The climb of a financial services consultant : Daryl La Fountain? When starting out, most small companies can get by with a simple bookkeeping service. As the business grows, however, you will quickly require a more sophisticated financial infrastructure that can evolve as you scale. For instance, a growing business should have: An accounting solution that meets your business requirements. A detailed and realistic financial model where you can visualize your monthly income, expenses and cash flow projections for the coming year. A key performance indicators dashboard. Basic internal controls, such as policies and procedures for accounts payable, accounts receivable and expense reimbursements. This will help you spot problems and deal with them before they spin out of control while providing your executive team with the insight it needs to make financially sound business decisions.
Daryl La Fountain‘s recommendations on improving your business financial situation: In most cases, weak internal financial controls and policies can make your business incapable of organizing its finances. They can potentially get you into some legal problems if you don’t organize your company’s financial affairs. As such, it’s important to set up good financial habits to keep up with your transactions and help you mitigate problems down the road. These good habits can include: Hire a reliable finance manager: This is to help you make informed and sound financial decisions. They can implement strict accounting and economic management that’s vital to the proper organization of your company’s finances.
Just as your parents probably sent you off to kindergarten with high hopes of preparing you for success in a world that seemed eons away, you need to plan for your retirement well in advance. Because of the way compound interest works, the sooner you start saving, the less principal you’ll have to invest to end up with the amount you need to retire. Why start saving for your retirement in your 20s? Here’s an Investopedia example: You start investing in the market at $100 a month, averaging a positive return of 1% a month or 12% a year, compounded monthly over 40 years. Your friend, who is the same age, doesn’t begin investing until 30 years later and invests $1,000 a month for 10 years, also averaging 1% a month or 12% a year, compounded monthly. After 10 years, your friend will have saved up around $230,000. Your retirement account will be a bit over $1.17 million. Company-sponsored retirement plans are a particularly great choice, because you get to put in pretax dollars and companies will often match part of your contribution, which is like getting free money.
If you’re single, it’s important to establish a financial plan that not only helps you meet your immediate goals, but that ensures your future self will be taken care of. This means doing all the things mentioned above without making any assumptions that things will somehow work themselves out. A big mistake? Assuming you’ll meet someone who will take care of you and deal with the finances in your relationship. If your relationship status changes or you get married, you’ll be well equipped to plan your finances together if you already have things in place for yourself.
About Daryl La Fountain: Daryl is an energetic professional CFO with a background in politics. Daryl has done fundraising, been a candidate, and worked in politically appointed positions in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. Daryl has worked for Democratic candidates and nominees in 18 additional states. Reach out to Daryl about his CFO work if you: Need help in your nonprofit Finance department. Have a need for an Interim role. Would like some offsite audit preparation work.