Fred's Finance, Investing & Marketing Blog

If you were to ask a thousand people what they would most want to change in their lives, the majority of answers will have something to do with personal finance. Money does not buy love or happiness but it does so much for your ability to enjoy life with greater ease and less stress. Read on for great advice on how to improve the personal finances of your own life.

Making your money stretch is important when dealing with personal financial issues. One way in which you can work to save money is to start looking at used items instead of new items. If that stove breaks, check out a place like Craigslist for some deals on quality items. You can save upwards of 80%.

Shop the dollar stores. You can often buy the same products in dollar stores for a fraction of the price you would pay in bigger department stores. Whether you are buying toothbrushes, over-the-counter medicines, cosmetics or any one of hundreds of other products there are big savings to be had in dollar stores.

To improve your personal finance habits, keep track of your actual expenditure in comparison to the monthly budget that you plan. Take time at least once a week to compare the two to make sure that you are not over-spending. If you have spent more that you planned in the first week, you can make up for it in the weeks to come.

Sell some of your belongings. This accomplishes two things. First, you are forced to take a look at what you have spent on items that you don’t really use. Hopefully, it will prevent you from buying frivolous items. Secondly, you can make some money on those items at a yard sale or through an online auction site.

Choose a broker whose ethics and experience you can trust. You should, of course, investigate reviews of a broker thoroughly enough to determine whether he or she is trustworthy. Moreover, your broker needs to be capable of understanding your goals and you should be able to communicate with him or her, as needed.

Get a savings account with a higher yield. The idea is to be liquid and safe while receiving some interest. Chances are that you’ll get better rates from online banks, so start searching the web for the higher-yielding, FDIC-insured savings accounts. You will periodically transfer money from your emergency savings or checking into this account.

Splurge every now and then. No one likes the feeling of deprivation, and if you know that you have the freedom to have one big meal or one pair of shoes every now and then, you will have a feeling of mastery over your finances. Don’t overdo it, but a small luxury purchase periodically is worth it.

Accurate information is key to developing and implementing any good strategy. Given the above advice you should be a bit more prepared to go after your personal finance goals and attain some peace of mind. Having control over your personal finances takes some training and discipline but in the long run you will find it very rewarding, in more ways than you can imagine!

When it comes to billionaires most people just think they must be lucky, few stop to think that there might be some behavior that helps them build their wealth. In fact there is such a thing as billionaire behavior and it does not begin with a passion for getting rich. There are six core behaviors that are common to all of the many billionaires I have studied and they are remarkably easy to emulate.

The first of these is a passion for doing, or supplying, something that other people want to buy and being the best in the world at doing it. They are not all successful at being the best but they are usually the most passionate about being so. This is by far more likely to generate profits than a desire to make most money by selling the same product or service. Delighting customers is the number one billionaire behavior.

Having become passionate about delighting customers with some product or service the next key behavior, and it is obvious but so few entrepreneurs get it right, is creating a systematic approach to successful selling. You must be a sales person and be great at both generating leads and closing sales. A systematic approach to lead generation and selling makes success inevitable. Random efforts and the lack of a system of split testing for continuous improvement keeps small businesses, small and poor.

Generating new customers is expensive and, it is always easier to retain customers and sell more to them than to win new ones. A system for making customers feel wanted and for understanding what else they want to buy is a key to continuous growth. Understanding the lifetime value of a customer and how to make that value grow is vital to becoming wealthy.

The retention and management of data is essential to understanding the business and continuously improving methods and efficiency. Beyond the early stages of a business, delegation and outsourcing becomes the means of maintaining and accelerating profit growth. This is simply not possible without well organized management information providing key performance indicators in clear sharp focus.

We have all heard of the 80:20 principle and a few of us for a short time use it to organize our time. Billionaires focus on this to extreme applying a 98:2 approach to their time and effort. They spend all their own time in the 2% of effort generating 98% of the profits. They then look to replicate that 2% fifty times to use 100% of their time. If you do the maths, that is 4,800 times more effective than the typical small business owner who spends 100% of their time doing everything. Billionaires delegate and outsource everything other than the 2% of things that generate 98% of profits. They find people better, much better than themselves at doing everything except the final decision on strategy.

‘Would be billionaires’ are usually way too busy and, in their opinion, far too darned good to take advice and systematically improve themselves. Real billionaires are all humble and avid learners. Most billionaires always have a new book to read that will develop themselves and they read self-development every day. Continuous learning is just part of continuous improvement.

There you have it. Six simple things done systematically, sometimes intuitively, by all billionaires that could make you feel a bit more like thinking they might deserve their success.

Motivating employees is a strategy which requires long-term planning to affect the general work surroundings, and implementation must be continuous. What is amazing is that, although general managers are fully aware of all the losses and costs resulting from lack of motivation, plenty of them are reluctant to invest time, work and money to actually generate an environment for motivation.

Business owners know that without a motivated team they lose business and customers. They also witness a lowering of performance, quality and service levels, combined with an increase in tangible and intangible costs which might have been avoided: costs associated with accidents due to negligence, lawsuits from customers, labor disputes, higher staffing levels, supervisory and worker turnover with all the costs this entails, such as retraining, additional expenses to correct the enterprise’s picture, keep customers and attract new ones by means of marketing as well as costs which ought to never have been occurred. Companies hire department heads with the appropriate schooling, background, experience and qualifications. Or they hire people right out of college, who did some internship. Sometimes they promote from within, moving a well-performing assistant department head.

For some reason, those who hire new managers and supervisors expect them to succeed immediately as leaders who will know how to generate a motivated team who, in turn, will deliver the expected performance. In a worst case scenario, they actually expect the new hires to correct an existing bad situation, which the executive management itself could not solve! This is a great deal of responsibility placed on the shoulders of a new manager or supervisor.

