The 10 tips to Balance family and work life:
  

1. Work and Family Balance is a Conscious Decision : Work and family don’t “balance” automatically. Achieving balance is an ongoing process. Understanding this can reduce frustration and help you act to gain control.
   
   
2.  Write Down Family Goals : Family needs change over time. Opportunities to build a tree house for the kids or participate in a new family pastime don’t last forever. Decide what is important and write it down. Assign a date, and make these goals “absolutely-will-happens.”
   
   
3.  Stick to Your Values : Sometimes it can be tough to make a choice between a family and a work activity. Knowing where you stand on your values can make tough choices easier.
   
   
4.  Recognize that Imbalance is Sometimes Inevitable : It is important to recognize that jobs and responsibilities are important and that they sometimes take priority.
   
   
5.  Revisit Your Schedule : When your work schedule changes, new opportunities may become available to participate in family activities. Claim the high ground!
   
   
6.  Recognize the Benefits of Balance : Balancing work and family has pay-offs for children, home relationships, and everyone’s future happiness. Recognizing this can help you keep balance in mind.
   
   
7.  Manage Distractions and Procrastination : Working long hours causes stress that sometimes finds relief naturally through workplace distractions and procrastination. If you are at the office for 12 hours, do you really work only 10? If you are searching for more family time, it might be found here.
   
   
8.  Discuss Expectations and Responsibilities : When one family member is taking on too many responsibilities at home, resentments can build. Periodically discussing the perceptions of others can provide the awareness you need to consider opportunities and choices for work and family balance.
   
   
9.  Organize Your Work Better : Improving your delegation and time-management skills can buy you time needed for family life. Learning how to put work down, say “no,” and let go of workplace worries are skills that are learned through practice.
   
   
10.  Achieve an Integrated Life : Keep things in perspective. Create harmony in your life--a mixture of work, family and friends. Remember, there is no single formula for balancing work and family. It is a personal decision how one combines spouse, children and career.
    
    

“Is Training an investment or expense?”

Donald Cooper, MBA, world-class manufacturer and an award-winning retailer says, “Training and developing your staff is the single most important growth strategy that a business can have in this increasingly competitive and fast-changing world.”

Organisation’s today, consider training as an expense rather than an investment. To those who say, I m not sure if I am going to retain this person long enough to get them trained. Why would you hire someone in whom you have so little confidence?

One of the biggest mistakes companies make in times of crisis is budget cutbacks in staff training. Investment in human capital is one of the best ways to increase productivity of both businesses and society.

Investment in training brings great benefits to staff and the company. For example, employees who increased their knowledge or skill in specific areas, achieved their individual goals more easily, making better decisions and solving problems better and are prepared to perform more complex tasks.
For the company, training its human resources contributes to the formation of leaders and community leaders, enhancing communication between employees and increasing their profitability.

As a restaurant owner, what could you do to train your staff without the huge investment?

We live in a city which mostly lives off foreign tourism so perhaps implement an "English Day" a few times a week, encouraging your staff to further develop their communication effectively with customers. Regarding the kitchen, why not implement a few hours that your chefs are free to explore and create innovative dishes? New flavours = New customers for your business.
However, training does not work miracles and does not solve all the problems that an organization might have. Training is part of a process that requires diagnosis and proper planning as well as alignment with the needs and values of a company. It must be conducted by trained personnel and must be thoroughly assessed.If training is successful, the investment returns can be seen in the short and long term. And in the long term, the company will get more benefits if it can concentrate the knowledge gained by its employees and manage it properly.

Seven Ways to Earn Tax-Free Income

Summer is a good two months away, but some of us are already sweating. And for good reason. North Block has hinted at a higher tax for the rich and, perhaps, even an inheritance tax. Though the latter is not likely soon, the former is a distinct possibility.

What will you do if the finance minister decides to play Robin Hood with Budget 2013? Evading tax is illegal, but avoiding it is not. The income tax laws provide enough opportunities to the savvy investor to bring down his tax liability. However, this requires intricate knowledge of the tax rules.

Even so, with the right professional guidance, you can legitimately avoid paying tax on the income earned on your investments.

Here are the strategies you can employ to reduce your tax liability by making the most of opportunities offered by tax laws.  

