Since the new fiscal year just started for us yesterday, there are a lot of tax increases 2009 that are taking place. If you’re in the states, a lot of people will be affected even more during this hard time in the economy. And I can guarantee that every online entrepreneur making money online will be affected by this in some way.

Let’s start with the tax increases in Massachusetts, since that’s where I currently reside. They will be raising sales tax from 5% to 6.25% which is the first time it has increased since I have lived here. (And I’ve been here most of my life).

That will affect a lot of spending I do because anything I purchase will be slightly higher. So, say I purchase a new computer, desk, chair or whatever for my mini office, the extra sales tax accumulates over time.

In addition, they are trying to increase gas taxes as well. That sucks even more with the high gas rates as is, now traveling to business meetings by car will be just a little more expensive than it usually is.

So, outside of my state, almost every other state is being affected in some way with the taxes. I believe Florida is increasing cigarette taxes, Hawaii is increasing hotel taxes, etc.

If you guys have more details on your state, please drop a line by commenting.  I would definitely like to know.

Many of these states have different tax increases but ultimately, all of us are affected. Below is a breakdown in states on who will be increasing taxes and fees. It’s from May so it’s a little old but you’ll get some rough idea for your state.

Now, as an online entrepreneur, we all have to pay taxes. Technically, you’re supposed to report everything you make to the IRS and if you work from home, that basically means you’ll be writing a check out every April. But next year, I believe you will be writing a bigger check.

I read that people making over $250,000 a year will have their taxes increase, but now, even those making less than that will have their taxes increases as well. So, in essence, everyone that pays taxes will be paying just a little more.

In addition, there might be a slight increase in taxes for health insurance which would drastically affect middle-income homes. But nothing has been confirmed about that just yet but as things are slowly having the snowball effect, I wouldn’t be surprised.

The reason why I am posting about the tax increases 2009 is simply the fact that it will affect all of us making money, buying things, or just living in the states during these hard economic times. I’m not a big fan of taxes but unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about this.

I guess we have to sit here and just watch us get dug into a deeper hole.

It looks like there has been yet another Google Pagerank update in June 2009 and some unfortunate news, this blog remains the same at PR2. But like I said before and I’ll continue to say it, Google Pagerank doesn’t really mean much!

If you live by Google Pagerank, more than likely you’ll die by Google Pagerank. A majority of the times when I talk about Google Pagerank and the updates, I usually emphasize the fact that you can still make money, still get traffic, still be successful with a PR0 or a PR10. Honestly, it doesn’t matter just as long as your site gets ranked in search engines.

And yes, your site can get ranked in search engines without a Pagerank.

But instead of discussing the whole thing about Pagerank doesn’t really matter, I’m going to switch it up a bit. I’m going to tell you the various changes in PR with some of my sites. And I want to hear from you guys to see if your PR has changed at all.

So, DatMoney remains the same at PR2. The main reason is the fact that I haven’t been building links for this site for a while now. Matter of fact, I haven’t been doing much promotion in general for this site because I’ve been focusing on a few other projects.

I was going to do a couple of link exchanges with blogs with similar stats and niche but I’m just not sure if I’m going to do that. I may consider it, though.

If you guys have been following this blog for a while, my Pagerank history went from PR0 to PR4 to PR3 to PR2. It has stayed at PR2 for the last couple of updates, I believe.

Some of my other sites have gone up and down but none have gone back down to a PR0. I think a few of my brand news sites have become PR1. And those are the sites that I’ve probably had for only a month or so.

Others have gone up to PR3 while some have dropped to PR2. Overall, I believe most of my sites have some sort of Pagerank.

Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t really mean much. Because Pagerank or no Pagerank, I can still manage to make money online and get traffic.

So, how did you guys fair with the Google Pagerank Update - June 2009?

So, remember when I wrote about how I may get $500 for 10 minutes of my time? Well, I swung for the fences and I whiffed and struck out. But it’s okay, I knew the odds were against me. So, here’s the story incase you guys haven’t heard about it or been following it.

Let me go on to say that I would actually like to congratulate Jonathan Volk… so, me damning him in the title, that was to get more attention. Obviously, I’m joking. Okay, now that I got that out of the way, let’s continue with the story.

Well, our buddies Tyler Cruz and Jonathan Volk had a competition/contest against each other on who could lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. Of course, the loser would have to cough up $500 and if both of them didn’t meet the goal, they would both cough it up.

As you guys know, I voted against Jonathan but I didn’t just randomly pick, I had a theory and points on why I thought he would lose. Plus, I had to pick one person to officially enter the contest for a chance to win $500.

You can read my original post at “Working as an Online Entrepreneur = Weight Gain?”

So, it was going so good and I felt the $500 being sent to my Paypal account. I mean, he was like 4.5 pounds away like two days before the deadline. And of course, he worked out a lot more, starved himself, etc so he would succeed and not have to pay.

