Three Things Anybody Should Have Accomplished Before Venturing Into a Startup

The Internet is one specific reason why many entrepreneurs are entering into different business ventures. Reduced, cost-effective internet marketing strategies work for many startups looking for engagement from their customers. However, a reduced cost in marketing isn’t just want you need for business. Here are a few other things you should have accomplished by the time you open your first branch.

1.    Personal Budget

A business must be capable of paying their employees, and that includes you. Your personal budget should be shaved down to the minimum amount you need to survive daily. It is important that you have paid your outstanding debts, keep tabs on your living bills, go commuting, and anything else. Basically everything that does not involve luxury and only the bare necessities of survival should be addressed by your pay.

2.    Marketing Plan

A reduced-price, cost-effective internet marketing or offline marketing means that everyone else is using the same platform because of its affordability. If you have no idea how you’re going to market your products and services you could be in big trouble with deadlines. Remember, the more you wait and spend time in planning, the more competitors will be ahead of you.

3.    Savings

Back to your personal budget, it is important that you could survive on this reduced budget for six months or longer. Take it to a ceiling number of one year. If your partner in life could support you with their day job, you could find this step easier to handle. However, you may be distracted by his/her regarding your own personal issues.

Three Tips For an Affordable Wedding

No, you don’t have to spend more than five figures in a wedding. And no, it won’t be any less special than the weddings your parents or your cousin had. An affordable wedding only requires an open mind and dedication to the goal. Here are three things you could do to make your weddings more affordable.

1.    Choose an Unlikely Venue

The sad thing with wedding-themed venues is that they charge more for weddings than other functions. Choosing a park and renting a gazebo, for example, could make for some unique and creative wedding proceedings. Weddings don’t have to be the mainstream idea most of the time; you could create memories in any place you choose, and you save money too.

2.    Catering

A good catering service does not have to be the snootley-type with formalities. Have you and your spouse find a non-catering restaurant that serves the food you both love. You’ll never guess that both of you would pay less while enjoying the food you love with people that matter.

3.    People That Matter

Regarding that last sentence, weddings are very expensive because most couples invite every inch of their bloodline into the wedding. Cutting back on your wedding participants also lessens the wedding costs. Not that you’re playing favourites, but not everyone is that significant in your wedding. Your parents, closest friends and some cousins are the ones that really matter. We know that you know that.

If You’re Rich Enough, You Could Avoid The Eyes of the HMRC

It actually pays to become rich, literally, because you have so much money and the only trouble you have is spending it faster than you could hide it, or you could spend to hide it. Many in the United Kingdom use their money for the latter. UK millionaires may give you an insight on how to hide you money effectively from the HMRC.

1.    Incorporate a Business

Start a small business and have it pay you as an employee of the business. Employ your significant other and you both get reduced tax rates and benefits. This is opposed to paying 60% against 40% of your taxable income. Any income going over £100,000 automatically has an additional 20%, which is quite a painful load for any millionaire. Incorporation benefits also add more tax deductibles to your business activities.

 2.    Give to Charity

Giving to a charity or NGO gives you a tax deductible, but only to a point. It would be unwise to give to charity more than your income. But being a millionaire, such an income wouldn’t be too much of a burden for you. Just give enough money to the charity and you could get it back.

3.    Self-Employed

For self-employed individuals, declaring a living space as your workplace helps you have tax deductibles that you could use for renovation and improvement. For millionaires, having a tax deductible home helps them purchase the latest technological improvements for their home in the name of self-employment.

Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Be Too Afraid to Get Into Debt

Most people fear making a start-up company or investing because they said their formulas might not work and they may end up paying half of their lives to their lenders if things do not work out. People find it an aggravating situation to be in debt. In reality, being in debt is not a health condition and it will not kill you. It may be important to pay debt off, but it isn’t always wrong to have some in my opinion. Here’s my list that may convince you.

1.    Doing the Proper Math is the Best Way

Some people may be afraid of mathematics, but everyone recognises arithmetic as an important part of everyday life. When you have a £30 starting credit limit, you purchased something that costs around £5, and you pay only for the minimum of £1 with 4% interest, you wouldn’t get into so much trouble in one year, given that you would only accrue double your debt by two years. You still have enough time to pay. However, this idea only works if you could do the proper mathematics regarding these numbers in the long run.

2.    Your Time is Essential

Time is gold and time is money as well. Your money could be replenished, but your time could not. Time should be used sparingly. Getting things on credit and paying them back later helps you get the item or service instantly, increases your credit score and saves your time. Sure you may get some debts, but you could still pay them in a few short years.

