Let’s start with a little commentary on personal finances for the future. One of my friends traveled to China for a tradeshow. Upon return he found that the bank had bumped up his payment due date without notice. After making his payments on time for several years thanks to auto-scheduled debits, he was late once. Guess who cut his credit line and started charging him higher interest? Never assume that debts to a bank won’t bite you as long as you make your payments. Right now, the banks own me and I HATE that thought. Who’s really in control?

With the current economic state, and the coming ripple effects of the government’s “spend even more using debt” approach, I’ve decided my best chance in the future is to take back control now and never play a part in this debt financing mentality again. My biggest goal this year is to become debt free. Yeah, I said “year.” You can surmise that’s going to take an aggressive payoff plan. And for someone with irregular income, that’s going to take very careful planning. It won’t be fun…I’ve already said no to an opportunity I’m not even permitted to tell you about yet. Ugh, it could very well have changed my professional future, but it required that I continue the spend first and pay debt later approach. It’s like asking a single person about their approach to dating, and after a nice long answer, asking them how it’s working for them! Believe me, I had to look in the mirror on that one too. hah

So why do I want MoneyWell on my team? Simple. It won’t allow you to spend money you don’t have yet. Step one, set up a reasonable spending plan. Two, schedule your income payments. When they come in, turn on the spigot (quite literally…you have to see it!) and the money flows out of the income bucket and into the spending buckets you’ve set up. Why is that so cool? Because that money is no longer counted in your “available balance.” Looking at a bank account or any other personal finance software, the available balance includes all money even if it’s been earmarked for certain bills and expenses.

Check this out…let’s say I budgeted $50 for catching up with friends over happy hour, but this month was slow so only $35 was spent. Normally, that just shows up in an over/under report and you move on to next month and budget $50 again. Well, with simple drag and drop, you can move that extra $15 to a different category! Maybe it’s one that was overspent, or better yet, maybe it’s your savings bucket. If you choose to do nothing with it, it gets added to next months budget so you’ll have $65 allocated to this category. This is especially cool when the categories we’re talking about are debt payoff, savings, or upcoming expenditures that are big and hairy that you need to start saving for today.

So take a look at MoneyWell, download the free trial. I was blown away that after an entire day of trying other software, in 45 minutes, I had my bank transactions downloaded, sorted and allocated to buckets. I also knew in that short time, what I could keep spending on and what I needed to cut back on. I’d also made all the drag and drop adjustments to make up for my mistakes in spending for the last month.

Perhaps best yet, Kevin Hoctor, the man behind it is an entrepreneur just like any of us. He has lived with all the same cash flow confusion that it brings to us. This is a small company with responsive customer service and a great user community helping everyone out. I try to reserve my endorsements for things I truly believe in, but I truly believe this will do for personal finance, what David Jay did for photographers getting their work online with Showit.

It’s already been a great resource in a number of ways. One stop shopping for brides. One stop inspiration for each of the contributing photographers. I can see already that there is a huge amount of talent in this group and it will drive each of us to improve our work. I’m excited to see what can happen when you get Portland’s best working together.

Check out www.myportlandphotographer.com!

Ahhh, it feels like a new era for Kevin Meyers Photography! So what does a person do to convey that? Why they build a completely new website with all new work and features of course!! I’m really excited for this launch and all that it means for me, my clients, other photographers and all interested people.

Since my last web update I’ve stretched my legs a bit shooting weddings around the country and abroad. Being able to showcase that work and capture the attention of discerning brides for future opportunities like those, means a lot of great stories in my future. A new system has been implemented on the back-end that tracks all my work, scheduling, billing, invoicing, etc. That means more efficiency for me which translates into more face time with all of you!

My clients will also benefit greatly from that same system, as they’ll be able to handle the business aspect of their wedding, view my progress on their work, and pass any wedding plans to me through a private client interface. I’ll be able to update the site more frequently and easily so they’ll get see more of their images sprinkled within the site. A new album preview system has also been implemented that allows for much easier and more direct feedback on album designs…you no longer have to deal with paper notes, long emails, and difficulty describing your changes!

One of the biggest instruments in this new web presence is this blog. I’m excited to fill it with way more content, stories, images and resources for both photographers and brides. It works more like a news website so you’ll have a familiar feel in finding content that’s either very new, or organized according to your interests. The “Share This” feature allows you to pass along your favorite posts to various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It can also be emailed directly to any of your friends or family, or even better, those of you helping plan your wedding if you’d like them to see samples of your ideas and where you’re getting them. I’ve also included feeds from a couple of my favorite blogs that are always updated with inspiring content. I hope you find Southern Weddings Magazine and Style Me Pretty as inspiring as I do.

One final aspect of this new web presence is still in the works. Increasingly more often, I’m communiticating with brides and families over long distances and am unable to meet in person. This means putting myself on the web more tangibly is going to be so important. Streaming video, product tours, and web-based consultations are among future plans.

Finally, I owe a big thank you to the guys at BIG Folio for helping me get this all up and running. They’ve been amazing at handling my wishes!!

Thanks for reading! Stay a while and enjoy what’s to come!