Often when I think of a safe, I think of a large, rectangular, reinforced metal ??box?? for placing valuable or firearms. Though these large types of safes are available, and there is a very good reason to have one, they are not the only options out there for protecting your valuables. We do not have any firearms in our house, so we do not need large. But we do have some valuables and important documents that we would like to keep safe, especially in case of a fire. After doing a bit of research, I decided that I really like Sentry safes, so I took a look to see what they offered, and was impressed with the large range of different types of Sentry safes.

One nifty type of safe is the in-floor safe. It is a cylinder tube that is about 15?? high that is installed in the floor of your house. With the top flush with the floor, the safe is easily concealed under a rug. It comes with a combination lock and contoured handle. It says that it is easy to install in wood or concrete floors, and can be used in new or existing homes. It is not very big, but if you do not have a lot of items to protect, and have a desire to keep it hidden, an in-floor safe is a good option.

For a small family or single person, a great option from Sentry safes is a security chest or box. They are not very big, but are perfect for protecting basic documents such as birth certificates, wills, insurance papers, passports etc. Small external hard drives or thumb drives also easily fit, though you would want to make sure that the chest is classified to protect such data since electronic media is damaged at a lower temperature than paper . They are very compact and versatile and easy to grab and take with you in an emergency. Chests are also available with waterproof seals. I found out that these are some of the most popular Sentry safes in the world!

Most everybody has certain files that must be protected, and even all the documents that we have are sometimes nice just to keep better organized in a file type system. For those of you are are super organized, a security file may be for you! More than a file cabinet, it is an actual secure file box, with the same fire and security protection of any of the full sized Sentry safes. Also available with a waterproof seal.

If you have a business with a lot of keys for different buildings or vehicles, then Sentry safes offers keyboxes. It allows you to keep all of your keys organized and color coded, as well as secure from theft in one nice, safe location. Also great for small businesses which has to move cash around are Sentry??s safeboxes. They come with removable cash trays. Both of these types of Sentry safes are key locked.

A nifty little safe that I had not seen before are Sentry safes for autos. It seems that more and more people have valuable in their cars, especially with all of the electronic gadgets available today. The auto safe is compact and fits easily underneath a seat so it is out of sight from quick hit thieves. It has a key lock and a steel cable that allows you to anchor the safe to a seat or in the trunk, so the thief cannot just grab the safe to quietly break into somewhere else.

Last but not least, and one of the coolest and innovative things to hit the market, is the fireproof and waterproof external hard drives by Sentry safes. They have direct USB connectivity to your computer so that you can keep all of your files safely backed-up. The concept of keeping your files backed-up is not new, but the extra peace of mind to know that your external hard drive is also safe from fire and water damage as well as dust and dirt is truly peace of mind that cannot be found in a regular thumb drive or hard drive. You can also just keep it on your desk, and do not have to remember to back up your files and then put your hard drive back into a regular safe, so very convenient! Developed with Maxtor, this is probably just the first of this type of product to hit the market.

After doing this research, I think that I need more than one type of safe! I like the chest safe for basic documents, the fireproof hard drive for all of our electronic media (especially since we have so many digital family photos that I would hate to lose), and an auto safe for the valuable items we seem to often have with us in the car. So, of all the Sentry safes, which ones are best for you?

You may have heard the terms ‘structured’ and ‘unstructured’ play and wondered–which is better for my child? That’s a bit like asking, ‘Which is better: fruits or vegetables?’ Someone who eats healthy is going to have both without even thinking about it. If you are providing plenty of playtime opportunities for your child, then both kinds of play are taking place.

Structured play has a set of rules with specific objectives. Most games fall under the category of structured play: card games, board games and classic outdoor games like red-light green-light and tag are all structured activities. Putting puzzles together is a structured activity. So is following directions to assemble a toy, model airplane or Lego theme set. Organized sports-soccer, hockey, tennis, etc.–are all examples of structured activities. Generally speaking, when your child is engaging in structured play, she is seeking the most efficient way to achieve pre-existing objectives.

