Data-driven personal finance strategies for navigating changing labor markets and rate environments.
Instant zero-server calculation tools for rates, runway, and severance.
Calculate net severance payout post-tax (22% supplemental rate) and benchmark emergency runway months.
Calculate the exact hourly billable rate needed to match a corporate salary target with full benefits.
Identify redundant recurring software subscriptions and calculate annual cost savings.
No statute requires a sole proprietor to hold a separate account, and you can file an entire Schedule C from one personal checking account. The IRS still puts opening a business account first on its list for a new business, and the reason has nothing to do with legal protection.
The IRS lets you keep books in a spreadsheet and says so in plain words, so an app has to earn its place on something the rules never ask for. It does, and the thing it wins on is timing rather than features.
A single-member LLC is invisible to the IRS by default. Same Schedule C, same self-employment tax, same number at the bottom of the return. The saving everyone promises comes from a separate election, and the qualified business income deduction quietly takes most of it back.
Both plans stop at the same number. On $100,000 of net profit one of them lets you put away $18,587 and the other $43,087. Here is the mechanism that creates the gap, and the December 31 deadline that decides whether you get it.
Employers budgeted 3.2% for merit increases this year. Prices rose 3.4%. Here is the number that actually keeps you level, what it looks like in dollars, and why asking for a raise is now the weaker move.
Three clocks start the day you lose a job. What the 22% on your severance actually means, why COBRA costs far more than your old payroll deduction, and the deadlines that decide the rest.