You can be on Entrepreneur’s cover!

A Common Personal Finance Mistake New 'Treps Make Starting your own business will affect many parts of your life, including how you manage your finances.

By Catherine Clifford

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A Common Personal Finance Mistake New ‘Treps MakeStarting a business affects your life in many ways outside of work, in particular the way you manage your personal finances. One of the biggest mistakes new entrepreneurs make is not keeping their personal and business finances separate.

"They move money back and forth and it is very important to keep their records separate," says Edward Wacks, a business financial advisor based in Plantation, Fla. This commingling of finances, Wacks says, can have some damaging implications for your business down the road.

For example, if you are paying business expenses with personal funds or vice versa, it becomes challenging from an accounting standpoint to know what your profits or revenues are for your business, says Wacks. That makes filing your business taxes a headache.

Related: 9 Things Startups Must Know Before Approaching Lenders

Also, without a clear division in your finances, your personal assets are less protected if your business is sued or you take out a business loan and can't pay it back.

"Many entrepreneurs are great salespeople, but they are not as good with the inside" of a business, the metaphorical financial guts of a company, says Wacks.

Here are three tips for protecting your personal finances as a business owner:

1. Keep separate bank accounts. Taking this one step to separate business from personal will make the biggest difference, especially at tax time when you document your business' profits and losses. While this might seem obvious, Wacks says this is a common mistake he has seen startups make.

Related: 3 Online Tools To Find Funding

2. Think like you have business partners, even if you don't. To prevent yourself from getting lax about keeping your finances separate, think as though you have business partners, says Wacks. You wouldn't expect your business partners to pay for your groceries or the recent fill-up at the gas station: that will have to come out of your personal piggy bank.

3. Don't mix credit card purchases. When it comes time to pull out the plastic, keep one credit card strictly for business expenses and a separate one for personal purchases. Otherwise, trying to parse the business charges from personal ones on your monthly statement after the fact can get confusing.

Related: 4 Mistakes to Avoid When Applying for a Bank Loan

What is your best advice for keeping business and personal finances separate? Leave your comment below or respond to other reader comments.

Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Side Hustle

I Started a Semi-Passive Side Hustle That Earns $33,000 a Week on Amazon: 'Selling There Is a No-Brainer'

Dr. Jenny Woo wanted to create a product that would help people connect, and it turned out to be a lucrative one.

Business News

'Wildly Inappropriate': Woman Says She Was Denied a Job Because She Didn't Wear Makeup During the Interview

Melissa Weaver was applying for a VP of HR job at a tech company via video.

Fundraising

Avoid These 9 Pitch Deck Mistakes When Asking Others For Money

Crafting an efficient pitch deck requires serious effort, but at least it's not wandering in the dark since certain rules are shaped by decades of relationships between startups and investors.

Business Ideas

63 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2024

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2024.