Business Marketing & Finance Resources

Unless you are a Saint, you are bound to make a mistake or two in your lifetime. The mistakes that you have made can be insignificant or it can be a life changing event. You can make a huge mistake by accumulating so much debt that you only choice out of this jam is to file for bankruptcy protection, or you can make a tiny mistake such as forgetting about your son’s first birthday. Filing for bankruptcy shelter is absolutely a life changing event and most people would not want relive this ordeal in their lifetime. If you had to file for bankruptcy protection, what led you to this financial crossroad, and what do you plan to do to fix this in the future?

Poor budgeting and not watching out what you are spending and how much you are spending can be a major contributor to those who had to file for bankruptcy shelter. Poor financial planning can take the form of many scenarios. During the real estate bubble of the 2000s, many people got into deep financial debt because they bought homes they cannot afford. Even if you are making a lot of money, for example, $10,000 of net income per month. But if you ended up spending more than $7,000 on your home related expenses, can you live off the remaining $3,000? A good rule of thumb is not to spend more than 30% of your income on housing expenses.

By not living within their means, some people find themselves in a financial hole that they had to file for bankruptcy protection. In simpler terms, this means that you are spending more than you are making. During the mid 2000s and even the time leading up to the recession of 2008, using credit cards seems so easy to everybody. People who find themselves with a mountain of credit card debt forgot that charging purchases on credit card does not mean that the debt do not need to be repaid over time. Buying things or services using credit card does not mean that you do not have to pay for it, it just lets you pay for it at a later date. It is a useful tool to help you purchase that new TV that you have always wanted. In order not to abuse the credit card use, you have to know that you can pay for this new purchase in reasonable amount of time. You will know if you cannot afford to pay for this new purchase, because you are hoping to pay for this purchase using the minimum payment on the credit card bill.

The majority of the people who had to file for bankruptcy tend to abuse their credit cards. And to make matters worst, some of these people even use the credit cards for daily living needs. Can you imagine someone who is already heavily in debt, and yet he or she has to use the credit card to buy that food or shelter for the day? Cash advance from the credit card is one way that people tend to abuse the credit card usage. Cash advance is one of the worst financial transaction one can incur in his or her lifetime. The drawback to using the cash advance from the credit card include extraordinary high interest rate which means you will have even a harder time paying back this debt. Some people will justify this action by promising that this is just a one time occurrence. Those cannot manage their finances properly tend to find this cash advance way as an “easy” way to get by from month to month.

For those who are thinking of filing bankruptcy, or have filed for bankruptcy recently, here some advice that you should adhere to (coming from a person who had gone through this ordeal):

You should only spend on what you have earned and not more
Create a budget and use it wisely so that you can follow rule #1
Saving money is the best thing you can do, just in case you will need it one day

The objective to filing bankruptcy is to give yourself financial relief from the wrath of the creditors. Filing bankruptcy is not a get out of jail free card, like the one from monopoly. You should not use it as a way to wipe out your debt so that you can accumulate debt again. Take this chance given to you and rebuild your life without the massive debt hanging over your shoulders each and every day. Look at this from the positive side at all times, instead of focusing on the negative aspects of filing for bankruptcy. If you are uncertain of what is involve in the bankruptcy filing, seek the advice of a local bankruptcy lawyer near you.

No matter what industry you’re in, there is definitely a section of your business that needs to handle reports and analysis. Markets are competitive, and a business that doesn’t tend to the analytical as well as the administrative aspects of the company will not last very long. However, one of the main complaints is that in trying to take care of these elements, there is a new problem — how do you actually take care of the paper equation? Indeed, the problem can be narrowed down to the amount of paper that’s needed for those analytical and administrative components. If you think about industries like media, marketing, sales, and education, the amount of paper required for printing can be quite astronomical to the conservative eye. There has to be a better solution that still allows for paperwork to still be handled without taking away from the overall budget, right?

There is, actually. What you can do is look into outsourced printing, which does exactly what you might think. You will essentially be creating a commercial printing task in your business, but another company will be handling your printing needs. This is something that can not only save you money, but it can cut down on the overall paper that you use within the company. Generally speaking, whenever a business has to pay for something, they reduce the usage to save even more money. This means that you might find that your organization uses less paper to cut down on costs.

Print procurement is poised to be the new business revolution, and you can take advantage of it by ordering outsourced printing services online — there’s no need to fill out more paperwork when you’re trying to save money, not add to your costs in a negative way — why not get started today?