Unstructured play is open ended with unlimited possibilities. Playing with blocks is unstructured play. So is coloring, drawing or painting on blank paper. Deciding how to play with a toy airplane or doll is unstructured play. Inventing games to play is unstructured activity. So is running around the playground or park. Generally speaking, when your child is engaging in unstructured play, she is in the process of establishing her own objectives.

A consideration more important than structured vs. unstructured play is to ask whether the activity holds your child’s full attention. When your child is fully engaged in an activity, she is arranging and absorbing its meaning. She is finding reward in the act of understanding. She’s enjoying figuring it out, whether the “it”–the activity–is structured or unstructured. If you make a habit of providing quality playtime to your child, she’ll make a habit of taking ownership of an activity and applying her ingenuity and creativity to their fullest. That’s a valuable habit–a lifetime learning habit that does not have its origin in structured or unstructured play, but rather in quality play.

Most parents want to be good parents. Yet parenting is one of those things that does not have hard and fast rules. So how do we know what to do? How do we know what will support our children in being all they can be?One of the most important things for parents to do is to learn to trust their own intuition. Your feelings tell you when you are on course or off course in your behavior with your children. When things feel right inside, then you know that you are being a truly loving parent, and when they feel wrong inside, you know you are out of alignment with what is in your highest good and your children’s highest good.I remember my mother telling me that she used to put her fist in her mouth to stop herself from crying and from picking me up when I was an infant and cried. She had read in Dr. Spock that babies should not be picked up when they cry, that it is good for their lungs to cry, and that she would spoil me if she picked me up. But her insides were telling her the opposite – that babies cry when they need food, changing, or love. It is so sad that she followed Dr. Spock instead of her own inner knowing.Now research has proven that babies who are not picked up when they cry become more dependent and insecure than babies who are kept with their mothers. In other countries, babies sleep with their parents until they no longer want to, feeling safe all night. In our country, most babies are alone at night, some crying themselves to sleep. This is not only sad, it is not healthy for the baby.So the first thing your child needs from you is to trust your inner knowing rather than any book you read.Your child needs your loving presence – not your busy preoccupied presence. For your children to feel important to you, they need to feel you fully present with them – reading to them daily, playing with them, holding and comforting them, and listening to them.Your children need for you to create a healthy environment for them by feeding them healthy food, restricting screen time – TV, computer, video games – and making sure they play outdoors and get enough exercise. They need your encouragement to develop their hobbies and interests. They need you to try natural remedies before resorting to drugs for illness, so that you don’t set them up for more illness with the side effects of drugs.They need for you to be a good role model of self-care. Children need to see their parents taking full responsibility for their own feelings instead of being victims and blaming others. With this role modeling, they will also learn to take full responsibility for their own feelings. Learning and practicing the Inner Bonding process that we teach will support you in becoming this loving role model for your children.Children also need you to be a role model for care of the environment. My daughter told me that my 3-1/2 year-old grandson got very upset with the checker at the market for using a plastic bag. “No, no plastic bags! It’s bad for the environment!” he told the checker. By role modeling caring for our planet, we can raise children who are much more conscious of taking care of our environment.Your children need to see you being connected with a spiritual Source of love, peace and wisdom in order to naturally connect with their own higher power.� By developing your spiritual connection, they can learn to have their own.What do your children really need from you? They need you to learn to be all you can be so they have the role modeling and permission to be all they can be.

