challenge
To move through this exercise, just follow the easy steps outlined below:
- For 7 days, record each and every purchase you make in the Google Docs spreadsheet I put together at the link below. Do not change your spending habits just because you are doing this exercise.
- To obtain a copy that you can edit and use to track your own spending, simply save the document as an Excel file on your computer.
- In the spreadsheet above, there are 6 categories to place each purchase under. Please feel free to adapt these categories as you see fit for your specific situation.
- Entertainment
- Housing
- Transportation
- Investing/Donations
- Food
- Miscellaneous
- The spreadsheet will automatically generate 1) the total amount you spent during the period and 2) the pie chart and % breakdown of where you spent your money.
- Once you have your pie chart generated, take an in-depth look your spending. Look for patterns and areas where you may be spending too much. Listed below are some questions to help get you thinking.
- Do you spend 70% of your money on food? How can that be reduced?
- Are you spending too much going out to eat?
- Are your tabs at the bar costing you $500 per week?
- Etc…
Once you have gone through your results, post a comment and let me know how it goes!
What categories were you spending too much in? Did you find your Latte Factor? Do you know any one else who falls in to these habits of spending?
My Personal Finance Journey
Learning for Life
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Is It Good To Give Your Children An Allowance?
Recently, while reading a section of the book titled, Young Bucks – How to Raise a Future Millionaire
, by Troy Dunn, I came across a very interesting section on the ongoing debate of whether or not it is best to give your children an allowance while they are growing up. This topic will be subject of discussion in today’s post.
If you were like most children (me included), one of the things you looked forward to most was receiving an allowance at a regular interval of once every week or two.
The intended aim behind the allowance was twofold – 1) for you to be able to buy things that you want and 2) to teach you to begin thinking of managing your own money.
I am in agreement with the first element of the aim of an allowance. If I ever do have children, one of the things that I would want them to experience is being able to have access to certain opportunities to increase their happiness.
However, it is the opinion of this blogger and Troy Dunn in his book referenced above that too many times, instead of teaching children how to manage money, the receipt of an allowance only teaches a child 1) how to spend, 2) rely on their parents for funding, and 3) become accustomed at a young age that it is better to earn a steady salary than invest money to start and grow a business.
If money is simply handed to a child each week, it is my belief that it is seen as more of a gift, instead of what it actually is in the real world: compensation for work done (just as it is at your full time job).
Item #3 above is a big topic discussed in the Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad
series. In his books, Kiyosaki states there there are three ways to become rich. You either have to inherit wealth, marry wealth, or create it yourself. And, he mentions that the largest percentage of people create wealth by starting businesses that create value for other people.
Because of this, Kiyosaki believes that the primary goal of parents should be to encourage their children to start something that helps others from a young age, instead of teaching them that the solution to life is going to college, getting a good education, and becoming reliant on a salary their entire life. And, by giving them an allowance, parents are merely teaching them at an early age that receiving a regular salary is the way of life.
I agree partially with Kiyosaki on this. I believe that it is beneficial to expose children to the idea of creating something of their own.
However, I also I believe that working for a salary is a good way to gain experience and learn the skills that may be necessary to start the type of business you want to. In addition, I see nothing wrong with working for a salary if you are doing the type of job you love.
An alternative to an allowance – Give your children the most powerful gift of all: the gift of want
In Troy Dunn’s book, he encourages parents to (as an alternative to just giving children an allowance) give their children the gift of want by teaching them to earn the money they need to buy what they want themselves.
By doing this, the children will get used to the idea of creating value for others being the key to obtaining what they want in life as well.
If I really think about it, the gift of want was probably the best gift that my parents gave me. They inspired me to always want to learn more and make more of myself, and for that, I am very thankful.
Troy mentions that this can be done in several ways. First, if they are old enough to be employed part-time, they can obtain a job. However, if they are too young to be employed, parents can help them to create their own businesses.
What are some examples of these businesses that children can create?
Troy describes in great detail many of potential businesses. However, several of them are listed below. Think lemonade stand type ideas!
