Welcome to Kingdom News!!!

Welcome to our June 2022, Sivan 5782 Newsletter!

Spring is coming to a close and the Summer is about to heat up! We have made it through the omer count and should have seen the maturity we’ve gained during Shavuot. Now, it is the season of first fruits. Has your fruit ripened?

With all the self-improvements and introspection, we’ve been going through this year, we should now have something to show for our efforts. Personally speaking, it’s been tough, but we are seeing changes... physically, financially, and spiritually. I know it may be hard to see it when your “head 's down in the grind” day in and day out, but zoom out, take a look at all you’ve accomplished! We encourage you to evaluate and appreciate how you’ve navigated through the seasons.

Speaking of navigation, we are in the Hebrew month of Sivan, and the tribe associated with this month is Zebulun.

Genesis 49:13 “Zebulun will live by the seashore and become a haven for ships; his border will extend toward Sidon.

Interestingly, in this verse both the words “seashore” and “haven” are the Hebrew word hhoph/choph H2348. This word means “a covered place” in the sense of “A covered or hidden place for protection.” So, Zebulun is blessed in Genesis 49 to be a hidden place of protection. As summer sets in many of us will find ourselves vacationing on some shore, being protected from the stress of our day-to-day grind. Coincidence? I think not!

Furthermore, Zebulun starts with the Hebrew letter Zayin. In the ancient Pictograph Hebrew, the Zayin is a plow and the goal of a plow is to prepare the ground to grow and produce good fruit.

So, our focus for this newsletter is checking our fruit.

Checking for Good Fruit!

Seeing as many of us have just come off of counting the omer, we should be able to assess whether our fruit is truly ready for harvest. As the weather becomes more enticing, we’ll be out and about and will encounter more people. How’s our manners? Some people’s manners have waxed cold. Common courtesy seems to have taken a back seat to “it’s my world and you’re just living in it” attitudes. This smells like rotten fruit to me.

What about our integrity, judgment and decision making? Have we properly shaken up, squeezed and sniffed everything to be sure we’ve got the type of fruit our Father would be proud of? This is just food for thought.

Matthew 7:17-18 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Keeping all this in mind, we not only want to be harvesting good fruit now, but we also want to continue to grow good fruit.

How can we help?

One excellent way to keep a track of your fruit harvesting is through journaling and we got you covered. In our Amazon Author’s store, we have an extensive selection of journals and notebooks. Check out our selection here:

Start documenting and see how things progress and change through your journey. Click the links below and get writing today! KingdomKhaiAuthorPage

Budgeting & Finance Focus

In this issue's Budget and Finance Focus we will dig in to the W4.

What is the W4 and why should I care about it?

Many of us may or may not remember that form we filled out when we first started working at our job, or perhaps you filled one out recently. Either way, the W4 form can have a great impact on your tax return if you don’t know how to complete it. Today we are going to explain just what this form is and give some helpful tips on filling it out, to help avoid penalties at tax time.

What is a W4?

The W4, or more officially, the Employee’s Withholding Certificate, is a form that you fill out when you start a new job. This form is reported to the IRS, by the employer, so that they can calculate how much to withhold in federal taxes from each of your paychecks.

Your withholdings are held and counted towards your annual income tax bill, that you will calculate when you complete your annual tax return. Note: There was a new version of the form effective in the 2020 tax year.

As a result of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) the personal and dependent exemptions were eliminated and the standard deduction was doubled. With that, the W4 was also updated to only account for the number of dependents that you have in your household.

With all that blah, blah, blah, what do you really need to know?

Well, it is important to be as accurate as possible with your dependent situation to avoid owing taxes in April. So, if you are single and have no dependents and no side gig. it’s easy, you just enter zero on all the lines and keep it moving.

If by chance you do run that Door Dash or Uber, you might want to consider filling in an additional amount to be withheld in Step 4 of the form, for Optional Other Adjustments. In this section you can put in an amount that would be in addition to the amount that is normally calculated to be withheld from your check. This would be something you would do if you feel you are not withholding enough and you want to be sure that you don’t owe anything when you file your return.

If you do have dependent children or other dependents, Step 3 will be where you would indicate this information based on the instructions. A good rule of thumb is when in doubt go the lesser route. If you are not sure if you should claim 2 or 3 dependents etc. Always go with the lesser number and see how the taxes get calculated on your check. Otherwise, you could have too little withheld and end up owing and we all know that is no fun.

So, the main takeaways are…

1. If you have had any issues with tax time and your withholdings not covering your tax liability. You should take a look at your W4 and make some adjustments.

2. If you would rather have a bigger refund at tax time, then either adjust your dependent information to be less, or set up step 4 on the W4 to add an extra withholding from your check.

3. If you are doing a side gig or part time job, be sure that your withholding from both sources are enough to cover your tax bill and if not, make adjustments to your W4 to ensure your tax season is not stressful.

If you need assistance with your taxes or have questions about your W4. Send us a message and we can schedule a Budget and Tax Check up! Email us @ kingdomkhai@gmail.com

Happy Budgeting.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this share are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific financial product or company. It is only intended for educational purposes.

Our Final Thought:

Don’t forget…