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In today’s digital age and globalized world, long gone is the 9-5 business day that used to be standard for most workers. While today’s fluid work environment offers an incredible amount of flexibility and creative options for both employers and employees, at the same time, there is increased urgency, pressure and expectations that work get work done and delivered fast, at the highest quality and at the lowest cost.

Companies of all sizes need to be able to provide their clients with what they want and need quickly – because if not, someone else will. While large companies with deep resources may have on staff enough employees of a varied nature to satisfy client demands for quality, speed and cost, it is a bit trickier for smaller businesses with more limited resources.

Imagine a situation in which a client approaches your business with a lucrative project that requires a graphic designer who specifically has expertise in animation. Although this project is a great opportunity for the business, it probably doesn’t make sense to hire another graphic designer with these specific skills (when you already have a great designer on your team) and to invest in training and paying benefits when this is a one time project. At the same time, though, the small business owner does not want to turn down this opportunity.

What is a small business owner to do?

One practical and cost effective solution is to hire a freelancer or independent contractor. Although this may deviate from the way the small business is used to operating, there are some major benefits to be gained by hiring out.

Save Money

It is well known that oftentimes full time employees are not actually working all of those hours they are being paid for. On the other hand, freelancers only charge you for the hours they work so a business may end up spending less money for the same work, even when taking into consideration a higher hourly rate. Plus, there are great apps out there to help keep track of freelancers’ hours to guarantee that an hour worked is an hour paid. Some to check out include Toggl, RescueTime, Harvest, Hubstaff, Time Doctor and Timely.

Save On Time

If a freelancer accepts a job chances are he or she is highly motivated to get the project done on time and done well. Since most freelancers’ business model relies on repeat customers, freelancers can be counted on to get the job done promptly, maybe even before deadline.

Save On (Office) Space

Hiring a freelancer means you don’t need to find space for another person to sit in your already cramped office. Not needing to find a larger workspace means business owners will save money on rent. The freelancer will work from home, from the coffee shop, from another country – it doesn’t matter as long as the job gets completed.

Get More Experience

Experienced freelancers have done their time working with a variety of different companies and many come well equipped with a toolbox of eclectic skills that will benefit your company and impress your client.

Gain Access to Global Candidates

Hiring a freelancer allows you to transcend borders and timezones. They can work while you are sleeping and even on weekends, helping to speed up a project or free up time for salaried employees to work on other priorities during the workday.

Overall, hiring a freelancer can give your small business the advantages of motivation and fresh skills, while saving your business valuable resources – time and money being two critical resources that all small businesses owners are seeking to maximize.

One word of caution, however. Both employers and workers need to be clear on who, according to the law, is classified as a freelancer. Sometimes, there are situations in which employers may classify employees as independent contractors when in fact the law sees them as employees. If this is the case, these workers may be eligible to make claims for employee rights and benefits. To prevent any misunderstanding or legal issues down the line, it is best for a worker and employer to execute a written contract that defines the relationship prior to beginning any work.

Lee Madison writes about financial topics relevant to small business owners. She is director of content at Yellowstone Capital LLC.

It used to be that graduating students with large amounts of student loan debt were told to forget purchasing a home until after they’d paid down their debt. Still others were told to wait until they’d built up years of work history, delaying the initial purchase of a home for years. Today, however, more and more millennials are finding it possible to qualify for a mortgage while paying off student loan debt. How?

They Have Good Credit

Credit scores range anywhere from 350 to 850, with anything below 600 considered a poor score. Most mortgage lending programs, even those that are federally funded for first-time buyers, look for scores of at least 620. Those with excellent credit, above about 750, will stand an even higher chance of securing a mortgage with student loan debt.

If your credit score may be an issue, follow these steps to move toward improving it:

● Check your score – you can’t fix your score unless you know what it is. Examine your report and notify the credit bureau of any errors immediately.

● Address any delinquencies – it’s important you address delinquencies immediately. If possible, pay the account off entirely.

● Set up auto-pay – setting up auto-pay features for all your debts will ensure each payment is made on time. Building a lengthening history of paying every debt on time each month makes you much more attractive to lenders.

● Avoid applying for new credit that may go unused – applications are typically a ding on your credit, so even if you don’t intend to use the upper limits of a new card, it may hurt your score.

● Don’t close paid accounts – credit cards you’ve paid off can positively affect your credit score. If you are not using all of your available credit, open, empty credit cards can be helpful.

They Have a Lower Debt-to-Income Ratio

Debt-to-income (DTI) ratio is calculated as your monthly debt payments compared to your monthly income. If you are paying off a student loan in addition to credit card debt, you’ll need a relatively high monthly income to offset the amount of debt you’re carrying. Lenders will focus on your debt-to-income ratio to determine if you can afford another debt – your mortgage – in addition to what you’re already carrying. Paying off credit cards or student loans and maximizing your earning potential can help on both fronts.

