by The Happy WAHM
14/365Challenge: Laughter Is The Best Medicine. That section alone of the Reader’s Digest is worth every cent we’re paying for the subscription.
Good humor is very inexpensive. It is one of the pleasures in life that is relatively free. Fortunately for my family, we are practically rolling with it.
My husband is funny without trying to be. And laughter, like yawning, is contagious.
But get this. According to Dr. Robert Provine (Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, Penguin Books, 2001), laughter is not about humor. It’s about social relationships. Laughter establishes–or restores–a positive emotional climate and a sense of connection between two people, who literally take pleasure in the company of each other. Dr. Provine found that speakers laugh even more than their listeners.
And while it is good to laugh together from jokes that we read on social media, or comedy shows on TV, it is far better to laugh from homegrown conversations.
I remember this old post, where I shared one of the countless conversations with my husband that ended with laughter. And it’s like that almost everyday.
And it’s not to say that my husband and I never had any problems. We do, like any normal couple. Every day, we go through life meeting challenges. And our attitude towards life, and the way we react to these challenges, depends on the quality of relationships we decided to have. We’ve chosen to to keep our relationship rewarding, fresh, happy. We believe that the degree of happiness that we experience has more to do with the way we think, than it has to do with the circumstances and events of our lives. We simply choose to react to our circumstances positively.
So go ahead and laugh. It won’t make problems go away. But it can set the stage for you for tackling them with positivity.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
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Or you can be my writing challenge partner.
Send me a topic that you want me to talk about.
by The Happy WAHM
My day in comics, as illustrated by my middlechild. 🙂
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by The Happy WAHM
From being a double income family, can you really survive with just one income? To succeed in staying afloat, it’s most helpful to calculate, if not actually compute, the costs involved in having a second income.
I’m back to writing about our one-income household lifestyle. And today, I’m going to talk about how we came to be confident that we could survive with just one income. We worked on our numbers, and the first set of numbers we worked on was the cost of having a second income.
Of course, at the center of our planning and strategizing was my dear friend, Excel.
The Cost of a Second Income
Back in 2011, I wrote about cost to work briefly. But today, I’m sharing with you a more detailed version of the process we went through.
In a worksheet, I created two major columns:
Under each column, I added two more columns:
- I stay employed
- I stay home
Then we listed down everything. Under income, we included the benefits, like the sack of rice that we regularly received from the company.
Managing Expenses
The exciting part was working on the expenses. From Expenses => I stay employed column, we had househelps’ salaries (we had two), and 13th month pay. Those items were no longer to be seen under the Expenses => I stay home column, and because I had set up my file to autocompute, it was fun seeing the expense numbers really go down. From two househelps to zero, we also adjusted our monthly budget for electricity, water, food and other miscellaneous items like toiletries, snacks, lunch out, groceries, and phone. Then we further deducted my meals purchased at the office, wardrobe and other miscellaneous items an office girl spends on, like shoes, bags and accessories. In my case, I had a service vehicle from the company, so I had no transportation expense to take into account, but for the others who are thinking of giving up employment and are public commuters, you’ll find that your transportation expense will make a big difference on your budget.
Personally managing our home proved to be more cost-efficient, too. You won’t believe how I used to buy a liter of dishwashing liquid, fabric softener and laundry detergent weekly. But when I started to personally do our laundry, I only had to replenish our laundry supply every three weeks, same thing with the dishwashing liquid. Aside from the expected reduction of cost on food and utilities, personally managing our house meant further savings because we are more conscious about our spending.
Effectively managing your expenses and having a game plan in bolstering your income are crucial in surviving a one-income lifestyle. After you have all your ducks in a row, all your numbers computed, the difference you will end up with may not be sufficient to warrant holding on to the second income. Your reasons for holding on to a corporate career like job satisfaction, independence, career progression, and the like, may be overshadowed by being able to stay home with the children, having the time to learn a new skill, or becoming your own boss.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave me a message, or post them, at my Facebook Page.
Or you can be my writing challenge partner.
Send me a topic that you want me to talk about.
by The Happy WAHM
First of all, thank you to the ladies who submitted their questions yesterday! Wow! Really appreciate your participation!
So here’s the first of the questions I received. She asked to be kept anonymous, and I respect that.
I need help in paying taxes. How do you do it? Do I need to do it? I do freelance work, too, and I also have a small online store. I just don’t know how to go about it.
Okay. I’m not sure if I can really be of help, because I’m far from being a voice of authority in this field, but I will share with you what I have done for my own business.
I started my virtual assistance service back in 2006. But it was only in 2009 that I registered as a business. Reason? I sought the advice of a lawyer who told me to wait until I’m very stable before I register as a business. Meaning, I had to wait until my income was steady at a certain amount.
