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Will Your Home Business Soon Be Credit-Strapped?

One of the problems facing many home business owners is the fact that financing is getting harder to come by. The credit crunch has meant that banks are lending less to consumers and businesses alike, making it more difficult to get the financing needed for adequate cash flow. As a result, more home business operators have been turning to credit cards to fill their needs.

Unfortunately, credit cards may represent the next incarnation of the credit crunch. With credit card issuers slashing credit lines and tightening lending standards, it may be difficult for you to get the financing that you need. This is why P2P lending, such as that offered by Lending Club, Prosper and Green Note is becoming more popular.

If you can't get financing from the financial institutions, you might be able to get home business financing help from your peers.

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Peer to Peer Lending: Harvard Business Review Breakout Ideas of 2009 (bargaineering.com)
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Work from Home: 3 Companies That Let You Work from Home

by Miranda Marquit 3 Comments

Telecommuting is gaining in popularity right now, and it's no surprise. With the economy prompting companies to cut costs, and with more people interested in working from home, more businesses are seeing the benefit in telecommuting.

Besides, technology makes it easy to outsource such functions as tech support, sales and customer service to people who work from home. All they need is high-speed Internet access, a little training and some basic home office equipment.

Here are 3 companies that allow you to work from home via telecommuting:

1. Jetblue allows fight reservation takers to work from home. JetBlue is perhaps one of the more famous examples of allowing telecommuting.

2. Convergys, the telemarketing and call center company, also allows some to work from home. You do need a USB headset to participate, though, and in some cases Convergys limits who can participate.

3. Working Solutions is a company that provides services in order processing, customer service, market research and other job descriptions, meant to fit your needs. Working solutions has won awards as a "place" to work.

Do you know of any other companies that allow workers to engage in telecommuting?

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Work for a call center from your home office? You're 'homeshoring.' (teletwenties.com)
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Friday Fun Video: The Office Musical

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

Enjoy this musical compilation of funny moments from The Office. I needed this because my stupid DVR didn’t properly record the new episode last night, and now I have to wait for it on Hulu.

Happy Friday!

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Rescuing Your Retirement Step 4: Concentrate on Your Mortgage

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

We've reached step 4 in our look at what CNN Money recommends for rescuing your retirement. You can read about the other steps in other posts: Keep Working, Pump Up Your Portfolio, Evaluate Where You Are Now.

Concentrate on your mortgage

CNN Money recommends that you consider trying to pay off your mortgage sooner. If you have the funds available, you can pay down your mortgage. The goal should be to have the mortgage paid off by the time you retire. I can see where this would be helpful. I think that having your mortgage paid off would be a great step in being completely debt free:

1. You could rent it out, earning an income on it while you travel.

2. If you decide to downsize, you keep all the money from the sale price.

3. You could use a carefully thought out reverse mortgage to earn regular income.

And, of course, if you just live in the house, your monthly expenditures are much less if you aren't making a mortgage payment.

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Retirement losses: What now? (money.cnn.com)
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1 in 5 Mortgages Now 'Underwater' (mymortgageinsider.com)

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Jobs Data: Small and Medium Sized Businesses Shed the Most Jobs

by Miranda Marquit 4 Comments

In what is not particularly surprising, February jobs data shows continued losses. And, equally unsurprising, small business and medium sized business were the categories that suffered the most. The Financial Times reports on the losses according to business size:

Mid-sized and small businesses suffered the most job cuts last month,
shedding 314,000 and 262,000 workers respectively. Large companies –
those with more than 500 employees – cut 121,000 jobs.

This offers continued evidence that more needs to be done in order to help small business owners survive. Even though the "big guys" are in the news a lot, the fact of the matter is that small business and medium sized business does most of the employing in this country. Perhaps its time to focus on bolstering the smaller businesses so that they do not have to keep making layoffs.

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FastDue.com Offers Online Help for Home Business

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

I received notice from FastDue.com that the company recently just closed $5,000,000 in Series A funding. Which, of course, prompted me to wonder what FastDue.com is all about. Turns out that FastDue.com offers a number of online tools — many of them free — that can help your home or small business function smoother. And less expensively.