Learning the alphabet and learning to read must be a piece of cake, right ? If nearly every six year old can master it, then it must be simple … or is it ?The alphabet, and its use in written language, is one of the most astounding developments in human history. The ability to share knowledge and information through writing has had an impact on every other human endeavor in history. For each new generation of children, reading is a bit of a miraculous accomplishment, which requires a sophisticated set of skills.To a young child, the written word is no more than seemingly random scribbles on a page. For those squiggles and lines to fall into place and form recognizable letters, and for those letters to have specific names with predictably constant sounds, and, incredibly, for each sequence of letters to come together to create a unified whole – wow ! Successfully making that journey is one of the crowning achievements in any child’s life. Learning to read means learning that written letters translate into spoken sounds. Those sounds represents known words. Those words conveys meanings – they signify real objects in the real world or they refer to concepts.”D” is the letter “dee.” The letter “D” gives us the sound “dee.” “D – O – G” equals “DOG,” perhaps some specific dog that the child knows and loves. For a child to unlock that secret is right up there with taking his or her first steps, and soon learning how to walk, and then run. From scribble, to symbol, to complete word with meaning in the physical world !Once a child can read, new worlds of knowledge and pleasure open up, and a lifetime of learning and vicarious fictional experiences can begin. What a child reads will play a role in the kind of person that that child becomes: what she or he knows, believes, values, enjoys. It may contribute to the choice of a career or provide an avenue for lifelong entertainment. In the western industrialized world, education and literacy skills are sometimes taken for granted, but the reality is that learning to read, this most powerful of cognitive skills, cannot just happen by itself, and it is not a quick process. It takes time, and different children master it at different rates.Parents need not, however, just sit back and wait for it to happen, or leave the entire burden to the school system. They need not simply hope that their children will prove to be quick studies. There is plenty that parents can do to get their children off to a good start and to reinforce reading skills at every step of the way.In “Teaching Our Youngest,” from the U.S. Department of Education, it is stated that “Children who enter kindergarten knowing many letter names tend to have an easier time learning to read than do children who have not learned these skills. In fact, it is unreasonable to believe that children will be able to read until they can recognize and name a number of letters. To read, children recognize letters and know how to connect these individual letters and sometimes combinations of letters with the sounds of spoken words.”This article provides some easy and practical tips for parents who want to enhance their children’s liklihood of success, and to do so in ways that create effortless fun for their children. Learning does not need to be drudgery for parents or for children. It can, and should, be creative and enjoyable ! The trick is to work it into everyday situations, to make learning a spontaneous and natural part of everyday life.1. READ TO YOUR CHILDREN !The more you read to your children, the more they learn that books are powerful magic. Alphabet letters, written words, and books tell us exciting stories. They can let us discover new worlds and they can teach us things we’ve never dreamed of. Let your children see the words on the page as you read them aloud. Your kids can then make the connection between the written words and the words you speak, long before they are able to read those words for themselves. Let them understand that there are coded meanings to decipher from that mysterious printed page. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, “At the beginning of kindergarten, children’s reading skills and knowledge were related to their home literacy environment. Children from a ‘literacy-rich’ home environment (i.e., those who are read to, sung to, and told stories more frequently and those who have more children’s books, records/audiotapes/CDs in the home) demonstrated higher reading knowledge and skills than other children. This relationship existed whether their families’ income was above or below the federal poverty threshold.” This effect continues once the children are in school. For example, government statistics reveal that “… children with rich literacy environments at home were more likely than other children to perform well in reading at the end of both kindergarten and 1st grade.”Therefore, it’s important to set aside a quiet sharing time every day, just for reading to your children. Share picture books, share longer stories, and share online or CD-ROM picture stories. If children associate the written word with pleasurable experiences, both their learning AND their motivation to learn how to read will be enhanced.2. SING SONGS TO YOUR CHILDREN !Sing simple songs to babies and very young children; teach songs to toddlers and preschoolers and older children. Help them tune into the rhythms and the rhymes, to the beauty of the sounds of words, spoken or sung. Try lullabies, familiar children’s songs, chanted Mother Goose rhymes, even bouncy pop songs. You can also play finger games with rhyming jingles, both for the soothing sounds of the words and to help young fingers gain dexterity.3. PLAY ALPHABET GAMES !Help your children master the alphabet before they begin kindergarten or first grade. Help them associate letters with the sounds that they make, for the same government report confirms that “… children who had certain early literacy knowledge and skills (e.g. could recognize letters of the alphabet, recognize numbers and shapes, and understand the concept of the relative size of objects) when they entered kindergarten demonstrated higher reading proficiency in the spring of both kindergarten and 1st grade than children who did not have this knowledge and these skills.”In part 2 of this article, I’ll be providing some starter ideas for helping your children learn the alphabet and to get a head start in ultimately learning how to read.