- Scrubbing and cleaning tile floors and showers in people’s bathrooms
- Selling items of eBay
- Having garage sales
- Preparing meals from customer’s own recipes
- Convert old VHS tapes to DVDs.
- And more!
Keep on learning!
Jacob
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How To Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft
, I came across a great sections with several tips/action steps that I could perform to help safeguard myself against one of the worst crimes of all, identity theft. 
Another way to prevent identity prowlers from stumbling upon old papers/statements with your personal information on them is to prevent the papers from being sent to you in the first place.
If you’re like most people, you receive hundreds of “pre-approved” bank, credit card, and loan offers every year in the mail. Of course, all of these are unsolicited, unwanted, and a nuisance. However, if you are not careful, they can even become very dangerous because they contain your personal information.
Now, there is a tool offered by the three credit reporting agencies called Opt Out Pre-Screen. By clicking on the link below, or by calling 888-5-OPTOUT, you can choose not to be sent these offers permanently, or for 5 years at a time.
I hope these simple steps help to safeguard you and your family from identity theft. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Keep on learning!
Jacob
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How I Saved Myself Money With Rental Cars (And You Can Too)
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The book is great because it is nicely divided in to chapters, based on different financial “hurdles” that a person can, and probably will face in life. Examples of the topics are shown below:
• Cars
• Banking
• Credit
• Family
• Health
• Home
• Retirement
• Shopping
• Taxes
• TV and Phones
• Travel
For each of these topics, David then proceeds to discuss potential ways that people (you included) have or could be ripped off.
One of the most compelling sections of this book is about ways to save money on rental cars. I liked the content so much that I wanted to share combined advice from David’s book, and my personal experiences in an effort so everyone can benefit.
For the sake of analysis in this post, I am going to assume two scenarios of renting a car – Scenario 1) Renting a full-size car for 2 days during the workweek – June 29 through July 1st, 2010, in Richmond, VA, Scenario 2) Renting a full-size car for 2 days during the weekend – July 10-12, 2010, in Richmond, VA.
• Tip # 1 – Shopping Around
The first bit of advice that Bach offers is that prices can vary greatly between the different rental car companies.
My favorite website for doing this comparison is Kayak.com. At this site, you can type in exactly what type of car you want, and it automatically not only gives you results from Kayak’s search engine, but also pops up search results for priceline.com, hotwire.com, travelocity.com, and expedia.com. Amazing right!? Another great place to compare rates online for different rental carriers is CarRentals.com.
Another tip that David presents to us is the idea of making sure not to overlook the smaller, regional rental car companies. Names of these companies are listed below.
- ACE
- Advantage
- Fox
- Triangle
- U-haul
Often, these companies will be able to match, or beat, the rental rates of the national chains.
The rental rates for Scenario 1 for several different companies are listed below.
Scenario 1
Enterprise – $105
Budget – $110
Hertz – $113
Ace – $118
As you can see, there is a slight difference in rental rates. Clearly, this difference wouldn’t make that much of a difference for just two days, but if you were to rent for longer, the price differential would be even greater (because the rental rates are per day).
Enterprise is the cheapest, followed by Budget. It is interesting to note that in this instance, the smaller rental company was actually much more expensive. Interesting!
• Tip #2 – Negotiating and Asking for Discounts
Another great piece of advice that David instills in us while reading his book is the power of simply remembering to 1) find and 2) ask for a discount.
Finding Discounts
For example, many of the most company organizations that we belong to today (AARP, Sam’s Club, AAA, Costco, gyms, and even certain companies) offer discounts on many different types of service. Usually, rental cars are included! So, be sure to ask about what discounts you can get. This goes for hotel rooms as well!
In addition to these discount offers, rental cars publish discount coupons on consumer discount websites such as Rental Codes and Rental Car Momma
Asking for Discounts
In addition to the already published offers discussed above, you should always remember to ask “are you all having any specials currently?” After all, the worst they can say is “no” right?
