PC World - 101 Fantastic Freebies

Once upon a time you actually had to pay for great software and services -- hard to believe, but true.

Luckily, we no longer live in that world. The Internet is stuffed with great downloads and Web sites offering free software and services of every kind. Want to tune up your PC, keep it safe, create graphics, or back up your system with gobs of free storage space? You can find free software and sites to do all that, and plenty more. Read full article.

You are the Brand

Creating your personal brand has created some buzz over the last few years. If you want to learn about the subject, A Brand You World telesummit, offers a large collection of mp3 pod casts with topics like:

• Use Personal Branding to Take Your Job Search from Zero to 60 - Jason Alba
• Three Steps to a Winning Brand - William Arrude
• How A Book Becomes A Brand: The 35-Year History of WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? - Richard Bolles
• How Finding and Developing Your Personal Brand Helps Your Career - Anita Bruzzese

You can listen or download these seminars here.

Viral Marketing

Seth Godin explains the difference between word of mouth marketing and viral marketing.

Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that's it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. A lousy flight on United Airlines is word of mouth. A great meal at Momofuku is word of mouth.

Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn't have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.) The Mona Lisa is an ideavirus.

This distinction is vital.

Read all of Seth's post here.

Sciral - Consistency

Have tasks that should be done on a regular basis but have no due dates? You know things like watering the plants in your office, calling friends and clients to stay in touch. Sciral Consistency may be the application you are looking for. Consistency is shareware you can try for free or buy for $25. It lets you name tasks you need to do on a consistent basis. You put in a minimum and maximum time between occurrences then as they age the color coding shows them becoming more and more urgent. So if you forgot to call your Mom last month, or your plants are all tuning brown Consistency could be for you.

Death By Powerpoint

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Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death.

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SIMPLE IRA Plan

For employers looking for a low cost way to offer a retirement plan, the SIMPLE IRA plan is a good choice. SIMPLE IRA plans can be established by any business with 100 or less employees who earned or are expected to earn $5,000 per year. Tax exempt organizations and government entities also qualify to establish SIMPLE IRA plans. SIMPLE IRA plans are maintained on a calendar year basis. You can establish a SIMPLE IRA plan anytime between January 1 and October 1 of the initial plan year. New plans or changes can only be made effective January 1, if the plan was in existence for the previous calendar year.

Under a SIMPLE IRA plan employees can make pretax contributions, and the employer makes matching or non elective contributions. All contributions are made into an IRA established for each participant. All contributions are immediately 100% vested. Investment decisions are made by the individual participant, and the investment choices are limited only by IRA rules and any limitations imposed by the custodian.

A SIMPLE IRA plan is established by adopting a SIMPLE IRA plan document provided by the IRS or by adopting a prototype plan that has been approved by the IRS. Prototype plans are offered by financial service firms like banks, brokerage, and insurance companies. Each eligible employee must be provided with information about the plan (usually called a summary plan description) and about the SIMPLE IRA where the participant's funds will be deposited.

All participants may defer 100% of eligible compensation up to $11,500 for 2009 ($14,000 if over 50). In addition to the employees deferral the employer is required to match dollar for dollar up to 3% of the employee's eligible compensation. Rather than making matching contributions an employer can choose to make a non elective contribution of 2% of the employee's eligible earnings up to $240,000 for 2009. However, if the non elective contribution is chosen it must be made to all eligible employees regardless of whether they chose to make any deferral contributions. The 3% match can be reduced if the following conditions are met;

• the matching limit cannot be less than 1%

• the limit cannot be for more than 2 years of a 5 year period, and

• the employees are notified in a reasonable period of time before the 60 day election period when employees can select deferral rates.

Participation rates do not limit the amount highly compensated employees and business owners can contribute to a SIMPLE IRA plan. An important distinction for business owners is that, unlike a 401k plan, they may always make the maximum contribution to their own account and receive the maximum allowable match.

During the 60 day election period which generally begins November 2 of each calendar year, the employer must provide each eligible employee details of their opportunity to make or change a salary deferral, the employer's decision as to the matching contributions or non elective contributions, and a summary description of the plan.

Early withdrawals from SIMPLE IRA plans are allowed and may not be restricted by the employer. However the IRS levies a 25% tax penalty for early (pre 591/2) withdrawals made in the first two years of plan participation. After 2 years early withdrawals are subject to a 10% penalty. Of course income taxes are due on any withdrawals. During the initial 2 year period SIMPLE IRA plan funds cannot be transferred or rolled over without taxes to any account other than another SIMPLE IRA.

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Safe Harbor For Your 401k

IRS non discrimination rules sometimes can make establishing a 401k hard for small businesses with a few highly compensated employees. Owners and highly compensated employees are usually limited in their salary deferrals by the participation rate and average deferral rate of all employees.

If your 401k plan has or expects to have low participation rates or employee deferral rates, including safe harbor provisions in your plan may be the solution you need.

To qualify for the safe harbor provisions the plan must make contributions to employee accounts by one of the following methods:

Make a 3% Non elective contribution

• No allocation requirements may be imposed ie. minimum hours of service or employed on last day of plan year . Must cover all employees, even those who died or discontinued service during the plan year.

• Must be 100% vested immediately. However these funds are not available for in-service withdrawals, even under the hardship withdrawal rules.

Make matching contributions of 100% of the first 3% of salary deferral and 50% of next 2% of salary deferrals

• No allocation requirements may be imposed ie. minimum hours of service or employed on last day of plan year. Must cover all employees, even those who died or discontinued service during the plan year.

• Must be 100% vested immediately. However these funds are not available for in-service withdrawals, even under the hardship withdrawal rules.

• Rate of match cannot increase as deferral rate increases.

A safe harbor notice must be provided to each eligible employee 30 to 90 days before the start of each plan year.

Safe harbor provisions cannot be added to an existing 401k plan during the plan year. The plan may be amended to include a safe harbor provision but it cannot become effective until the first day of a new plan year. A newly established 401k must have at least three months remaining in the short plan year to have a safe harbor provision, unless it is a plan for a brand new business.

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