With a divorce rate in this country that approaches 50%, and a fairly sizable percentage of marriages that aren’t particularly blissful, it’s difficult to avoid searching for the answer to the battle of the sexes.

Would you like to stop searching?

We’ve moved through the old paradigm of getting your needs met in relationships and it has proven itself to be a miserable failure. Why? Attempting to get your needs met in your relationship causes some troublesome things to happen. First, it causes you to focus mainly on your needs and not on the desires of your partner. Secondly, it sets you up for disaster because it has you believing that you deserve something that may well not be delivered.

All across this great country of ours, battles are raging between men and women: she needs to talk and connect, and he needs his space and independence. Who wins here?
The answer, of course, is that both lose because of a flawed view of what a successful relationship is all about. What also happens is that both people start to blame the other for not meeting their needs.

For men who are really serious about success in their relationships, it’s important to understand how blaming your partner is an enormous problem itself. It creates a bigger problem and has you convinced that you are not part of the problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Blaming has never worked and never will. It may have you feeling justified in your position, but it will always hurt your relationship.

It’s particularly important to develop the realization that your feelings can deceive you in your relationship with your partner. This can be difficult for people raised during the honor your feelings era of relationships. Your feelings tell you things like, I can’t believe she could do something like that to me, or, How could she treat me so badly? These feelings are the result of your own low self-esteem and your own personal history of victimization.

While it’s true that your partner may treat you in a way you don’t like sometimes, it’s not true that you need to react to it with strong negative feelings. These strong negative feelings are a reflection of your own esteem issues. They also have a way of keeping your partner engaged in the struggle with you so that you can continue to blame each other. When you are both engaged in the struggle, you’ll believe that she needs to be fixed. She’ll think the same of you. Nobody wins and everybody loses. This isn’t very smart or effective.

What would happen for men in their important relationships if they gave up defending themselves and believing their needs needed to be met? What would happen if they worked at being kind and caring with their partners? I’ll tell you what would happen. They’d have great relationships! After all, the only thing that you can do to improve a relationship is to improve you.

So stop looking over at your partner and seeing all of her flaws. Stop blaming her. She has issues just like we all do. But if you see her as a collection of flaws you’ll have no chance at a successful relationship. And it’s successful relationships in life that make us truly happy.

According to a new survey carried out by Alliance & where ID_NUM=9270;
Leicester, one in five small business owners view tax as
their greatest concern. The Chancellor has announced in his
last budget that companies with profits below œ10,000 will
not have to pay any corporation tax with effect from 1 April
2002. The question to be asked is: does that announcement
make incorporation a more attractive option compared to
being a sole trader?

The answer is that from a tax point of view, it is
advantageous to trade through a limited company as long
as the income is drawn from the company by the owners as
dividends from their shares and the amount of dividends
drawn is restricted below the 40% band rate (i.e. œ31,063
for tax year 2002/03). That way, the owners have no further
personal tax (“income tax”) to pay. Moreover, dividends are
not subject to national insurance contributions. This is
excellent news of course. But, if dividend income falls
within the higher rate bracket of income tax (i.e. above
œ34,515), they will be taxed at 22.5% on the excess, which
of course will increase the tax burden. The company profits
are subject to corporation tax rates. Those are lower than
income tax rates.

The most catastrophic scenario is when the director takes
his reward from the company as salary. Then his/her salary
is taxed at income tax rates (like a sole trader’s income).
That is because, unlike sole traders, the tax system treats
companies as separate from their owners because a company is
a separate legal entity. The problem is that the income
taxes are higher than corporation tax rates. On top of
that, they will be subject to employee and employer national
insurance contributions, which of course increase the tax
burden and render his position worse than even an
unincorporated business (“sole trader”), because NIC Class 1
on payroll are higher than NIC Class 2 paid by self
employed.

In contrast, a self employed person (“sole trader”) is taxed
at income tax rates on the profits from his business, which
are added to his other sources of income. As it has already
been mentioned, income tax rates are overall higher than
corporation tax rates. On top of income tax, national
insurance contributions class 4 are payable on the business
profits within a specified band (7% on profits between
œ4,615and œ30,420). National insurance contributions Class 2
are also paid by self-employed people, although those are
lower than those payable by company directors on their
salaries.