Another trick to use here is that after you have used a site like kayak.com to find the cheapest rental car rate, you should call the actual rental car store where you will rent from and ask, “can you give me a better rate than the website?” Many times, they will!
• Tip #3 – Renting on the Weekend
Since a large majority of the business that rental car companies get is from business travelers, they can generally charge a higher price during the week vs. the weekend. As individuals, we need to take advantage of this price differential by making every possible effort to rent on the weekend.
Listed below are the rental rates from several different companies in Scenario 2. As you can see, the rates are ~50% cheaper. Awesome!
Scenario 2
Budget – $57 (a 45% price reduction from renting during the week)
Hertz – $60
Ace – $118
This is consistent with what I have experienced as well. In a recent trip, the rental rates from Enterprise for a full size rental car were $25/day on the weekend and $59/day during the week.
• Tip # 4 – Avoid Renting at the Airport
Similarly, since demand for rental cars is higher at airports, the rental car companies charge more if you rent from these locations.
Because of this, you should always do a cost analysis to compare how much more you will pay for the convenience of renting directly from the airport. Many times (if you will be renting for more than 2 days), it will be a lot cheaper to rent from a nearby location, and then simply take a taxi to the airport.
If we perform the exact same rental car search on kayak.com from Scenario 2 above, except that we change the rental location to the airport, the results become as follows:
Scenario 2 @ the airport
Dollar – $68 (~20% increase in price from renting at a neighborhood location)
Alamo – $73
Hertz – $107
• Tip #5 – Avoid Dropping Off at a Different Location Than You Rented From
The privilege of being able to drop off the rental car at a location different from where you rented comes at a high cost.
Let’s take a look at what happens to the rental rates in Scenario 2 if we rent the car in Richmond, VA and drop it off in Baltimore, MD. The results are shown below.
Clearly, the prices vary significantly in this case, depending on which rental company you choose.
Scenario 2 w/ dropping off at a different location
Alamo – $212 (272% price increase from original Scenario 2 rate – crazy!)
National – $302
These prices are even higher than what I have experienced. In a recent trip where I rented from Enterprise, they were charging a flat $75 car drop off charge for returning the car to a location different from where it was rented.
• Tip # 6 – Avoid Buying the Insurance Coverage They Offer
This topic is extensive, and will be covered in a future post.
However, the short answer, is that most people DO NOT need to buy the coverage offered.
• Tip # 7 – Fill Up With Gas Before Returning the Car, gas 2.60 – they offer 3.90
A very easy way to get ripped off when renting a car is to forget to fill up the car’s tank with gas before returning it.
For example, when I recently rented a car from Enterprise, the going rate for gas at gas stations was $2.60/gal. However, the rate being charged for Enterprise to fill up the tank was $3.90/gal (a 50% increase in price).
In plain English, for a 16 gallon gas tank, this would mean that you would pay Enterprise $63 to fill up the tank, but you could do it yourself for just $42.
I hope these tips will be useful and you can bring a printout of this post with you next time you go to rent a car. I know I will!
Keep on learning!
Jacob
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Paying Off Credit Card Debt Through Smarter Ways
- You should use online comparison services to save on your utility bills – electricity & gas and insurance products – home, life, and cheap car insurance for women.
- You can switch to unbranded accessories, clothing, and food.
- Shop at discounted stores to save on your grocery bill. Invariably, they can offer heavy discounts like “Buy 1 get 1 free,” and so on.
- Bring a welcome change in your lifestyle. You can even consider walking or boarding a bus to your workplace instead of driving down by your car.
- In order to increase liquidity, you can even consider rent out your shop or home. This is in fact an excellent way to increase your liquidity.
- Every individual has unwanted items. So why not sell them out an online auction site? You would be amazed to know that some of the items you considered as trash could fetch sizeable amount of money when sold.
- You could even become a freelancer and start offering services online. In the quest you could make regular clients who could provide you business for an ongoing basis. Complimenting your salary with freelance work could solve your debt related concerns on the go.