Running a business is a massive budget gimmick, in terms of services size and so forth. It is crucial for the manager to maintain financial stability, which is a hard task; without mentioning that there are competitors in the market who are also aware of such facts, as well.

Facing competition is one thing, while facing turmoil of juggling sales reports, cash flow and invoicing income and expenses is in fact something that requires big work. This tires and overwhelms owners of small businesses in most cases.

Often than not, the operation of small businesses are run by people who just want to make the most of their skills or crafts. Usually, they are not people who have acquired a degree in business or in the field of accounting. So, there should be a tool that manages the financial data, and let these people earn good money while doing what they enjoy. Actually, to run a business, there are several budgetary requirements, other than craft or manufacturing skills.

The advent of the personal accounting software has changed a lot of things. As the name suggests, it is a software application that helps business owners to follow the financial transactions. Here we get a big gain of time and profit. Personal finance software for small businesses is a good record of keeping all that relates primarily to the financial situation of the company. What you should do is keep a good record in one amount of money coming in and out of the business interest, and then all necessary data and report processing can be obtained easily in the future, with the help of the software.

In this way, it will be much easier for employers to maintain a good path of how the work could be for a certain period of time. In addition, it allows managers to take a look at the business and evaluate the work that has been done.

The advantages of accounting software for small businesses are evident and clear, that’s why there are many packages of them that are constantly being produced and put on the market today.

There are online versions of personal accounting software available to all those who want an eye on their money, but for free. These are usually very easy to use, and they would help you a lot in managing personal finances, as well as small businesses cash flows.

Whether you want to create a new company, to develop a new product, opening a branch, purchase new machinery, breaking into a new market or enter a new business category, the most effective way to evaluate the profitability of these investment projects is using NPV.

Simply find the NPV of an investment project, to see if the project is viable or not.

Also, if you have several investment options, the NPV lets us know which of these projects is the most profitable.

Net Present Value (NPV) is the result of subtracting from Net Profit Updated (BNA), the investment of the project:

VAN = BNA – Investment

Net Profit Updated (BNA) is the resulting amount of total project cash flow, but converted to a current value via a discount rate.

The Discount Rate is the minimum rate of return we expect for our investment.

To better understand these concepts, we see an example of how to find the NPV of an investment project:

Suppose we want to find the NPV of a company you want to create.

To do this, based on our budget revenue (sales forecast) and our budget expenditures (costs and expenses), we have developed our projected cash flow for the next 5 years (usual to find the NPV is using this term).

The last line of the projected cash flow (revenue minus expenses) is:

If, for example, we calculate that the investment required to create the company amounts to U.S. $ 16 000, we could say that the company in 5 years would have a profit or gain of U.S. $ 4,000 (20 000 – 16 000), and at be a positive amount, the business is profitable.

But this would not be entirely correct, because we have not taken into account the value of money over time, i.e. we have not considered that the projected 20 000 today would have another value.

To find the present value of 20 000, we need to update this amount through a discount rate.

To determine the discount rate, we must determine what the minimum rate of return you could expect for our investment, i.e. how much we would grow a minimum, our investment in 5 years.

Therefore we can guide the rates of return given in investment projects with the same risk.

Suppose we have found the rate of return offered by banks and a savings deposit and the rate offered by other investments, and have concluded that the least we can expect for our investment is a return of 14%.

Avoid unnecessary debt, especially debt that has great interest, such as credit cards. Pay off all debt as quickly as possible, even if it means taking an extra mortgage to do so. If you are saving, then make sure you know what you are saving for.

A car will always depreciate very fast, and the holidays are a very fast way to burn savings.

If you are saving a portion of their money as 10%, then make sure you stick to it. If you are budget, then make sure you stick to it too. It is very easy to do after a while it just habit becomes.

If you’re looking to build a stock portfolio that you should really learn about investing in stocks in the first place. Not a good idea to leave it to a stockbroker, they do not care about your money as much as you, and they work on commission. Choose a few companies you think are really a good investment. Do some research on companies and find out what products they offer. Choosing a company has a product just because you love can be an investment strategy. Alternatively, firms choose which you think has a great future potential and other reasons as well.

If you want to invest in property, and then make any statement you need to get a decent debt in the form of a mortgage. This debt is much safer because it is secured by property that is bringing income to cover interest on the mortgage.

It’s because real estate is as safe banks will lend you money against it. This creates leverage in their investment. Banks will not lend you money to invest in stocks.

Real estate is the preferred choice of investment for many people who know little about investing. If you do not have time to learn to invest in stocks, then this should be your choice of where to allocate your savings.