To illustrate the above, let’s take a simple example. We
have a limited company and a sole trader. They both make
œ60,000 profits each in the tax year 2002/03. We assume that
the company director takes a salary equal to the amount of
his personal allowances (untaxed income) of œ4,615 and the
balance as dividends. The company will pay corporation tax
at 19% equal to œ10,523 and nothing else. The sole trader
will pay income tax œ16,542, National insurance Class 2 œ104
and National insurance Class 4 œ1,806. Total œ18,452. The
bottom line is that the person that has incorporated his
business into a limited company will make a tax saving of
œ7,929 compared to a sole trader! Isn’t that fantastic?

Somebody might be wondering: why is this entire happening?
The official explanation is that, this government, to help
the economy grow, encourages people to leave as much profits
within their businesses to be reinvested, instead of being
taken out and spent.

The “unofficial line” is that, as a matter of fact, for
years the Inland Revenue has tried to reclassify the
self-employed. The 1% in NIC hike on staff salaries above
the NIC threshold from next April adds to both the
employees’ and employers’ tax burden and may more than
offset the saving from the corporation tax zero rate on the
first œ10,000 of profits.

Aren’t there any other matters to consider in deciding
whether to incorporate or not?

Higher administration costs to comply with company law,
payroll and bookkeeping is one factor. Another issue is
pension planning. Extracting profits out of the company as
dividends rather than salary means that there will be no
“net relevant earnings” and therefore pension contributions
can’t be made. But the advent of stakeholder pension plans
has meant that contributions up to œ3,600 per year can be
made without the need for any earnings. If a person does not
wish to transfer funds in existing plans into stakeholder
because of high charges, there is a way out: the best net
relevant earnings (i.e. salary) in five consecutive years
can be used for making contributions for the next five
years, even if there were no salaries in the remainder four
years. It is comforting to know that entitlement to basic
state pension is not affected by taking a salary from the
company at the level of a person’s personal allowances i.e.
œ4,615.

Furthermore, an individual may decide not to bother with
pension plans and instead invest in ISA. Often, these can be
more efficient than pensions but that’s beside the scope of
this article. If that option is taken, no salary is
necessary.

Another factor is business motoring. It might be tax
advantageous for an unincorporated business that owns many
cars not to incorporate because if these cars have some
private use there will be benefits in kind taxed on the
users. These are generally higher than the straight
apportionment between private and business for all car
running costs in the case of sole traders.

The conclusion is that there can be considerable tax savings
waiting the sole trader who decides to go down the
road to incorporation. But, one needs to proceed with
caution and careful planning. And don’t forget the biggest
advantage of incorporation, which is Protection
from Personal Liability. Incorporating is one of the best
ways to protect a business owner from personal liability.
Shareholders of a company are generally not liable for the
obligations of the company. Creditors of a company may seek
payment from its assets, but not the assets of the
shareholders. This means that business owners may engage in
business without risking their homes or other personal
property.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Article. I hope
you’ve found it useful. If you have, please drop me an email
and let me know what you think.

You can email me at…

constantinesavva@accamail.com

Alternatively, you can visit our website at
http://www.tax-accounting-london.info and read a series of
other full length articles that present the complete picture
on a variety of interesting topics.

If you would like to know how to save tax and make sure that
more of your hard earned cash stays with you to expand your
business and increase your profits, we have a Free Special
Report addressed to small businesses either starting up or
already in business. This Exclusive Free Special Report is
available automatically when you subscribe to our regular
series of Free Newsletters on finance advice and tax
planning by visiting our subscription area on our website
www.tax-accounting- london.info. It is complied from real
life situations dealing with small business tax affairs for
over 10 years and it is loaded with down-to-earth advice and
practical, understandable examples.

LEGAL NOTICE
Whilst every care has been taken in the preparation of this
article, the author cannot accept responsibility for any
errors or omissions. Proper professional advice should be
taken at all times.