- Bankers and other debt consolidators could also be contacted in order to provide cheaper cost of capital. Or they may provide a customized arrangement to ease off the debt. If debtor defaults to make a payment their credit rating may take some beating. Henceforth, availing a loan or liability would become difficult or may be impossible.
Veronica
Keep on learning!
Jacob
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Beer – Bottled vs. Canned, Wine – Corks vs. Screw Tops
In a previous post (see link below), I discussed the topic of how the cost of wine can add up to a significant sum over the years. Furthermore, I discussed that if you are smart in choosing low-priced wine, it can result in large savings over the years.
As a continuation to discussing the various financial impacts that our choice of ethanol containing beverages present, I wanted to investigate two topics that I occasionally ponder when drinking wine or beer.
Question 1 – Does bottling beer or canning beer make the drink taste better?
Until recently, I believed that all high-quality, more expensive beer was packaged in to bottles (and that only cheap beer was canned).
However, when I bought a case of Royal Weisse wheat beer from Sly Fox Brewery in Royersford, PA (it is a microbrewery that brews their own high-quality beer) about a month ago, the case consisted of 24 aluminum cans of beer instead of 24 glass bottles.
This is when I began to think that maybe, there is actually an advantage to canning beer vs. bottling it.
After doing a little research online, I found the following link, which I felt was helpful to identify the following plus’s and minus’s of bottling vs. canned beer.
Drinkfocus.com – Comparison of Different Presentations of Beer
Bottled Beer
- Has a shelf life of about 3 months.
- Have undergone rapid heat treatment of pasteurization.
- Light can penetrate bottle and cause oxidation of the beer if stored for long period of time.
Canned Beer
- Although not affected by exposure to sunlight, canned beer can still be spoiled by heat exposure.
- Canned beer can pick up a bad taste from the aluminum particles of the can in which it is stored.
- Is filtered and then heat treated by pasteurization after it is canned.
Bottom Line
- For me, the bottom line is that canning is better for beer that has to travel long distances to reach you (aka beer from national companies – Bud Light, Heineken, etc) due to it being resistant to oxidation by sunlight and bottling is better for beer that is purchased from local breweries.
Question 2 – Does a cork or screw top bottle make wine taste better?
As most people know, many less expensive wines these days are steering away from the use of corks to cap the bottles and are employing metal screw-top caps instead.
It is a common preconceived notion that these screw caps do not retain the flavor of the wine as effectively as the corks do. However, is there any proof to whether one capping method or the other preserves flavor better?
After searching for several minutes on Google, I came across the website below.
Lovetoknow.com – Wine Bottle Closures
As you can see from the article, screw top wine closures have the following benefits over traditional corks.
- Create an air-tight seal so as to not allow oxidation to occur in the wine bottle.
- Eliminate the occurrence of wine getting spoiled by bad corks.
- Easier to open. No corkscrew needed.
- Works with all types of wine.
- For me, the bottom line here is that screw top caps are the superior form of wine bottle closure for wines that are destined to be consumed in less than 2 years (short term).
Keep on learning!
Jacob
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Top 10 Highest Net Worth People and What We Can Learn From Them
Tonight’s article is another solid guest post from Alban. In his first post on My Money Blog, Alban did a great job explaining to us about five financial products that the majority of people should have. This posting gained a very high-ranking on the personal finance article website, Pfbuzz.com as well. Please see the links below for more information.
My Money Blog – 5 Financial Products Most People Need
Alban’s Post Featured on Pfbuzz.com
Please visit Aban’s website at the following link to read more of his articles! – Home Loan Finder. To become a guest poster on My Money Blog, simply email me at the address in the Contact Me section.
Top 10 Highest Net Worth People and What We Can Learn From Them
It’s not difficult to have an expensive shiny car, a big expensive house or a shiny, big, expensive TV because it is easier than ever to charge your purchases to credit and get into debt to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. However, many of the rich and famous you are trying to emulate are not truly rich either as they too have gone into debt to maintain the lifestyle which is expected of them. Instead you should be striving for the lifestyles of those with high net worth, so find out more about what it means to be truly wealthy and which famous faces make it into the top 10 high net worth people.