3.     Risk is Always Present

Remember, in any kind of venture and purchase, risks are always present. It is essential that we consumers understand that our money also lowers in value daily. Think of buying as a form of investment into products and items that increase the value of our money. In this way, we create more savings the more we buy. In using your credit to gain loans and financing, this can definitely help boost your chances of ensuring the value of your properties increase.

Three Plausible Ideas For Money-Growing Opportunities

Money devalues every single day it recovers from competition with other currencies. Storing them in a vault is a bad idea, and it would be best to invest them where they could continuously grow. Honestly, the stock market has too many high risks, while the real-estate industry is very slow in providing the profit you need at present. Here are other money growing ideas that could kickstart your money’s worth.

1.    Microfinancing

Neighbourhoods could increase their property’s value, including yours, if microlenders lend no-credit financing to local communities. Deciding to lend money to your neighbours while having a high interest rate for their high-risk credit conduct can have your money evolving in value. However, trust and transparency is a great problem in this situation.

2.    Kickstarter Projects

Working as an angel investor rather than just any kind of investor in a Kickstarter.com project can yield you higher profits based on an agreement met by you and the people behind the project. Do not settle for donations; approach the project managers and express your interest. They will be happy to oblige. High gains await if the product or service becomes the next big thing.

3.    Online Marketing

Many startup online marketing companies are in need of investors who could provide a small amount to start up their endeavours. However, do not just trust any company online. It is important that you assess their risks and their business method and strategy for all bases before you decide to invest.

Reducing Taxes on Your Startups in the Last Minute

Being knowledgeable with taxes and accounting could increase the business profits your company gets before the dreaded half of April arrives. If you think you’ve done all your taxes with your accountant right, maybe you missed some on the following.

1.    Employee Travel Expenses

Credit card statements are valid as proof of payment for the Internal Revenue Service. If you use the company’s deductible statements, you could actually get tax reimbursements for something that you could register as company travel.

2.    Retirement Savings

Retirement savings for yourself help reduce the taxes by lowering your taxable income for the year, disqualify you from paying taxes until you reach the age of 70.5. The earlier you decide to start on your retirement savings, the better resuls you could get.

3.    Property Taxes Deduction

If your house or unit is what you use as an office, then you could reduce the tax percentage of your total home cost. However, it is important to highlight that this part of your house is where you work, and not where your family does recreational and bonding activities.

4.    Donations

Making donations had been a staple of tax easing. Incentives on donating and aiding in community work, you could use the receipt from qualified charitable organisations to reduce the taxes you personally receive. As a partnership, the proprietor can claim at an individual tax return at any time.

Finding Financing Even if You’re “Nobody”

Almost every business in the world start with an entrepreneur expressing his or her ideas, and an investor. However, investors, especially venture capitalists, are very strict when it comes to providing funding for starting companies. But there are ways to get capital even if you start out as a nobody in the industry.

1.    Create a Good Credit Score

A small company proprietor with a business credit card could make use of his or her financing to purchase equipment gradually, and then positive credit behaviour could help lenders fund their business. Consistent performance will grant them more financing, which indicates their business is doing well.

2.    Venture Capitalist

Allow your business to thrive on a business loan for at least three to five months before presenting your workflow to a venture capitalist. Venture capitalists vary upon the time the business has experienced before they can judge your results to be consistent. At this point, any unique product and service designs you may have must be patented.

3.    Crowd Funding

If you have several prototypes and you already have a large following, you could involve your patrons and potential investors into crowd funding your newest product or service. Crowd funding involves much marketing expertise, namely in the field of research and explanation to potential investors.  

Investments: Don’t Let Rumours Always Get the Best of You

Rumours are good at achieving one thing: chaos and imbalance among people. People often irrationally believe anything that they can agree with, or agree with anything a person they trust says. However, in the stock market, and in any other related industry, rumours could cost millions of pounds in losses.

1.    Facts Are Very Important

Objective value is very important in investing. Looking at things objectively, and not just believing hearsay from people that an investor trusts is the best way to make financial decisions. Nothing is final until it has happened, yet analysing the details on your own about the company is also very important.

2.    Feasibility and Accountability

After hearing a rumour, analyse the feasibility of the financial risk involved, and the decision-maker in the company’s consequences upon making the choice. If there is a rumoured merger between two gigantic companies, assess first whether company A will want to compromise the good quality of products it has with company B, who mass-produces the same goods. Branding, reputation and other factors will help you dispel or agree with the rumour with enough evidence.