1. Use indexation to nullify tax : High inflation has been a curse for investors in the past few years, but for some, it has been a boon. Tax rules allow investors to adjust the cost of an asset to inflation during the holding period. The taxpayer has the option to pay a 10% flat tax on the long-term capital gains or pay 20% after indexation.Though the rate is higher, the high inflation has made indexation the better option in the past few years.The taxpayers who have availed of this inflation indexation benefit have been able to reduce their tax to nil. In fact, if you invested in a debt fund or a debt-oriented MIP scheme three years ago and earned annualised returns of 10%, your tax liability would be zero. Not all investments are eligible for the indexation benefit. Only certain capital assets, including debt funds, FMPs, debt-oriented hybrid funds and gold ETFs, make the cut.
    
2.  Invest through a non-working spouse :A homemaker's work is never finished. From sending kids to school to shopping and managing the household, her day is fully packed. Now, add one more task to this long list—investing to earn tax-free money.This is not as simple as it appears. If you gift money to your wife, there is no tax implication. However, if this money is invested, the taxman will club the earning with your income for the year.The clubbing provision under Section 60 is meant to check tax evasion.If you are taxed on the income, is there any point in investing in your wife's name? Yes, there is. The clubbing happens only at the first level of income.
   
   If this money is reinvested and earns an income, it will be treated as your wife's, not yours. Here's how you can make this rule work for you. Gift money to your wife and then get her to invest in any of the several tax-free investment options.
   
   The earning will be clubbed with your income, but since these investment options are tax-free, it won't push up your tax liability. Your wife can then reinvest that money, and this time, the income will not be clubbed. There's another way to escape clubbing. Instead of gifting, give her a loan to buy property. Rental income from the property will be treated as her income as long as she pays you a nominal interest on the loan.
    
3.  Avail of minor exemption :As mentioned earlier, if a parent invests in a minor child's name, the income is clubbed with that of the parent who earns more. In some cases, a minor child may have a personal income, such as a cash prize in a competition or payments for commercials and events. However, this is rare and mostly it's the parent who invests on behalf of the child. There is a small Rs 1,500 exemption per child per year for the income earned by such investments.
   
   You can avail of this for a maximum of two children. This means, you can safely invest Rs 15,000 in a fixed deposit in your child's name. If you have two children, that's Rs 30,000 earning tax-free income every year.
   
   
4.  Take help of an adult child :Rebellious, obdurate, lackadaisical, wasteful ... parents have several adjectives for college-going children. Allow us to add 'tax-savers' to this list. You can save a neat sum by investing in the name of an adult child. After a person turns 18, he is treated as a separate individual for tax purposes. This means his earnings are no longer clubbed with his parent's income and he enjoys the same exemptions and deductions as any other adult taxpayer.
   
   "Gifting money to a child above 18 and then investing it for taxfree gains is a perfectly legal strategy. You can gift any amount to your child without any tax liability,” You don't have to wait for the child to turn 18 before you embark on this strategy. The rule is that if an individual turns 18 anytime during a financial year (even on 31 March); he gets the benefit for the entire year. Even those with children aged 16-17 years can use this strategy.
   
   
5.  Parents can help too :Your parents can also help you avoid the tax net. If any or both of your parents do not have a high income, while you are in the highest 30% tax slab, you can invest in their name to earn tax-free income. Every adult enjoys a basic tax exemption of Rs 2 lakh a year. For senior citizens (above 60 years), the basic exemption is higher at Rs 2.4 lakh a year. Unlike the investments made in the name of a spouse or a minor child, there is no clubbing of income in the case of parents. So, a person above 60 can potentially earn Rs 2.5 lakh per year without any tax implication. If he invests in tax saving schemes under Section 80C, the income can be as much as Rs 3.5 lakh a year.
   
   
6.  Revive your forgotten Ulip :In many ways; Ulip is like a smart phone. It's costly and many people have bought one, but only a few understand and use all its features. Most of us have Ulips in our portfolios and many of us have stopped paying the premium. If you are part of this crowd, you can use your Ulip to earn tax-free income effectively. Pay all the pending premiums at one go. However, the policy should not have lapsed due to non-payment of premium.
   
   
7.  Form an HUF with inherited wealth :A lot of taxpayers are clamouring for raising the Rs 2 lakh basic exemption limit and the Rs 1 lakh tax-saving limit in the forthcoming Budget. But very few know that they can double their exemption and savings limit simply by establishing a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF). The tax authorities treat the HUF as a separate entity. It is entitled to the same exemptions and deductions as any other individual taxpayer. This means the karta gets an additional basic tax exemption of Rs 2 lakh per year, an additional tax deduction under Sections 80C and 80D, plus the benefit of lower tax slabs.
   
   Excerpts from an article from THE ECONOMIC TIMES.