Info Advantage Blog

When money is tight and you start feeling down about your financial situation, it’s important to keep the big picture in mind. This can be done by reviewing your net worth. Plus, if you go so far as to track your net worth, then you’ll constantly have this big picture before you. This will help you to worry less and allow you to better focus on your goals.

How to Find Out Your Net Worth
Thankfully, your net worth takes more into consideration than just your paycheck. A good definition of net worth is the value of all assets, minus the total of all liabilities. Put another way, net worth is what you own minus what you owe. Generally speaking, this is why your net worth increases over time, due to the fact that you’ll owe less and less on the debts you pay.

When determining your net worth, start by making a thorough list of what you own and what you owe.

What You Own

• Home (its current value)
• Other real estate
• Automobiles and other vehicles like RVs and ATVs (leased vehicles don’t count)
• Jewelry and collectibles
• Household items, like furniture, appliances, etc.
• Retirement accounts, bonds, stocks, mutual funds
• Cash value of life insurance
• The balance of checking and savings accounts
• Cash

What You Owe

• Home mortgage principal
• Other mortgage principal
• Auto loans
• Student loans
• Credit card debt
• Other loans

Once you have all of these items in order, you’ll next plug this information into an online net worth calculator.

How to Track Your Net Worth
Now that you know your net worth, you can use a spreadsheet tool to keep track of its growth--in a similar way to how you keep track of your monthly budget. Here are four ways that tracking your net worth can benefit your financial situation.

• Financial Progress: We all want to evolve and progress in anything in life, it’s human nature. It's even better when you grow your money and can look back to the month or year previous and see how far you've come.
• Confidence Builder: For example, if you saved an extra $1,000 in your emergency fund or watch your 401K increase due to a bigger contribution, it will make you feel proud of what you’ve been able to accomplish.
• Avoid focusing on just assets: If you have 200K in assets but 100K in debt, you’re just lying to yourself. It's important to factor both into the calculation.
• Loans: Your net worth can be a factor if you plan on applying for a loan in the near future.

In the same way that it’s beneficial to keep track of your personal net worth, there are benefits to keeping track of your company’s assets. The average SMB likely needs more than a calculator and a spreadsheet to do this, which is why there are so many enterprise-level accounting solutions on the market. To learn more about what’s available for your accounting department and how technology can further your company’s goals, give us a call at (585) 254-8710.

P.S. Some businesses struggle to reliably budget out their IT, especially with surprise bills when technology goes down and unexpected updates need to take place. If you are frustrated with the unforeseen nature of your current IT, reach out to Info Advantage to discuss a managed, proactive approach.

Regardless of how your business’s administration is set up, you should be aware that anyone in a position of authority must have a basic understanding of how IT, and its related responsibilities, functions for your business. Here are four ways that you can learn more about how IT works within your organization.

Know Who to Contact for Support
As a leader within your organization, you need to lead by example. You should be aware of who to contact within your company for any IT-related issues, and this contact information should be shared with other employees within your organization. By cooperating with IT, your business can improve operations so that you don’t encounter a roadblock when it comes time to upgrade to more recent technology, or perform maintenance on critical hardware and software.

Working with Vendors
Dealing with vendors is part of doing business with technology. Your organization likely has several different vendors for your various hardware and software solutions. Knowing how to communicate with them is key to getting the most from your products. In other words, you should at least be privy to information concerning your organization’s relationship with its vendors.

Basic Security Best Practices
This is a part of business that all of your employees should be familiar with. Data security is one of the most crucial parts of running a business, and your team needs to understand this if you want to ensure maximum security. Examples of basic security best practices include the following:

• Employees should use long, complex passwords.
• Employees should use two-factor authentication.
• Employees should be able to identify potential online scams.

Managing Laptops and Mobile Devices
If your employees bring their own devices (BYOD) to the workplace for use on your company network, you have a responsibility to ensure that they’re following proper protocol. Do you have a BYOD policy? If not, you should consider setting one up. You need to have some sort of oversight in regards to what data is being used and accessed on what devices. The idea is to restrict the flow of data through permissions so that you can know how it’s being used, and to limit its exposure to threats.

This might seem like a lot to take in, but you don’t have anything to worry about. Most of these issues can be resolved simply by having an IT technician on-hand to consult in times of need. If you don’t have an in-house IT department, this might seem like an impossible task. Thankfully, Info Advantage makes it easy for your business to keep your technology functioning properly and running without incident; all thanks to outsourced managed IT services.

Info Advantage can handle the everyday management and maintenance of your IT systems, and act as a consultant, helping you make educated decisions about the future of your technology systems. For more information, give us a call at (585) 254-8710.

Most modern businesses need access to crucial parts of their infrastructure in order to keep operations moving forward. For example, your building’s electricity is necessary to power your technology, and without an Internet connection, you could be losing out on hours of potential productivity. What can you do to minimize downtime and make the best out of a bad situation?

Every business owner understands that having a good reputation is paramount toward their success. Yet, some business owners may not fully grasp just how much the Internet influences their company’s reputation in today’s business environment. In order to find out what the people of the Internet are saying about your business, you have to manage your company’s online reputation.