(Financial mentoring) Disaster Preparedness and Your Home Business
No commentsBy Joel Booker
Disasters or family tragedies can strike families in many forms - Mother Nature, sickness and even computer problems can cause major difficulties for your business. Do you have a plan of action on how you will handle your home-based business if disaster were to strike? If not, you absolutely need to. Having a plan ensures that you can not only keep your business running, but decrease stress because you have already prepared for the unexpected.
Below are four tips to help you handle the unexpected.
1. Work around the events -Your customers will understand as long as you communicate with them. Be honest that things may take a little longer than usual, but keep your customers updated as often as possible. Communication is the key. Most people will understand the delay as long as they are aware of it. If you get to the point where you cannot work or cannot finish a project, but sure to be clear and honest about the situation and try to make an arrangement that will be acceptable. Also, let them know as soon as possible so they can prepare. Don’t wait until the last minute to advise them of a potential problem.
If you’re struggling because of a child being sick, try to work when the child is sleeping and don’t stress yourself out to work at other times. Make a schedule of what needs to be done, so that you can accomplish as much as possible during these times.
2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help - As moms, we tend to feel that we should be able to handle everything that is thrown at us. Unfortunately, this just isn’t always the case. There are times when we need to allow ourselves to ask for help. When a tragedy occurs and you are simply overwhelmed, find someone who you trust and ask them for help. Many times, just having someone reply to customers on your behalf can take the pressure off your shoulders.
Allowing someone to help you when necessary can also be uplifting to them as they feel they can be a part of helping in a difficult situation. So don’t’ shy away from letting others know. We all benefit when we work together and help one another.
When our one-year old had surgery he didn’t handle the pain medication well. He was wide awake for the better part of two days. In this case, I knew ahead of time when the surgery would occur, but I had no idea what his recovery would entail. It was impossible to work while he slept, because he wasn’t sleeping. I realized that I not only needed help business-wise, but I needed help with him as well so that I could get some rest. While it was humbling to admit that I needed help, that I couldn’t do it all, it turned out as a great time spent with family that we would not have had if I hadn’t asked for help.
3. Prepare for the worst - Because we never know what the future holds, it is always better to be prepared. As the old saying goes, “Better safe than sorry.”
One of the best resources to help you prepare is the Home Office Recovery Plan: Disaster Preparedness for Your Home Office by authors Diana Ennen and Patty Gale. This e-book covers all the bases of getting a Disaster Recovery Plan in place now so that if disaster strikes your home business or an emergency arises, you are able to get your business back up and running quickly and smoothly.
Ennen states, “In my case, this guide has been a lifesaver as a resident of South Florida. I have prepared for eight major hurricanes in the past two years with Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma taking a direct hit on Broward County where I live. I was without power for two weeks with Hurricane Wilma. Had I not prepared, my clients would have suffered as would my business.”
Gale also knows the importance of this book having lived in New York after 9/11 and had the task of preparing a similar guideline for a company she was working with at the time. Both know the importance in ensuring your business will withstand whatever this hurricane or any disaster (including a theft in the office or fire) has to offer.
4. Get a Plan - There are times when life becomes overwhelming and you simply aren’t able to accomplish everything on your own. It’s for these times that you need to have some type of log of what you do and what needs to be done. Keep a spreadsheet of tasks that you do, how often they are done and mark them completed as you are able. Keep a list of passwords in a safe, secure place. Make sure that your family (or whoever may be helping you during this time) is able to carry on even in the event that you are away from home.
If possible, train someone that you trust to do the things that you do each day (at least the key things), so that when the unexpected arises you won’t be caught off-guard.
Tragedy comes in many shapes and forms, but if you are prepared much of the unnecessary stress can be avoided. When tragedy strikes, you want to be focused on the important things in life, your family and you. By advance planning you are able to do so.
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Six Great Home Business Opportunities
By Joel Booker
Over the years, the history of human race has replaced many significant changes in a continuous quest of improving life style. Past few years have characterized by such changes in every aspect of society. Certainly, many new innovations and improvised technologies are altered the world forever. And perhaps, the most significant contribution by advance technology has come from internet. Gone are the traditional ways of earning income. There has been rise in home based business income opportunities emerging from this new global sphere.
If we have a closer look at a recorded history, then it has been a conventional trend that people who wish to work for a salary are compelled to work at the location of client or of company they are working for. Although that concept of self employment had been present in past, it wasn’t until the 90’s when internet came of age and presented diverse opportunities and platforms for people to work from home while having access to the world through their personal computers.
Home Business
Home business is an ideal platform which allows people to work from home and get paid handsomely for the efforts they put in. With these ever increasing opportunities, the people like you and me are able to work according to our own terms. There is no more compulsion from our rude boss to work as per his dictated terms and conditions. In fact, home business offers a freedom that no other business can offer.
There are plenty options and opportunities knocking your door on internet. You can easily find a plan for home business that can fit your needs and terms. Even though, surfing on internet for such home based business income opportunities can be time consuming. You will come across thousands of sites and places which claim to be perfect option on internet. They claim to know exactly what you are searching for and there is a possibility that you can commit blunders because of their exaggerated claims.
