the richest man in atherstone

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

Since becoming self-employed a few weeks ago, I've been thinking an awful lot about whether I should keep my business income and Doubling income separate. This is the way I've done it over the past year, the main reason being that the rules for Doubling state that Doubling money should be kept separate from personal cash.

This poses a number of problems. Firstly, I will have two sets of accounts to keep and working out the split for National Insurance and taxes will be quite difficult. Secondly, each time I come up with a new money-making idea, I will have to decide whether it contributes to my personal or Doubling income. I would have to design some sort of criteria to help me make the decision - and what sort of criteria would I use?

Over the weeks, I've come up with a number of strategies for keeping the funds separate, however none of them 'felt right' and they were all unnecessarily over-complicated. I feel I could continue to ponder upon this until the cows come home but, even then I don't think I would come up with a satisfactory solution.

So, I made a decision.

I will combine my Doubling quest with my other business ventures and split all the income between myself and the Doubling Pot. Although this is technically breaking one of the rules of Doubling, I believe it is the only satisfactory solution to the dilemma. My business will become my 'Doubling Account' and one of the expenses from said account will be my salary. I think at some point everyone that attempts to 'Double to a Million' will have to pay wages or labour costs, and that is the way I think about drawing a salary from it.

As well as gaining personally from my Doubling exploits, my Doubling Project will gain from my personal business income (including income from this website). A joining of forces, as it were.

The way I intend to split the profits is by totting up the income earned every quarter and splitting it three ways. The first third will be held back to pay the end of year tax bill. The second third will be retained as the Doubling Fund and the third third(?) will be transferred to my personal bank account.

My salary will be further divided as highlighted in my personal financial plan for 2008.

This also has the advantage of amalgamating the Doubling updates I make here into a single quarterly post.

So, with this plan in hand and a little math, I find that I need to earn a little over £15000 during 2008 to achieve two of the goals I set myself at the beginning of the year (goals 4 and 5).

I'd better get cracking...