We retain copyright fo
r the contents of this article. Any
unauthorized copying or onward distributions are prohibited
without our consent.

Am I Really A Stroller-Monger?
By David Leonhardt

I was reading “A Modern Infant Armada”, a humor column in Maclean’s Magazine written by a fellow humor columnist. Writing about it now is a bit like a painter painting another painter or a singer singing about another singer (but it not like a cook cooking another cook.).

David Russell (yes, another humor columnist named David) laughs at his neighbor for parking both cars in the driveway to make room in the garage for four strollers for just one child. I laughed with him. Four strollers for just one baby is ridiculous, right?

However, David Russell becomes a parent himself, a condition that afflicts many unsuspecting homo sapiens, and he concludes that a call to his neighbor is warranted: “I need to see if he can help me get a fleet rate.”

“Traitor!” I cried out. “Stroller monger!”

“Who’s a traitor?” my wife asked as she walked in the room. “And just what is a stroller monger.”

I resisted the obvious answer – that a stroller monger is somebody who mongs strollers. “David Russell. He says that one stroller is enough for any child, but then he decides to buy an entire fleet.”

“Say, we could have saved a bundle if we had applied for a fleet rate,” my wife mused.

“What? We don’t have four strollers.”

My wife smiled. It was a sweet smile you could just fall in love with…if you did not know that it meant, “Oh yes we do!”

“We do not.”

“My wife took out her counting fingers. “First there is the car seat,” she said, pressing down the first finger. “We snap it into the stroller base whenever we go anywhere.”

“OK, that’s one.”

“Then there is the SUV,” she said, pressing down on a second finger. The “SUV” is a full sized stroller. We bought it when we were still squeezing it on a downtown apartment. With no storage space, it stood in the entrance area, blocking our path to the kitchen and any hope of escaping if the place caught fire. The SUV is the Hummer of strollers.

“OK, that is a stroller, I will grant you. But that’s just two.”

“We also have the fold-up stroller,” my wife said, pressing down a third finger.

“But she’s not even using it yet.”

“She will soon and we have it now,” my wife pointed out. “Then there is the old fold-up stroller we kept as a backup. That makes four.”

“You can’t count duplicates. That’s double counting.”

“It takes double the space,” my wife insisted. “We have four strollers.

I stared in silence. Slowly it sunk in. Yes, there were two Davids who were humor columnists, but there were also two Davids who were stroller-mongers.

Uh-oh. My wife was smiling again. She was watched for just the right moment to strike. “Our baby has more seats in this house than anybody else has.”

“That’s ridiculous.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than I remembered the boomerang rule. Words like ridiculous, ludicrous, silly, stupid and big mouth usually apply only to the person who speaks them.

My wife rhymed off our seats, “Three on the couch, two chairs in the living room, six in the kitchen, one in the bathroom and one at each of our desks. Plus the three red chairs Little Lady has in the living room. That makes 17.”

“Ha!” I knew it couldn’t be true.

Then came that deadly sweet smile again, the smile that said, “Take my hand while I lead you around the house to see why you should think first and shout ‘Aha!’ later.”

In the kitchen stood the high chair and the sit-in play saucer. In her office sat the rocking chair that never rocked and the bouncy chair that never bounced. There was the swing seat, and there were two cushion seats for sitting upright on the floor. She opened the door to the enclosed porch, and there were the four strollers and the car seat she would soon be using.

“That makes 12,” my wife tallied. “We each have fewer than six.”

I thought really hard. “Aha!” I said again, proudly pointing out that this time I had thought first and shouted ‘Aha!’ later.. “We have three chairs on the balcony, and six on the patio. There are also six folding chairs for the fire pit.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there was no reason to forget all the outdoors furniture at a time like this. Unfortunately, there was no reason to forget arithmetic, either. Our baby still had the most seats in the house – and outside the house, too.

“Uh, do toilet seats count?”

My wife smiled her sweet smile again, a smile that could only mean, “So, stroller monger, what do you have to say for yourself now?”

I knew that another humor columnist named David had just been labeled a traitor. Meekly, I mumbled. “Lawn tractor seat?”