Simon’s Notes

Kassper is a blogger and a great friend of mine, he’s been blogging for longer than I have but he’s always been there for me to lend a helping hand. I would have to honestly say that he is one of my best online blogging friends.

Besides Kassper’s day job as a financial consultant, he also has a goal to make some money from his blog, and from what I can tell, he’s been quite successful at it. I always learn so much from his experiences. So here he is.

Simon: Could you tell us a little about yourself, such as your name, age, education, hobbies, and anything else interesting?

Kassper: Of course my friend, my name is Dario, I’m 24 and I come from a beautiful town called Koprivnica (Croatia) and am a college graduate in economics - finance and marketing.

At the moment, besides my online projects, I work as an financial consultant where I manage my own time, and I work for a construction company in their commercial sector.

It’s hard for me to find some time for hobbies, but when I do make the time, it’s usually for playing some friendly poker with my friends and sometimes football…

Simon: When did you discover blogging, and what were your first reactions to the concept?

Kassper: Blogging is just great, isn’t it?

I started blogging about 4 months ago and decided to make my own blog then. As soon as I started blogging more seriously I just fell in love with it. I can’t even imagine myself giving up on blogging now

Simon: What are your main reasons for blogging?

Kassper: I started blogging to make money. And I do make it now so there are other reasons why I enjoy blogging. I like the blogosphere itself. So many bloggers around the world with so many great ideas. I enjoy reading my favorite blogs and most of all, I enjoy learning something new each day and every day.

Simon: Do you prefer to use blogger, wordpress, or something else?

Kassper: Wordpress is the mother of blogs.

Simon: Could you explain why?

Kassper: There are many features that provides Wordpress and no one else. The plugins, themes, support, dashboard etc. etc.

For all new bloggers out there, I would definitely recommend Wordpress as their new blog platform.

Simon: Do you set goals for what you want your blog to achieve?

Kassper: Yes I do. It is very important to know where you want to take your blog! Setting up goals is the key for success in blogging.

Simon: Do you feel that you are or can reach those goals?

Kassper: Again yes. I think that anyone can achieve their goals if they know what they want, it just takes time, perseverance and determination.

Filed under: Interviews by Simon Rodrigues
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I read a post recently from John Chow where he gives his opinion on income taxes in the USA. John Chow believes that the government should basically reverse the system, or at least do away with it all together. The income tax is currently paid on a sliding scale, so if you earn more you will pay a higher percentage of tax than someone that earns less. John Chow believes that it should be the other way around, so if you earn less you should pay more than someone that earns more. If nothing else, it should at least be fixed so everyone is paying the same.

When I read this, I didn’t think much of it at first, to me this concept is not new and its one that has always made some sense in my opinion. But then someone left a comment accusing John of being greedy, now I’m not going to argue that assumption, he might very well be the greediest man alive, I don’t care. But in relation to this topic, I don’t think so.

I don’t live in the USA, I live in South Africa, but its exactly the same here. This system for calculating income tax basically rewards you for being lazy and poor. Here in South Africa there is even a threshold where you don’t have to pay taxes at all, so if you make 40,000 rand (5714 dollars) or less per year, you don’t have to pay any taxes. That may seem like pocket change to most of you but here in South Africa 40,000 rand is more than minimum wage (quite a bit more) and a lot of people earn less than that. On the surface this seems great, but actually this just promotes poverty, most people don’t want to make more money because it will just get taken away. If you earn a little more than R40,000 per year you might actually end up with less than your next door neighbor that makes less than you, its crazy.

Its not greedy to want to reward those that are moving the country forward. The only greedy ones here are the government, if they tax the richer people more they can make more money, and at the same time they can get votes from the majority of the poor people by not taxing them as much.

I’m not against poor people and helping others, in fact I’m quite involved with a lot of charity work here in SA. There are some people that are truly less fortunate than ourselves, and those people need our help. But here in SA its become a huge problem where you constantly find people that can make something of themselves but they refuse to because they are lazy, as a result we have one of the most dangerous countries in the world crime wise. If only the government would provide incentives for making more money the legal way, I’m sure a lot of our problems would be solved.

Simon

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Filed under: Money and Finances by Simon Rodrigues
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