I have to give credit to both of them for losing the 10 pounds. Though, they probably worked extra, extra hard in the last week. Tyler made his goal too so he didn’t have to pay anyone.

It wasn’t a loss for me (even though $500 would have been nice) because I got a lot of recognition from simply entering the contest. I got link love from both parties and got my name and site out there in front of 4,500+ subscribers not including daily visitors (Tyler and Jonathan’s total put together).

And this all happened because I took 10 minutes out of my day to write a simple post. If you take initiative, you may or may not win big but you will definitely benefit from it nonetheless. I mean, my name and blog was mentioned quite a few times in front of thousands of readers. If I were to pay for a paid review, I would’ve sent hundreds of dollars… but I didn’t.

Lesson learned. Take initiative… you win some, you lose some but if you can manage to win more than the losses, you should be pretty successful.

I thought about this the other day: how much money do I need to retire? Technically, even if I had all the money in the world, I probably wouldn’t “retire” but just take it easy. I would still work and do my online stuff but again, I would take it easier. But let’s just ask it for fun, how much money do I need to retire?

Well, given the fact that I don’t have my own house yet, haven’t finished paying back my student loans or have my life situated the way I want, I would need a lot of money. But we can’t all win the lottery… and even if we did, how much would actually be enough?

This is mainly food for thought to see how much you guys would actually need to be comfortable for the rest of your life.

I know everyone is a different age, have different needs in their lives and so on, but I figured I’d just base it off someone that is in their 20s or even 30s that is looking to retire extra young. Most people don’t retire until mid 60s but all of us have the dream of retiring when we’re young so we can enjoy things, right? Well, let’s get into it.

Say You Won the Lottery

Say I won the lottery, how much money do I need to retire? I know everyone plays differently and the jackpot varies depending on what game you played but say you won $35 million dollars (current estimated cash option for the Mega Millions), could you retire off of that?

My answer is yes. If I were to live happy without having to think about money, I’d say $100k yearly would be good enough to be comfortable. Now, with $35 million, that could last 350 years of my life. Plus, I’d have enough to purchase a new home, pay for all my expenses (foods, clothing, all types of insurance, cars, luxury items, etc).

Now my goal used to be to aim for something much much lower, maybe $250,000 but I definitely couldn’t retire off of that, just take an extended break.

Making a Living Online

A lot of people try to work from home full-time but do you guys plan on doing that for the rest of your life? And what if you made John Chow type money (like $30k-$40k monthly), or a super affiliate (we’ll say probably $100k monthly), how much would you need to save up before you officially retire young?

In my calculations, I think $6 million would be enough to retire. Based on $100k yearly to live comfortable, you could 60 more years without worrying too much about money.

If you made John Chow type money, you would probably need to work for 16 more years. And if you were a super affiliate, you would probably need to work for five more years.

Then again, if you made that type of money working online, I’m sure you wouldn’t stop if you hit the $6 million goal.

Working a Day Job

If you work a day job, more than likely you won’t be retiring anytime soon. Typically, the average person makes somewhere between $40-$50k yearly. Based on my $6 million retire numbers, that person wouldn’t reach that in their lifetime.

Matter of fact, most people won’t ever make a few million. But then again, most people won’t retire early.

So, how much money do I need to retire? Well, everyone has their own set amount but I just ran through how much I would need. Again, just food for thought if you ever needed to try to calculate how much you would have to save… realistically.

Anyways, what do you guys think?

I know this isn’t a really big significant accomplishment but it is one nonetheless. I managed to reach 900 RSS Feed subscribers which is just on the stepping stones of hitting that century mark of 1,000.

I’m sure a lot of you guys are wondering how I managed to get this far. And honestly, there’s nothing that changed with my methods. Matter of fact, I’ve been promoting this blog a lot less so my traffic has been down quite a bit but surprisingly, my RSS Feed numbers just continue to climb.

A large part of that is simply the fact that a lot of people subscribe because they want the password to my $100/day from Adsense because most people still have no clue on how to make Adsense money so everyday people are trying to find out my method.

I know for a fact that a lot of people subscribe for the wrong reasons but I’m not stupid, a lot of people unsubscribe soon after they receive the password. And people wonder why I don’t send out the passwords immediately after people subscribe… because they’ll literally be a subscriber for a whole two and a half minutes.

Don’t worry to those of you guys that keep e-mailing me asking what the password is, you’ll get it. I’ve been sick and haven’t been checking my e-mails as much but you should receive it by the end of the month at the latest.

Anyways, I just wanted to celebrate a little bit on my accomplishment. Once I hit the 1,000 RSS Feed Subscribers mark, I will have a contest. And don’t you guys worry, if you’re already subscribed via e-mail, you are already entered to win whatever I choose as the contest prize(s).

So, stay tuned for the upcoming contest. The sooner I hit 1,000, the sooner you’ll see a contest. FYI… I know how much everyone loves blog contests!