Net Worth is True Wealth
Calculating your net worth can be done using a simple sum, where you deduct your liabilities such as your credit card debts, personal loans, mortgage or student loans, from the value of your assets including your house, car and other investments. After deducting your liabilities from your assets you see what you are truly worth if you were to liquidate those assets today.
Unfortunately many people have a negative net worth, that is, they have more liabilities than they do assets and while these people may appear wealthy because they have the big cars, houses and TVs, if they do not have the assets and investments to back it up they simply have possessions, not true wealth. When you hear or see on the TV or in magazines that a certain celebrity is worth a certain number of millions or billions, this is the calculation of their net worth so while they may live in a mansion which is worth $10 million, they may have a mortgage on that house and personal or credit card debt so they are not really worth the full $10 million of their assets.
The 10 Highest Net Worth People
In the case of the following 10 people, their worth is calculated on the value of their assets, less the liabilities it has cost them to obtain those assets and maintain their lifestyles. The 10 highest net worth people are currently:
1) Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett has an estimated net worth of $62 billion which secures him a place at number one in this list. Buffett is the chairman and CEO of the conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway which operates in insurance, jewelry, retail, manufacturing and utilities to name just a few of their subsidiary companies.
2) Bill Gates
We all know who Bill Gates is and thanks to millions of us around the world continuing to invest in computers so we can continually curse at them, Bill Gates is estimated to be worth $58 billion.
3) Sheldon Adelson
Las Vegas Sands is the world’s premier casino-based company and as the shareholder, Adelson is worth $26 billion.
4) Larry Ellison
The multinational operations of the Oracle Corporation have helped the founder Larry Ellison accumulate a net worth of $25 billion. Oracle is a computer technology corporation which develops and markets enterprise software products such as database management systems allowing Ellison to organise his way to the fourth highest net worth listing.
5) The Waltons
The Wal-Mart stores can add something else to their already comprehensive list of products and services, as founders of the chain are enjoying a net worth of $19.2 billion each.
6) Sergey Brin
Where do you go when you have a question? Google. And it is that unanimous answer which has secured the co-founder of Google worth of $18.6 billion.
7) Larry Page
Unlike the co-founder in the number 10 spot of this list, as a co-founder of Google Larry Page is equally worth $18.6 billion.
8) Charles and David Koch
Charles and David are the co-founder and executive president respectively of Koch Industries which works in manufacturing, trading and investments. Both are worth $17 billion.
9) Michael Dell
With computers and technology taking a strong spot in this net worth list, the chairman and CEO of Dell Inc is worth a respectable $16.4 billion.
10) Paul Allen
Paul Allen is an entrepreneur and the much less wealthy co-founder of Microsoft worth just $16 billion. Perhaps he didn’t get the 50-50 split that the Google guys were able to negotiate, or perhaps his mortgage is just a lot bigger than Bill’s.
You will notice from this list that every person has worked hard to build their own net worth, rather than basing it on family fortunes, or getting caught up in debt. While you may not be able to accumulate a net worth in the billions, you can still be aware of what you are worth to put your debts and possessions in perspective.
Thanks for reading.
Alban is a personal finance writer. He offers tips to maximise net worth through investment and helps people to compare investment home loans.
Keep on learning!
Jacob
Save Yourself 50% On Your Monthly Bills With a 5 Minute Phone Call
Yesterday, a reminder popped up on my Microsoft Outlook calendar that the 6-month $38/month “promotional” pricing period for my high speed internet service was expiring on June 4th of this year. On June 4th, it was slated to resume the “normal” pricing program of $60 per month.
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Billed @ $38 per month – (after asking for discount)
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Total Cost = $4,560
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Billed @ $60 per month – (no taking 5 minutes to ask for a discount)
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Total Cost = $7,200