As you may have noticed, I haven’t been as active in my posting for the past long while. Being in school has proven to be extremely time consuming, and while I probably could have made some time here and there to continue to post, I didn’t. But now the first year is almost at an end. All my finals are next week, and then it’ll be over. After that I’ll be heading out to sunny California for my internship. It should end up being at least an interesting experience. Maybe I’ll have some time to post more often over this summer and impart some of the things I’ve learned over this last year.

With tomorrow being Christmas, the big shopping season comes to a close. Hopefully you all were able to stay within your budgets this year. Apparently the retail sales figures have been rather disappointing, so it seems that at least most people have been able to reign in their spending. But if you’re still looking for a few things, you may want to check out the stores in the couple of days right after Christmas. They will supposedly be slashing some prices even further because of the slowdown in sales.

So, I wish you all a merry Christmas and hope that you all enjoy whatever it is that you have planned.

I know that I’ve talked to a lot of people who eventually want to start their own website, and there are probably many of you out there that would like to have your own site for whatever reason. One of the biggest reasons that these people never really actually start their website is because they don’t know where or how to get started. Maybe you’re wondering the same thing.

Well, besides figuring out what type of website you’d actually like to have and what it’s going to be about, one of the first things that you’re going to need to get is web hosting. Now, even though this may sound a little complicated to some out there, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you’ll probably end up being surprised by how simple it actually is to get your web hosting set up. And it doesn’t really cost all that much either. It’s usually only about nine or ten dollars per month. And once you have the web hosting set up you can pretty much do whatever you’d like to do with the website.

So, if you’ve been wanting to start up a website of your own, then why not get started sooner rather than later? Just take some time to figure out which web hosting service you’d like to go with and then try it out.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted anything in quite some time. Well, I suppose I must have overestimated the amount of free time that I would have while in school. There has been some down time every once and a while, but I’m usually pretty tired. So, long story short, I’m now on Christmas break and may be able to find some time to catch up on things that have been going on. At least that’s the plan…

I’m currently in process of finding someone to rent out our house now that we’ve moved. It’s not exactly a straight-forward process, but it’s not something that’s impossible to do. It’s our second house that we’re trying to rent out now and there are definitely some things that we’ve learned from the first time.

We didn’t do this the first time, and we didn’t have any problems, but something that most likely should be done is to have a Background Check run on any applicants that you have. I understand that you may assume the best in people, and so do I, but when you’re going to sign a lengthy agreement/contract with someone, you’ll want to make sure that you have as much information as you can with which to make the best decision possible. And if that means that you should have a Criminal Background Check performed, then so be it.

There are also other reasons that you would want to have a Criminal Check run on someone. Perhaps you’re a business owner and want it for hiring reasons. The important thing is that you know that it’s available so that you can make informed decisions concerning some of the people that you choose to do business with.

One of the calculations that you’ll hear thrown around time and time again is the compound annual growth rate. It’s a more accurate measure of past investment performance than just a simple average of the different years investment returns. Knowing what the average return of some investment is doesn’t give you any insight into what you might actually expect to have as a result of some initial investment.

To illustrate this, consider the example of two consecutive years where you earn 50% the first year and then lose 33% the next. If you average these returns, you end up with a 8.5% return on your investment, which doesn’t sound that bad. But if you actually run the numbers on some initial investment, you can see that the actual two year return was 0%.

So here’s how you calculate the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR):

CAGR = [Ending Balance/Beginning Balance]^(1/Time Period, i.e. number of years)

It’s a relatively simple calculation to make, and it’s important because you can then equally compare the returns from different investments. I will caution you though, that just because you know the CAGR of some investment in the past, it cannot accurately predict the future returns of the investment.

As many of you may already know, running a business is no small task. Starting a business is another thing altogether, but the day to day operations themselves can take up most if not all of your time just by themselves. This can get to be a problem, or perhaps already is, when you know you should be focusing on some of the larger issues of the company like the future strategy and direction.

So if you’re company isn’t large enough to have it’s own HR department and general office staff, you can look into hiring or retaining the services of a firm like National PEO or a Professional Employer Organization. They can provide many different services that a smaller company isn’t ready to bring in-house yet. They have HR services, workers’ compensation, employee benefits administration, and even more.

They can also provide you with Payroll Serviceswhich is a big concern for many just starting out. If you’ve ever wondered how you’re going to pay people and handle all the tax withholding and payments, as well as manage multiple people’s timecards, then this is a service that you should probably look into. It can all be handled for you.

National PEO is based in Arizona and can also handle the verification process for employees’ eligibility to work in Arizona so that you can remain compliant with the hiring laws. This is through a process called E verify. So if you’ve been puzzled with any of these issues in your business or want to know more about it before you start one, then you should look into these different services.