Tax and money advice are as close as your yellow pages.

            Stock photographers who operate their own business can tap into a gold mine of tax information through the array of continuing education courses available at YMCAs, colleges, VoTech schools and the like, that are taught by experienced lawyers, CPAs, and financial planners -- who are there to provide advice that is uncomplicated and immediately helpful.

            How can these courses help you? They make it possible for you to benefit from up-to-date insights from qualified professionals. Addresses for such courses can be found in your local Yellow Pages.

            Enrollment fees are a fraction of what you'd have to shell out for a one-on-one session with a CPA. In my near-New-York-City neck of the woods, for example, the going hourly rate for tax lawyers commonly is several hundred dollars and up.

            With the right kind of courses under your belt, you should need to spend less time with such high-priced consultants, whether attorneys, accountants or financial planners.

A Helpful Website

            In lieu of face-to-face sessions, you might want to familiarize yourself with another option in the "relatively inexpensive" category: (this one's fairly new) the person-to-person Internet advice sites that let you talk to experts on the telephone about how to more astutely select investments, trim taxes and handle a variety of financial subjects.

            Consider, for instance, "Keen," where you get answers to your questions over the Web (www.keen.com) and through a toll-free phone number. You browse a directory of people who can provide live, immediate advice on a variety of topics, click on a "call now" icon, and you are connected over the phone to advisers like yours truly. Calls to specialists in different areas can provide the groundwork for a broad financial education -- from tax-saving strategies that you can apply yourself, to new theories to test out on real-world advisers, to portfolio diversification strategies. You pay a per-minute fee, which allows the average person to get advice from an expert, without the commitment of a one-hour minimum consultation fee and trip across town.

            Of course, such Web advice sites aren't perfect for every situation. But they are particularly well-suited for several common situations, like verifying something said by a CPA or some other adviser, that didn't sound quite right to you. And during tax filing season, someone with a simple tax question can get a quick answer, instead of dialing into the IRS telephone assistance system only to be stymied by busy signals or put on hold to endure a lengthy wait.

Ed. Note: Other places on the Web to seek advice: http://www.allexperts.com, http://www.askanexpert.com, http://www.AskMe.com, http://www.frenzi.com, http://www.inforocket.com, http://www.experts-exchange.com, http://www.captive.com/Ask_The_Expert.html, http://www.exp.com, http://www.expertcentral.com.