It is quite obvious that the sites claiming to offer best plan don’t know you personally. They don’t know your likes and dislikes. They don’t know about your passion. They don’t know about targets- short term or long term. They don’t know your expectancy level of income and they don’t know how much time you can work for. The lack of this knowledge can pose a great threat to your search for such opportunities.
So, in order to find a perfect suitable plan or opportunity you have to do some kind of research and find opportunities of your own. You can even search for the research opportunities with their supported statistics. This thing can narrow down your search for the best home based opportunity.
The best part while searching for such business can be considering your own hobbies, your own likes. Just ask yourself how do you spend your idle time? There are so many hobbies like book reading, ornamental fish keeping, shopping, watching sports, keeping pets or even finding a good deal. Surely, you will be much more comfortable at one of those hobbies. So, if you find a niche that is related to something you love, then you are bound to stick with that opportunity for longer time. You spend time building it to work for you and that will be the secret of the success of your home business. .
Today, there are plenty options and several successful platforms available for home based internet business opportunities.
1. Digital Product Creation - You will be certainly good at one of the aspects or fields you have learned so far in life. If you have such a special knowledge or skill in a specific sector then you can sell this by creating your own e-book. Suppose you are good at cooking and if it is your hobby and if you do experimentation and try for innovation then you can create your own e-book of tantalizing recipes. These fields can range from learning yoga to playing guitar and from purchasing dirt free airline tickets to movie or digital recording.
2. Affiliate Programs - Many big companies try to encourage people other than their marketing team to promote their products. You can promote such products with help of advertisements on your own website or via e-mail system. In return the said company will pay you a certain percentage of every sale. This kind of business has great potential n promoting the products like MP3 download services, ring tones, visual clips, beauty products, insurance and travel services.
3. Internet Marketing - The process of acquiring knowledge to start and run a successful home based business has itself become a business of great potential. At present, there are so many informative programs exists which guide average people in learning and honing the skills to run a successful business with its marketing plans.
4. Blogging - This is the latest internet trend at business. This includes a process of creating and updating your own web diary on internet in which you can discuss and seek comments on specific subjects you choose. Persons having special interest and knowledge in a specific subject are used to create such blogs and thousands of people visit such blog everyday. In return person who owns that blog earn income by using advertising systems or affiliate programs.
5. Online Stores - you can buy any physical goods like computers, clothing, books, mobiles or DVD movies at lower rate and can sell these items at a higher price. Although it is a traditional selling concept, internet makes it easier to purchase, to sell and advertise than traditional ways in past. Only the thing you have to do is search for wholesale suppliers of such goods to get a lower price.
6. Outsourcing - Outsourcing has been a key word in IT industry today. If you are good at any software development then you can provide such services as there is a great demand from main companies for such jobs.
In short, there are abundant opportunities present on internet for home based business. If you are motivated enough to reap the benefits of internet then brace yourself for certain amount of work, prepare your mind to learn new things and you will find it is not as difficult as many think.
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Defining the 401(K)
By Barton Simmons
The 401(k) retirement plan is funded by employee contribution and a matching employer contribution. The major feature of the plan is that the contributions are taken from pre-taxed salary. The fund accumulates tax-free until it is withdrawn. Most businesses and tax-exempt organizations can create these retirement plans.
The 401(k) takes its name from the IRC (Internal Revenue Code) of 1978. The operation of the 401(k) is administered by the EBSA (Employee Benefits Security Administration) of the Department of Labor.
The 401(k) plan has a lot of advantages. First and foremost is that the employee can contribute pre-tax money that reduces the tax paid in each paycheck. Also, the company contribution and any growth in the fund is free of tax until withdrawn.
The compounding of the fund during a 20 to 30 year period is quite amazing. The employee has a lot of control in the direction of the future contributions. When the company matches your contributions, it adds something extra on top of your own money. All money in the plan can be moved from one company to another unlike pension.
The 401(k) plan is protected by pension laws since it is a personal investment plan. It includes protection from garnishment by creditors but not from domestic cases that include child support.
There are some disadvantages in the 401(k) plan, it is hard to get your 401(k) contributions before age 60 (59 1/2 to be exact). The 401(k) is not insured by the PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp). Also, the company contributions do not kick in until a certain number of years of service have been given. The rules state that company matching contributions must either be a 3 year ‘cliff’ plan (100 percent after 3 years) or a 6-year ‘graded’ plan.
Employees participating in a 401(k) plan have many options for investment. In most cases a listing of mutual funds. The mutual funds usually include money market fund, treasuries, stock funds and bond funds. Some plans may include investing in company stock and US Savings Bonds. The employee gets to choose how the savings is invested. The employee can also choose at any time to stop contributions.
Financial advisers usually say that the average 401(k) contributor is non-aggressive in terms of their investment options. Stocks have historically outperformed other types of investment, since the 401(k) is a long term investment it should be able to minimize the stock fluctuations.
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Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 4:00 pm and is filed under finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