3.    Do Not Believe the News

Financial news and other media often hype company bankruptcies, which have investors breaking their own banks to save their skin. However, a bankruptcy only means the assets will be liquidated and your shares’ final values will be returned to you. Do not let the hype of bankruptcies or bad investments from companies fool you easily. If a product line from a reputable technology company you invested in fails this year, it does not mean they lose their overall inherent value; they just tarnished their consumer confidence quite a bit.

Never Rush Your Finances and Allow Yourself Time to Breathe

Banks and financial institutions designed financial products to save time, which is the most valuable currency in the world. Time is worth more than gold because nobody can reproduce lost time. The bank’s financial products have bred a culture of saving, and doing more with one’s time, which is not necessarily evil.

However, it contributed to some disappointments for many people who had laid out financial plans. Adjusting their lifestyle according to their income, spending only a specific amount monthly, and enduring just to meet their savings target, many had put themselves under pressure. Those who succeeded indeed met their targets, but for those quite unfortunate, they became discouraged.

Any person could try hard to save enough money, but every person has a limitation. Taking it slowly is a good way to manage your finances. Do not rush by taking out 25% of your savings at once. Allow yourself to slowly adjust from 5%, to 10%, to 20%, in a span of a few months. Breathing space is important; Rome was not built in a day.

Remember never to rush your finances. Time is a valuable currency, sure, but time is spent to heal yourself from experiences through learning, and you spend your time in living your life, which enough money, in terms of financial stability, is an essential part.

Investments You Should Have Made Before You Go Into Retirement

We all look forward to retirement, but our own physical and mental peace is not always a guarantee. The way we used our money during our professional years will signify the smoothness or roughness of our retirement day. Here are a few things you should have before you go into retirement.

1.    Stock Investments

Your insurance policy could be based on a mutual or balanced fund. If the economy goes well, you will get easy access to your insurance policies. But why settle for insurance policies? You could go for stock investments. Find out more about investing as early as you get your first job. Stagnant money at home will not give you any profit and stock investments can truly help.

2.    Properties and Real Estate

Look for new properties budding all around the metro and different locations in your country. Most of these structures are looking for investors who wish to be part-owners of the hotels. Even if you purchase just one or two condominium or room units, you could earn much from having it rented, or the profits you could reap after you sell it once the property’s value blooms.

3.    Antiques and Rare Items

Any type of object or product that had been phased out from manufacturing is a potential collector of value. If you continue to collect rare trading cards, family heirlooms, rare craft from both recent and older history, they could gain value and you can sell them to an action at a fairly higher price than where you started.

Looking Beyond Economic Disasters

When I read a news that tells me a country that holds my investments is having an economic turmoil because of natural causes, “acts of God” or political unrest, I would feel surprised. My first action is to know the situation of the nationals in the country, then to check up on the status of my business investments and their personnel. Then I assess the damages to the business brought by economic disasters

I discovered several optimistic sides when a disaster happens. This may be too objective for some, but this can be helpful for businesses and investors whose ventures have gone into literal dust.

During a disaster, some part of your properties may crumble. In a political unrest, it is very likely your investment is not a performing asset anymore. It is important to estimate how long a possible political unrest can be to see if you can still sell the investment shares for at least 80% of its price. In a disaster, ensure that you have property insurance to help you rebuild your structure and even improve on it.

After a political unrest is resolved, land in such countries become cheap because of very low economic activity. Investors like me purchase lands and properties in such countries right after the resolution of trouble. We are even encouraged to do so to appreciate the prices of these properties. The same can also be said for disasters. It is an “open season” for investors to develop the land, which many refuse.

Of course, before you purchase any land, take good care to research and assess the future of the land or property you will purchase; it does not mean it is cheap it will give you something back.

Financial Independence: It Takes Time and Patience

The second priority of almost every person in the world is to be financially independent. One can attain financial stability first before they reach financial independence, but he or she can reach stability faster with a job that pays enough for his or her needs. Financial independence means asking yourself what you want out of life and how much patience you have.

As an investor myself, I found my first few years investing at a young age to be a rocky road; there is no formal education for investing in the stock market, industries or businesses. It all boils down to research, analysis and common sense.

It is part of my common sense during that time that investments take time to gain value as much as how a startup company begins to have value as it gains more consumers and produces more of its products or services. The essentials of investing goes like this, when the company grows, you also grow. So it will really take time. It is not an instant money-making machine; it becomes a part of you, the working part of you that generates income for a later time.

You must take time and have patience to research about the long-term goals and potential of the industry or market you want because investing is similar to including an external part of your body. Of course, we do not want a part of our body rotten and selecting the ones that could support ourselves fully takes a slow, difficult road.