As the Owner of your Own Business, what kind of Salary, Compensation and Benefits do you Owe Yourself?

If you are a small businessman with your own 10-employee business, you certainly know how to determine what the contribution of each one of your employees is worth. What about the salary, compensation that you pay yourself every month out of the revenues that come into the business? Executive compensation has been an emotional topic of discussion for quite a while. Everyone clearly hates how top CEOs just pay themselves millions and give themselves salary hikes each year. What are you supposed to do as the owner of the small business? How do you know what you're worth, how much you pay yourself and what would be fair for your business? Only about 60% of American small businesses have any kind of proper written philosophy over what the company is to pay the owner. Everyone else just does whatever feels right at the moment.

Often, the salary that you pay yourself is whatever is left over after all the suppliers and employees and expenses are paid for. But if there is enough to go around that you could raise it or lower it as you wished, there are a few things you need to consider. A good way to put a price on the contribution you make to your company would be to think about what an independent investor in your company would think about what you bring to the table and would he be comfortable with what you get paid. A good way to estimate want your contributions are worth would be to list out all the important things you do for the company one after the other and then pay each kind of responsibility you carry out whatever the going rate is in the market.

But even if you can arrive a figure once you list everything out that only has to be the theoretical amount you get paid. Since seeing the company grow is a kind of compensation in itself, for going a bit of salary, compensation or benefits for the betterment of the company may not be such a bad idea. Plowing back profits into the company can be a form of investing in your own future and the future of the company that will reap you better profits and time. Owners of startup businesses usually accept next to nothing in compensation for the first few years until the business finds its feet.

You could also use industry benchmarks to determine for yourself what your job might be worth. To know what other business owners in your position make can be a great indication. You could just go on the Internet and look for what kind of salary, compensation and benefits people in your position make. You'll find free compensation figures at lots of websites. But in these things, you usually don't get very good information for free. The best estimates cost thousands of dollars. Whichever estimate you choose, you need to take with a pinch of salt.

In general, before you make your mind up about what you owe yourself, you need to consider the general economic climate at the time, the size of the company, the complexity of the business, educational qualifications and the kind of industry you work in.

When Graduate Jobs in America Involve a Broom, a Bartender's License and an Apron

There's something about America that feels a lot like India these days. In India, you're often likely to find that in the cities, every low-paid clerk at the grocery store, the cab drivers, the office gophers and construction workers, hold graduate and postgraduate degrees. Back in America today, you're likely to find lots of similar stories. You'll find someone with an MA in classical languages stocking shelves at Target; you'll find that your bartender has a degree in psychology; and you'll find that that bright political science from down the street works a phone for a little money. These are the new graduate jobs. These are the jobs that young people take out student loans that they pay back for the rest of their lives for.

When you hear that the recession is over and that the economy is back on track, don't believe it. One of the worst things the recession has done has been to take hope away from today's generation. And education was always supposed to be one's ticket to a better life. Today, with people with graduate school under their belt flipping burgers and scooping french fries at McDonald's, one wonders what people with only high school or a year of college are doing.

The really lucky ones do find suitable graduate jobs; but they find that those jobs pay sharply lower salaries then they would have three years ago, before the recession. On average, the starting salary of a young person last year with a four-year degree under his belt, was $27,000. That's $3000 less than what it used to be before the recession. And this is a period of time that prices have risen quite spectacularly. So if you think about it, that's actually a $5,000 salary cut when you adjust for inflation.

When you hear that unemployment around the country is at 9% or 10%, does that sound truly alarming to you? How does 45% sound? That's the unemployment figure among new graduates from last year. It used to be before the recession, that only 10% of those who graduated with a four-year degree had trouble finding a job right away.

Of course, not all graduate degrees are the same. When it comes to finding graduate jobs - or jobs that actually require a graduate degree (unlike the aforementioned jobs tending bar or stocking shelves at Target), young people who have degrees in teaching or engineering are more likely to find a job today. Young people who have a degree in political science or the classical languages are the least likely to find graduate jobs.

People who suffer this way react often by resorting to further education with a vengeance. They go back to school trying to get a PhD or something. What could they do? It's their only shot.

Selling Gold - the New National Pastime

What kinds of treasures lie in your attic? To families across the country, digging out poorly-used and very old silver items from storage and bits of broken gold jewelry from deep in some drawer are becoming quite a profitable pastime. The price of gold and silver have been soaring on the backs of vigorous investing activity for quite a while now; and people are beginning to realize that this could be a great time to bring long forgotten pieces of precious metal out in the open. As people begin to hear the news of how they are in the middle of a rare opportunity to turn forgotten scraps of precious metal into cash, with gold and silver prices at record highs, they have taken to everything short of digging out their fillings to cash in. Selling gold has become the new national pastime.

The price of gold jumped up 50% in the first quarter of this year alone. It's the highest it's been since the 80s. And jewelers of every description have begun to change the recipes they use for their designs. Gold, long the mainstay of the wedding ring, is beginning to give way to silver. In some cases, jewelers are trying to construct rings almost entirely without metal - mostly with precious stones like emeralds. As the marriage season picks up steam, even Indian weddings, long dependent on the luster of gold to make things look classy enough, are changing their ways.

With everyone getting in on the act, selling gold and silver, one of the first kinds of business to benefit has been the pawn shop. Corporate-owned businesses like First Cash Financial and EZCorp have been doing spectacularly well. They've seen growth that's about 50% higher than even a couple of months ago, with customers and bringing in every scrap of gold and silver they can lay their hands on.

Investors who wish to get in on the precious metals are in many cases worried about how they've missed the boat with gold. At $1600 a troy ounce, this isn't any market for investors to be getting into for the first time. It's for investors who have already bought in and who wish to be selling gold to cash out. Silver, at about $50 a troy ounce is priced exactly right for those who may wish to make a killing. Silver has never been really considered a precious metal; it is not a base metal, of course; but it hasn't quite been in the same leagues as gold or platinum.

Basically, jewelry makers who design stuff for the affordable end of the market are trying to switch to base metals. Even silver is too expensive these days. Go to stores like Nordstrom or Saks, and the jewelry you see there that sells for $300 or so is usually gold-plated brass these days.