You can also consider consolidating debt with a personal loan. If you have a great deal of credit card debt, you likely have a variety of higher interest rates. A personal loan is a stable debt rather than revolving debt like a credit card, and reflects positively on your credit history. You’ll likely receive a lower rate in addition to freeing up available credit.

They’ve Secured Employment in Their Field

Lenders will consider your employment history to determine if you have the steady income required to continue to make mortgage payments. If you’ve recently graduated, you may not have the recommended two years of steady employment. However, underwriters will often consider a move from college straight into gainful employment in your chosen field a substitute for part of your employment history.

They’ve Refinanced or Restructured Student Loans

When lenders look at your debt-to-income ratio, student loans are among the debts they’ll consider. If your payments are unwieldy, consider applying for an income-driven repayment plan through the U.S. Department of Education. These plans consider your income and often provide a lower payment than the typical graduated repayment program. If your income increases, you can increase your repayment to ensure you continue to pay down your loans.

Another solution that can lower your monthly payments is refinancing your student loans. Loans refinanced through banks or other institutions typically carry lower interest rates and lower monthly payments than the original federal loans. As with other loans, you’ll need to consider your creditworthiness, income, and debt-to-income ratio.

They’ve Qualified for Down Payment Assistance

Though the traditional down payment is 20% or more, several programs exist to reduce your down payment in order to speed up the homebuying process for those with student loan and other debt. For example, FHA loans by the Federal Housing Authority offer a much lower percentage – 3.5% for those with credit scores in the 600s and above, and 10% for those in the 500s. HomeReady loans targeted at first-time home buyers offer even lower down payment terms of around 3%.

Find a lender that works with these and other first-time home buyer and down payment assistance programs. Many lenders do not offer zero down payment, but still offer a variety of other loan types that could meet your needs. Obviously, if you have the means to provide a 20% down payment, you’ll lower the principal on your loan, but these assistance programs can put buying your first home within your grasp.

Today’s millennials with student debt are qualifying for mortgages, and chances are, you can too. Overall, pay close attention to your credit score and making your payments on time. Keep your other debt low, and ask your lender about assistance programs that may be available to you. Finally, if you’re in the market for a home, get pre-approved first to see just how much home you can afford. Then, if you find the home of your dreams, you’ll know you can move forward, even while you’re paying off your student loan debt.

Information is provided by Sammamish Mortgage, a Premiere Mortgage Company in Pacific Northwest including WA, ID, OR, CO.

The reason most entrepreneurs set up in business is, at least partly, to make money so financial management is a crucial skill which all new business owners or would-be entrepreneurs need to learn if they want to be successful.

However, managing finances isn’t always a skill which comes naturally to many. Entrepreneurs tend to be focussed on their big idea and making it a reality, but the money side isn’t necessarily where there energies are naturally directed.

While you can always outsource your finances to a professional accountant to a certain extent, you still need to know and understand your numbers to enable you to spot any issues or trends which you might need to address within your business.

Here are five tips for new entrepreneurs to help with financial management:

1. Record and organise your finances

Whether you are managing your finances yourself or supplying all of your information to an accountant to deal with, it’s important to be organised and keep records of all of your income, outgoings and expenses.

This includes keeping copies of all your receipts, invoices, and any other paperwork related to financial issues, in an orderly fashion. Just putting them all into a shoe box won’t cut it when you are an entrepreneur.

Just using a simple spreadsheet to record income and outgoings can be enough to start with, when setting up a new business, or as the business grows you might need to invest in accounting software to help record all of the financial transactions.

2. Keep track of your credit score

As an entrepreneur you might well need to seek funding for your business either to start it up at the beginning or further down the line to help with an expansion of your services so make you’re your credit is up to scratch.

The last thing you want to do is start a business only to find your credit score or existing level of debt means you can’t get the funding you need to grow the company a few years down the line. Take action to improve your credit score ideally before you start out.

3. Have an emergency fund

While setting up a new business often involves expense rather than profit initially it’s still important to make sure you have money put aside for an emergency – you might need to suddenly buy new equipment or replace a computer for example, so try saving an emergency pot to help take the pressure off.

You can create the fund easily by putting a small amount aside every week so it needn’t be too taxing to save enough to help keep as a buffer. You never know when a client might not be able to pay you or a supplier might go bust so an emergency fund can be the difference between success and failure.

4. Seek professional advice

If you are brand new to business then don’t get daunted or overwhelmed by all of the financial obligations or requirements. If the finance side is beyond your knowledge then don’t bury your head in the sand but seek professional help.

Whether you hire a full-time professional accountant or use the services of a part-time book keeper they can both help and provide expert advice to guide you as you take your business forward as well as looking after the books. You can even make it easier for you by signing up for accounting services offered by companies like Crunch. You can find out how they help small businesses here.

5. Set short-term and long-term financial goals

As well as knowing and understanding your business numbers you should set financial goals for the business to achieve as well. Have short term goals for what you want the business to achieve in the next month, the next quarter and the next year.

You should also have a longer term forecasting tool to predict the income you expect to bring in over the next year to five years, to help make sure you keep your business on track and meet all of your income goals.

