Here’s How We Help Our Clients Manage Their Creative Businesses /  by Paco de Leon

A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemption. Our main character, Scrooge, starts as a cranky old man who hoards his wealth, treats his employees like garbage, and bums people out with his bad vibes and lack of generosity. Throughout the story, we bear witness to Scrooge’s transformation. He is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and what is yet to come. These spirit guides help Scrooge slowly gain clarity on who he has been and wants to become.

Through these visions, Scrooge recognizes the error of his ways, and by the end, old Ebenezer finds the willingness to change. If you haven’t read Charles Dickens's novella, I’m sure you’ve seen some version of it. Some old 90’s sitcoms have used this same framework to help the hero of a story emerge on the other side a better, more aware version of themselves.

Weirdly, the work we do at Hell Yeah Bookkeeping is a bit like this story. Thankfully, our clients aren’t cranky old misers. Instead, they tend to be insightful, creative business owners. And they need our help to become better, more aware captains of their company. In perfect conditions, we take our clients through a similar, but less dire, Scoorge-like journey where the ghost of business-past, business-present, and business-future all help our heroes have clarity and inspire a change to be better business owners.

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What My Clients Taught Me About Pricing and Building a Sustainable Business /  by Paco de Leon

Here are all the lessons I’ve learned from all the business owners with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working. They helped me build my sustainable business first by being paying customers, but I’ve also had the unique viewpoint of watching them grow their businesses from the inside out. Watching and playing a tiny, supporting role in other people’s success has been really fun.

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What Is In Store For 2024? My Predictions and Outlook On Creative Businesses In the New Year /  by Paco de Leon

Here are my predictions for what’s in store in 2024 and what that means for creative businesses. They’re a result of reflecting on the last year, observing larger trends and chatting with folks across various creative industries, from creators who make money on social media to to small business owners, artists, and folks in the podcasting industry. A lot of this may be anecdotal, but some of these patterns are worth paying attention to. Let’s dig in.

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What Playing in a Band Taught Me About Making Money /  by Paco de Leon

I spent most of my young adulthood and late teenage years playing in bands with my friends. But it all started with a simple question.

One day, a classmate who eventually became one of my best friends casually asked, “Do you want to start a band?” Surprised and intrigued, I asked her what instrument she played. She said something about taking piano lessons as a kid.

“Well, do you want to learn how to play the bass?” I thought about the cheap, $ 40, midnight blue electric bass guitar I begged my dad to buy earlier that year from a stranger selling it on Craigslist. “I have one you could use.”

“Yes,” she said with the kind of confidence reserved for youth, “Definitely,” 

I took the bass to school the next day. As I handed it to my friend, not realizing how this little action would seal our fates and friendship for decades, we agreed to have our first practice later that week on the last day of our junior year of high school.

We’ve played together for years. On and off. And in different projects. We still tinker around to this day. Throughout all the years playing together, we learned our instruments, made lots of mistakes, and even more memories – like the great tequila embargo of 2014.

As the years accumulated, I wondered how playing hundreds of shows and writing countless songs would fit into the bigger picture of my life. Starting a band is a lot like starting a business. 

Even though my constitution will always require playing and making music for the sake of silly art and self-expression, I also learned many invaluable business lessons along the way. Here they are in no particular order.

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The Lazy Person's Guide to Building Wealth (Part 2): Investing for Beginners /  by Paco de Leon

Welcome to part 2 of “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Building Wealth.” If you missed part 1, get caught up here. If you’ve ever been curious about investing in the stock market but are honestly puzzled about how to get started, this guide is for you. If you question whether investing in the stock market is a realm reserved only for Wall Street moguls or the already rich, this guide is also for you. By the end of it, you’ll have everything you need to know to start investing.

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An Open Letter to Buy Now, Pay Later Companies. Your product is like cigarettes for people’s financial lives. /  by Paco de Leon

Dear Buy Now, Pay Later companies,

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

“Consumers need this,” you say. “We’re giving them options and flexibility in uncertain economic times,” you say. If you shut one eye and squint the other, you may be able to fool yourself into seeing what you want to see. That’s the beauty and the curse of the human mind. You’re asking them if they’d like to be kicked in the crotch or punched in the face. Options!

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The Secret to Managing Money as a Couple: Split the Check /  by Paco de Leon

Navigating the intersection of love and money can be tricky, especially if one partner is more of a spender than the other. There is one method of managing finances that can help every couple find the balance between working towards the same financial goals, while also maintaining some level of autonomy. It’s called “splitting the check.”

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Five Financial Rituals to Adopt in the New Year /  by Paco de Leon

We don’t always get what we give. At least, that’s what the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto discovered in the 1800s while harvesting peas from his garden. Pareto observed that 80% of the peas came from only 20% of the peapods, demonstrating an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. Wondering if this pattern would repeat itself in other areas of life, Pareto began to look at different data sets to confirm his findings. 

While this principle might skew and not always hold one hundred percent of the time, the general principle that 80% of effects result from 20% of causes holds. Less than 10% of the population owns 80% of the stock market. Few social media accounts are responsible for most misinformation across platforms. And we’ve recently seen, in a pandemic, that roughly 20% of the most infectious individuals are responsible for 80% of the transmission.