New managers themselves feel insecure at this preliminary stage and require assistance and assistance to overcome their new challenges. Employees often reject new authority. They do their best to make life difficult for new managers and supervisors, or they do not react, going about their duties, ignoring the change in management. They work in silence and do not communicate. They do not warn of pitfalls and past failed attempts. In the event that they see a new supervisor forge ahead in a wrong direction, they joyfully wait for him (or her) to fall flat on the face. Some even boycott the efforts of the new manager.

Business owners ought to recognize the precarious situation newly hired managers and supervisors find themselves in. They can dedicate some time to converse and listen to these new hires, ask for feedback, offer and even assure them of assistance, and, most of all, communicate to them a feeling of trust and safety. In the matter of worker motivation, it is these mid-managers who require management’s full attention and assistance. They are the key to the motivation and successful performance of their departments.

Most consultants point out that usually new hires would not dare admit to needing guidance in the matter of people management, nor would they admit to being sabotaged by assistants and employees. They think about such revelations as an admittance of personal failure, due to impact their own job security. It is up to upper-level managers and business owners to generate an actual open and collaborative atmosphere, in which such troublesome issues could be discussed. When new hires feel the necessity for management coaching and training, they never ask for it. And if offered, they would hesitate to accept it, not yet knowing whether this would show a sign of their weakness.

Due to plenty of demands business owners and senior-level managers have on their time, successful companies hire outside consultants to help newly hired managers and supervisors succeed. Unfortunately some organizations do not – leading to under-developed, non-performing mid-managers and most of the time a wide spread case of “Peter Principle”. Those who do not take time to face the needs of their mid-managers often invest in other areas of the company to counter the effects of loss business; they spend on new decor, new sales campaigns and rebates and enter an ever-ending cycle of having to make constant efforts to market and promote their business.

If training and people development were universally labeled as part of product research and development they would have seen an upsurge in operational and organizational performance. Business people, who think in this context, end up leading their companies to success beyond their dreams. In lieu of constantly looking for the “right” solution to worker motivation, they would spend their time generating new ventures, with the help of the people they nurtured.

Entrepreneurial endeavors need consistent attention. A small business owner should have a financial plan in order to stay afloat each year. Think ahead. Do not be caught in a whirlwind of papers and panic come spring when you’re unable to pay your taxes and facing the reality of going under. There are simple things you can do to ensure your records are sufficient for tax filing and that you have a stable base for years to come.

What is your estimate per monthly income? How much revenue do you expect to bring in on average based on the business. If you do not have a standard ballpark number as a goal, how do you know if you are dragging or booming in sales? Every company should have a detailed file of incoming and outgoing business checks. Now would be the time to review those sheets. If you find disorganization, invest in software to do the work for you. You can even request the program to project revenue and expenses for coming months. Once you have those numbers you can create a financial plan that will give you consistent results, not accounting for periods of lesser profit. Nonetheless, with an accurate record you will soon learn when your best and worst selling months begin and end.

During off-seasons or months with loss, you need to amp up your efforts. Use this time to consult marketing companies and generate interest for your services. Also, cut back during these months. You can find cheap office supplies online. You will still need to make payments, so order cheap checks online instead of getting the expensive ones. Simple saving solutions make a big difference, especially when you are using items that you go through pretty quickly. Paper products and other office necessities will take out a chunk of your finances unless you look for the best deals.

Consider the profit versus the revenue. Your expenses must be considered in relation to what you bring in. If your expenses are too high and you’re not making a profit, what was the point of all that hard work? Find a way to cut expenses. Do not get caught in a situation where you depend solely on loans and help from the banks either because that is a slippery slope.

Hopefully you will find some comfort in your organizational skills. Success is not about what figures you can write into a blank check, but how well you play the game. If you can survive both good and bad times financially then you are better off then some.

Thousands of people dream about starting a business every day, yet only a very small percentage will ever turn their dream into a reality.

If you follow these 5 important tips then your business idea can get off the ground. Not only that, it can also succeed and become a sustainable venture for many years to come.

1. Get your head out of the clouds.

The first important lesson when considering a new business venture is to be realistic. Whether you are wanting to open a shop or an online venture you must be realistic. Without a realistic approach you are likely to fail. Far too many businesses fail in their first 3 years simply due to unwarranted expectations. Business owners expect their business to flourish quickly instead of having the patience to gradully build their brand and company.

You need to ask some serious questions before you start your business. Will it work? How much money do I need to get it started? What are the business risks? How much do i need to earn to survive? You must consider these questions carefully. If the responses are positive, go for it!

2. Market research.

You must carry out lots of market research before you start your first business. You do not have to pay a company to do it for you, you can do it yourself. Find out who your target customers are and ask them if they would be interested in your product or service. Avoid asking friends or family relatives as they are likely to tell you what you want to hear, as opposed to some truthful and honest feedback.

3. Don’t borrow money from a bank.

Unless you are absolutely 100% certain you have the next big thing, avoid the banks. Try instead borrowing from friends and family but make sure you limit the risks and the amount you borrow.

4. Avoid flash cars and fancy offices.

When I started my first business I spent the first 3 years operating from my cellar. This was great as it allowed me to operate with very low overheads. Far too many business start-ups get flash cars and nice offices when they really do not need them. If you do buy a flash car, pay cash for it!

5. Be patient.

Don’t rush your business. It must be an enjoyable experience. When I first started my business I wanted it to be huge as soon as possible; this as a mistake. I have now been going for 7 years and it is a successful venture and very profitable. I put the success to eventually realising that all good things come to those who wait. Be patient, be meticulous and be very careful who you work with!

By following the above 5 tips your business will be certain to become a sustainable venture.