As well as your business goals you should also set savings goals which allow you to have enough put aside to pay your tax contributions every year so you don’t get caught out with a big bill at the end of the tax year and nothing to pay it with.

Conclusion

Financial management is a key element to running a business and is a skill which every new entrepreneur needs to learn if they are to be successful in the corporate world. No business can survive if it’s not financially viable.

There are few tips here to help make financial management easier to cope with but if financial management really is beyond your skill set then you should always seek professional guidance and advice to make sure your business can still thrive, leaving you free to focus on the aspects of entrepreneurship where you are strongest.

There are several retirees who are of the opinion that they won’t be able to obtain a loan just because they don’t get a salary any longer. Although it is true that it can be tougher to qualify for loans during retirement, yet it is not at all impossible. You must have been saving in your retirement accounts like your Roth IRA or 401(k) accounts but something that you should avoid is borrowing from these accounts. This can have an adverse impact on your savings and also on the income that you fall back on during your retirement. There are several kinds of online loans and offline ones which can save you from a financial setback even during retirement. Read on to know more on this.

Borrowing during retirement – How do you qualify?

When you’re self-funded, lenders will typically decide the monthly income utilizing 2 different procedures which are as follows:

• Asset depletion: In this technique, the lender will subtract the down payment from the entire and sum total of the value of your fiscal assets and then take 70% of the remainder amount and then divide by 360 months.
• Drawdown of assets: The regular monthly amount that you withdraw from your retirement accounts in the form of income will be taken into account.

Retiree loan borrowing options

Secured loans are still easier to borrow as you can set collateral against the loan but as long as unsecured loans are concerned, they’re tough for a retiree to borrow as there is no collateral to assure timely payment and hence the interest rates will also be pretty high. Here are few loan options combining secured and unsecured.

MORTGAGE LOAN

The most common kind of secured loan is definitely a home loan which carries your home as collateral. However, the income of the retiree is a major setback, more so when most of your income comes from savings or investment earnings.

CASH-OUT REFINANCE LOAN

When you refinance your existing loan with an amount that is more than what you owe and less than the value of your home, this is called cash-out refinance loan. The extra amount that you make is the secured cash loan. This will also extend the time that it take to repay your mortgage loan.

DEBT CONSOLIDATION LOAN

As the name suggests, a debt consolidation loan is only designed to consolidate debt. It is more like refinancing your current debt. This will mean paying off the debt throughout a longer period of time with lower payments. The new interest rate that you pay may be lower than your present rate or may not be.

PAYDAY LOANS

Anyone including retirees can qualify for unsecured short term loans like payday loans. You may check out websites like www.PaydayMe.com to get short term loans during an emergency when you’re sure that money will come in again with which you can repay the existing payday loan on time.

Therefore, when you’re a retiree who is thinking of ways in which you can fund your emergencies, you can take into account the above mentioned options.

Understanding the viability of bluechip funds can help you plan your investment and get a well-rounded portfolio.

It is a well-known fact that market-linked investments are subject to a certain degree of risk. However, certain equity funds offer higher growth prospects with the risk element evened out over the long term. One such fund is the Emerging blue chip fund, or blue chip funds in general.

What is a bluechip fund?

The term ‘bluechip’ comes from the game of poker, where the blue coloured chip is the most expensive or valuable of all. The same logic is applied to the bluechip fund – these are equity funds of large multinationals or companies with a long and well-established track record of high performance and market credibility. Companies offering blue chip funds are normally in the top 3 performance bracket in their sector or industry.

Given their reputation and economic standing, bluechip equity funds are those with a large market capitalisation, usually in crores of Rupees. They are normally listed on the stock exchange.

Investors earn via dividend payments from these funds. They are considered relatively ‘safe’ funds to invest in, with a higher propensity for stable and regular growth.

However…

• These equity funds offer dividend payouts since their prices normally do not move much. The dividends can become a valuable second income for investors.

• Having mentioned the risk factor, we would be remiss in not mentioning that the bluechip funds are amongst the highest performers among most equity funds, year on year. These funds have been seen to perform over the benchmark indexes set for them over the last decade.

• The size and composition of the company alone does not automatically guarantee that the bluechip fund is safe. Even the best in class bluechip equity funds like the Emerging Bluechip Fund carry a moderate amount of risk. But this is easily attributable to all equity funds. The key is to remain invested for a longer time frame to reap the rewards of the fund.

• They offer stability to your portfolio, with expert handling by the fund manager (but do partner with a reputed fund house when you buy the fund). The fund can normally recover itself in a bearish market, or when there is a downturn for some reason. This is because the fund can ride market volatility much better.

• Investors have the option of investing in blue chip funds, blue chip ULIPs, etc. This is because the fund moves in the broader market only.

• They are more expensive. This factor might deter new investors from seeking investment in blue chip equity funds, however, they are a viable option for their growth potential. Yet, it is not ideal to have too many bluechip funds in your portfolio, and you can diversify with a range of mid-cap and small-cap funds.