Knowing 80% of your success and results come from only 20% of your efforts; you can apply the 80/20 rule to your financial lives. Here are the five financial rituals you can focus on that will impact results the most. 

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A Black Friday Survival Guide /  by Paco de Leon

The shopping season is here, and it’s coming for your wallet. Not only do we have Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, but this American tradition has also spun off into a string of frenzied buying days. There’s now Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday. Of course, I’m not a monster. I do love a good deal. But it’s hard not to be cynical and critical of our hyper-consumerist society. So for anyone looking to mindfully shop this holiday season, here are some things to consider before venturing out into the wild.

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How to Prepare to Start Paying Your Student Loans Again /  by Paco de Leon

Student loan forbearance began in March 2020 and, for over two years, borrowers didn’t have to pay anything towards their student loans, with no consequence. As Americans everywhere were met with new financial hardships, student loan debt relief was put in place, pausing all payments and keeping the interest rates at 0%.

Here’s everything you need to know about student loan repayment after covid relief and how to prepare for student loan payments to start back up again in 2023.

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How to Apply for One-time Federal Student Loan Debt Relief /  by Paco de Leon

It’s happening, y’all! The Department of Education launched a beta test of student loan forgiveness applications at 5:45p PT on Friday Oct 14, 2022. During this beta period, federal student loan borrowers may submit applications for some debt relief.

The applications won’t be processed until the official site launch later this month. However, according to a Department spokesperson, folks that apply for forgiveness during the beta period won’t have to reapply once the site goes live (or so they say).

Of course, a beta period indicates that the site, the application, and the process are in testing. During this period, bugs will be discovered – it’s the point of a beta test. So folks that apply now should manage their expectations.

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Five Financial Things: Meditations on Money /  by Paco de Leon

Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately.

Disclaimer: I’m probably not the first person to think of these things. I’m sure I picked these up from a fellow human expressing themselves through conversations, words in a book, dialogue in a movie, lyrics in a song, or eavesdropping on folks arguing over dinner (one of my favorite things to do). Sometimes it’s hard to remember where every insight originated. Sometimes they are slowly internalized through repeated exposure, like learning every lyric to a pop song you had no intention of loving. We’re all pulling from the same weird, swirling pool of ideas

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What Is a Buy List and How It Can Help You Build a Conscious Spending Habit /  by Paco de Leon

I went to hang out with a friend and outside of her apartment, I found an Amazon package that I picked up and brought in with me. She said she didn’t remember what she bought. That’s part of the horror of online shopping; the ability to purchase so cheaply and frequently that you lose track of your purchases. But that’s also the beauty of it - it’s a two-for-one when it comes to pleasure and dopamine. You get the first dose doing the shopping and the next when the package arrives and you anticipate what’s inside.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for transmitting signals between the nerve cells of the brain. It directly impacts our central nervous system and plays a significant role in the body. While many of us have come to believe that dopamine is involved in rewards, it’s important to understand that it’s also involved in the pursuit of rewards. Some researchers argue that dopamine when acting within what has become known as the brain’s reward system, signals desire.

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The Hell Yeah Holiday Gift Guide: Alternative Gifts and Sustainable Giving Ideas /  by Paco de Leon

The holiday season is an opportunity to slow down, to appreciate the year we’ve just had, and to spend time with family, chosen family, and friends. As you start to plan your holiday dinners or create new traditions, you may feel stressed or overwhelmed about staying true to your budget during this time of the year.

One gift-giving tradition that doesn’t need to continue throughout this holiday season is overspending on gifts that your friends and family probably don’t need. Giving someone a gift should come from a place of generosity, not lack. Giving gifts shouldn’t reinforce scarcity, so there's no reason to break the bank or dip too deep into your savings to express your affection and appreciation for your loved ones. Thankfully, there are sustainable and alternative gifting options that may be more energetically aligned with the spirit of giving.

We created an alternative gift guide to help put things into perspective, spark creativity, provide you with more sustainable alternatives, and be a voice that encourages you to be mindful this season.

Let’s take a closer look at some gift-giving alternatives for the holiday season.

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How to Have a Year-End Personal Money Review /  by Paco de Leon

The end of a year is a time for reflection. As you plan your end-of-the-year celebrations and start to plan your new year resolutions, you may want to consider taking some time to take a closer look at your finances. A year-end personal money review can help you reflect on the choices you made over the previous year and help guide you to make better financial choices in the new year.

Let’s take a look at what a year-end personal money review is and how it can help you have a better relationship with money:

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Most Common Investing Struggles (and How to Avoid Them) /  by Paco de Leon

Hey reader, just a little heads up that I am not an investment advisor, and the following article is not investment advice.

Before I took my first investment course in college, I had a lot of assumptions about investing. Many of them were wrong. I thought you had to know a lot about individual stocks and companies. I believed it was much more complicated than it turned out to be. And I expected it to be so much more exciting.

Investing is kind of like film and television. The result might be sexy and shiny and cool. But if you’ve ever been on set, you know that the process of filming is usually pretty dull compared to the result. There may be some excitement, but the great majority of the time gets spent waiting around - a lot like investing!

However, lately, investing seems to have changed -- from the Gamestop chaos to the Dodge coin drama, to the general market run-up over the last two years, investing feels exciting. Ask anyone who has seen their investment balances go up over the last couple of years.

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