When in 2009, I felt that I was ready, I registered as a sole proprietor, under “services” as the industry category. My first stop: DTI. I registered VASupportPro Services. VASupportPro stands for Virtual Administrative Support Professional. It’s the result of a month-long study on how I would rank on searches. I added “services” to make it flexible in terms of service offering. I wanted to have that elbow room to grow the business, offering services other than virtual assistance.
Then I secured a business permit, registered with BIR and had my official receipts printed.
I won’t go deep into the process that I went through, because I don’t want to turn this post into a rant. Having to transact with (some) government offices in this country can really discourage you to be a responsible citizen. Suffice it to say that I’m holding on to the belief that the change is in me, in all of us, and it is up to me, to us, to do our share and contribute to the change, for the better. So however hard it is to be good, let’s still be good. 🙂
To help you out with the process, I’m sharing here an article which lists down the types of taxes for self-employed people like us: What Taxes Should I Pay in the Philippines (Self-Employed)
I’m paying the 3% percentage tax, based on gross earnings. To help me stay organized in monitoring my earnings, I use this free invoicing platform, so that at the end of each month, I just copy everything to the eBIRform. I always make it a point that I file my monthly return on the first week to avoid the rush, but due date is always on or before the 20th of the month following the taxable month. I use the 2551M form.
For my quarterly filing, I opted for the 40% optional standard deduction, instead of the itemized deduction, so it’s less hassle for me. After all, my operating expense is pretty much the same month after month, so going for the straight deduction makes sense for me. But if your operation incurs lots of representation expenses, the itemized deduction may be a better option. I use the 1701Q form.
Putting the horrors of registration aside, paying your taxes is pretty much routine and really easy. It’s even made easier by the electronic filing that we have now. Just download the eBIRform package, set it up with your valid email address, and each month, you only need to input your gross earnings and it will automatically compute the tax payable for you. After filling in the necessary form, you will need to save it, then click on submit. That form will then travel through cyber going to the central BIR database, or whatever they call it. Wait a few minutes, and watch out for an acknowledgement of your submission from BIR via your email. While waiting for the BIR confirmation to reach your inbox, go ahead and print three copies of the form you submitted. Then, when that confirmation finally reaches your inbox, print it also at the back of the form that you already printed. After that, go your merry way to the nearest BIR office and make the payment. I opt to pay at our local BIR office. Transactions are faster. But you can also opt to pay at accredited banks. I may be doing that soon. 🙂
There may be certain months that you have no transaction to declare, like if your family went for a vacation and you opted not to work. You are still required to file. Just submit your form electronically, print the form, and print the confirmation email at the back of the form.
To wrap up, do you need to do it? I would say, yes, you do. That is, if you already have a steady flow of income, please go ahead and do it. Being able to issue an official receipt has advantages for the business. Some clients actually ask for a receipt, so being able to say, yes, you can provide it, already puts you a step ahead of competition. Being able to show an Income Tax Return also has advantages. Visa applications require that you have one. 🙂
And best of all, you sleep better at night knowing that you are part of what’s good in this country. 🙂
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave a comment below, or post them at my Facebook Page.
by The Happy WAHM
10/365Challenge: You know what’s the bigger challenge than writing? It’s deciding on what to write about.
So today, I’m going to ask for your help.
Will you be my partner in this writing challenge?
I’m going to put here a form. I’ll only require that you leave your name and email address. And no, I’m not likely to spam you with promotions. I can’t even release a decent newsletter due to the limited time I have for this blog, so be assured that your email address will be safe with me, and if ever I send you an email, it will be about something useful/helpful.
I’m just asking you to send me a topic that you’d love to read on the blog, but it has to fall on the following categories.
- Health
- Education
- Livelihood
- Parenting
Yep! Those are the topics closest to my heart, so if you haven’t noticed yet, I’d like to share here that my Facebook page URL is actually http://facebook.com/TheHappyWAHM
You can throw me a question, and I will answer lenghtily here. It may not be immediate. Like I’m being audacious and thinking that there may be a lot of you who will participate, and I can only answer one question, or cover one topic, in a day. Plus, I also have some more DIYs that I’m planning to do, so those will be shared with you here, as well.
And, since my husband is a WAHD, and there may be some male souls out there who are actually reading this blog, I will also welcome questions or topics thrown in by the members of the male population.
So how about it?
Are you ready to be my partner in my writing challenge?
Ready… set… fill out the form!
Thank you all in advance, and I’m looking forward to seeing this form have some entries real soon!
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave me a message, or post them, at my Facebook Page.