Some of the documents that are included at FastDue.com are:

* Consulting Agreement (handy for freelancers)
* Primissory Note
* Sale of Goods
* Non-disclosure
* Intellectual Property (handy for writers and the like)
* Past Due Notice
* Expense Reimbursement
* Invoice (although I do most of my invoicing through PayPal)

It looks like a solid and useful site that can help you create contracts and invoices, as well as keep track of them. There is even a reports section that can help you keep track of receivables and other important records.

Have any of you tried FastDue.com? How have you found it?

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Rescuing Your Retirement Step 3: Keeping Working

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

Periodically, we have been taking a look at a CNN article about rescuing your retirement. This can be just as crucial — and maybe even more so — for those who work from home. If you have a home business, chances are that you need to worry even more about your investment portfolio. Today, we will look at Step 3 of CNN's five steps to helping your retirement portfolio in these economic times:

Step 3: Keep working

It doesn't seem like the ideal solution, but if you can keep working for a few more years, it will give your retirement portfolio some time to recover. Plus, you'll build up the opportunity for bigger Social Security payments down the road. (Don't forget: If you have a home business, you are still paying into the Social Security system.)

At this point, if you can put off complete retirement, that is best. It may mean taking on a part-time job if you can't keep your full-time job. And if you have a home business, you could pull back if your financial position allows it.

Other posts in this series include Pump Up Your Portfolio and Evaluating Where You Are Now.

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Saving for retirement in good times and bad (cnn.com)
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Friday Fun Video: TurboTax Commercial

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

I like the commercials with the guys on our money from TurboTax. I even think they have a home business edition. I actually use an accountant.

Anyway, Happy Friday!

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Rescuing Your Retirement Step 2: Pump Up Your Portfolio

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, I started looking at an article from CNN Money about rescuing your retirement. The first step was to honestly evaluate where you are right now, so that you have a place to work forward from. Today, we will move on to Step 2, which is all about your portfolio.

Look at your retirement account investment portfolio

Your retirement account is really an investment portfolio. Your gains — and even your contributions — can be tax advantaged. This is a nice perk of having a retirement account. And now is not the time to pull out. Instead, you should look at your portfolio and make sure you have fundamentally sound investments — and a mix.

CNN Money offers this look at retirement account portfolio allocation:

As a general rule, financial advisers recommend keeping about 80% of
your savings in stocks when you're in your forties, 70% in your fifties
and 50% to 60% in your sixties, with the rest in bonds and stable-value
funds. With stocks now at their cheapest levels in nearly two decades,
those allocations give you a good shot at regrowing your portfolio
going forward.

It's still a good idea to avoid dumping all of your stocks. After all, they are inexpensive right now. However, don't count on them to completely rescue your retirement, and realize that they are a long-term strategy — something that gains over decades. But you may have to re-evaluate which stocks you keep.

image credit: Tracy O via Flickr

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Small Business Loans Defaulting at a Higher Rate

by Miranda Marquit Leave a Comment

In all the shuffle to keep the "big guys" from failing, not enough emphasis has been put on small business. And now problems with the economy are finally causing that policy to come home to roost: Rising defaults on small business loans — including those for home business — could form the basis of further economic turmoil.

Small business is the backbone of the economy. Unfortunately, with headlines of big businesses failing, the "little guys" haven't been getting much attention. But with bank lending drying up, and consumer spending down, small business is really starting to feel the pinch.

CNN Money reports on this disturbing trend in small business funding:

Last year's failure rate is a sharp increase over past years.
In 2004, the SBA loan failure rate was 2.4%, but it has increased each
year since, rising to 8.4% in 2007, according to Coleman's
calculations. The 2008 failure rate of nearly 12% covers the fiscal
year that ended on Sept. 30. In that year, the SBA's 7(a) and 504
programs approved 78,324 loans, totaling $18.2 billion.

The new economic stimulus bill provides incentives for small business lending, but for some it's too late.

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