It surprises people when they find out that I don’t have a finance background or an accounting degree. Most of my professional career was spent working in non-profit management and programming. I also didn’t grow up learning about finances and business, despite the fact that my parents have been small-business owners almost my entire life.

I have an appointment every Monday, first thing in the morning. I sit down with my coffee, open my laptop and prepare to get serious.

It’s an appointment with my bank account.

Developing a budget is a lot like New Year’s resolutions. You start out focused and ready to conquer the world. Even with the best of intentions, we don’t live in a perfect world and motivation wanes. Your January 1 self vows to eat salad, but the random-Tuesday-in-March self ends up doing the grocery shopping, to put it plainly.

If you have been saying to yourself: I really need to get on track with a budget, then I have some advice for you:

Do it, but get real.

We are heavy into tax season over here! We are checking reports, double checking reports, collecting statements and working hard to get 2024 tied up in a neat bow for all our clients. Can we talk to you about a habit that would make this time of year a little easier?

I’m a pencil and paper gal at heart. Only in the last couple of years have I finally given up on my paper date book with the big squares and graduated to a digital version. While it certainly is more efficient to have it all at my fingertips, old habits die hard and I have often found myself under a pile of random notes on scratch paper. “It’s here somewhere!” I say, looking for the information I know is on the corner of a pink piece of paper, in blue ink and written sideways.

As we continue to explore the value of clarity, one of the things that has been on my mind over the past 18 months is my own financial health. Between 2020 and 2023 I dealt with some big, hard, expensive things in my personal life, while scaling my business on the professional side. The amount of mental and emotional energy going into the challenges in my personal life took all of my bandwidth. I was just head down, keep pushing forward. Scaling the business took a lot of financial resources as I built in anticipation of the clients that would come. And I was learning how to translate everything that had relied just on me into the hands and brains of my team. I didn’t do it well at first and there were a lot of fits and starts.

It’s that time of year again, where flowers and candy are everywhere and the whole world seems to be talking about love. Cupid is nice and all, but as bookkeepers, you can show us you love us in some very specific ways that Hallmark doesn’t even make a card for. If you love your bookkeeper (and we know you do), then these are the perfect ways to show it:

I recently did a little refresh of my bathroom. Got a new rug, added a shelf, changed out some decor–nothing huge, just a little update. In the process, I realized that I didn’t really have hand towels that matched that bathroom. I have towels I could use in there, but nothing particularly remarkable, and definitely not worthy of company. As I was explaining this to my Mom, saying that I thought it would be “okay” to buy nice towels in case I had guests, she said something that got me thinking…

The last bit of January at MB is a little like working in Santa’s workshop. Lots of tinkering to get all those 1099s out by the deadline & double checking lists for the big show of tax day. It’s a great reminder that a little bit of preparation saves lot of stress down the road.

That said, we want to take this opportunity to encourage you to do a little preparation when it comes to your employees & get those reviews scheduled! I know it seems like an extra task, especially if you don’t have any performance complaints, but there are some big time benefits:

A great way to gain clarity and plan for the future of your business is to do a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and it’s an exercise to examine internal and external factors that affect your business. We did one at our staff retreat last summer and it was really interesting to see what the team had to say. If you don’t have employees to participate, think about your customer’s viewpoint, or ask a trusted friend if they have any input. You’ll be surprised at what others see.

I love living in a place with seasons.

I can't imagine living somewhere that's always tropical and sunny no matter what the season. When the days get short and cold, I appreciate the natural rhythm of a little bit of slowing down and hibernation. This year especially, I've become a little bit of a winter hermit. Bundled under my blankets reading my book or working.

I also appreciate that this time of year gives me space to contemplate the past year and look forward to the next year. I have a variety of different New Year exercises that I like to do as part of this process. Some of them involve reflecting on the previous year and the successes and failures of that year. Other pieces are forward-looking, with intentions and goal setting.

This time of year is always a time for reflection and an opportunity to adjust your mindset for the upcoming year. Resolutions are soooo last year (and generally make you feel bad if you fall short). Resolutions are more about “fixing” your perceived failures and not about building a better life. Instead, I’m calling this a…shift in focus, and I’ll be concentrating on habits and mindsets that make me feel better in all aspects of my life.