Guest Contributor on Money Questions and Answers Blog

Why Looking After Your Business Finances Is Important

Keeping on top of your personal finances is hugely important if you want to enjoy a secure future without financial pressures and avoid getting into bad situations. The same is true when it comes to the business finances of any business you run.

If you have a small company, you may think everything is okay as long as you aren’t clearly making a loss or encountering serious cash flow problems. However, if you are not doing enough to control your finances, you are losing out on a lot of benefits as well as exposing your business (and by extension your income) to uncertainty and risk.

Looking After Your Business Finances

Here we look at why good financial control is important in a business of any size:

Planning

When you have a firm understanding of exactly where money is going within your business and have good processes in place for financial management, it is far easier to plan for things that you want to do to help your business grow.

Whether it is expanding to a new location, hiring more people, or launching a new marketing campaign, without a good grasp of what your business’ financial state is you can’t really make good plans. Good financial management makes forecasting for the future not only possible but worthwhile, enabling you to make decisions and strategize more effectively.

Financially Resilient – How to Stop Living From Paycheck to Paycheck

by Guest Contributor

Financial problems have struck almost everybody at one point in their lives. Whether it’s a sudden, unexpected expense, a layoff or just working a job that barely covers your expenses, financial problems can lead to high levels of stress and anxiety.

One of the biggest financial concerns many people face is that of “living paycheck to paycheck.” Stretching yourself so thin that you hardly have any money left over each pay period is a dangerous financial game to play. But it doesn’t have to be a game that you play.

How to Stop Living From Paycheck to Paycheck

There are some tried-and-true ways you can stop living paycheck to paycheck and get your financial future in order.

Set Financial Goals

There is really nothing you can do to secure your financial future unless you actually know what you want that future to be. You can’t just say, “I want money in the bank and a house,” because it’s very hard to judge how close you are to achieving that goal. Instead, you need to set specific, measurable goals that are like mile markers along your journey to financial freedom.

Think of all of the things you want to have in 10 or 20 years and write them down. Then, put them in order from most important to least important. This will give you a hierarchy that will show you exactly what you want out of life and it makes it real to you because you’ve written it down.

Next, do a little research and figure out how much money you will need to achieve each goal. Now you will know about how much money you will need for everything so you can start working on a way to achieve those goals.

Five Significant Ways to Become Indispensable in Business

by Guest Contributor

Rick Wong is the author of Winning Lifelong Customers With The Five Abilities

The following article is a guest post by Rick Wong, author of Winning Lifelong Customers With The Five Abilities. If you’d like to contribute a guest post to Money Q&A, be sure to check out our guest posting guidelines.

Competition is fiercer today than ever before, and no matter how much you focus on data, analytics, and performance, it may surprise you that what ultimately matters the most to people is the human touch.

Companies don’t make decisions—people do… and people make the most crucial business decisions for personal reasons.

It may come as a surprise to some, but in today’s fast-moving, data-driven marketplace, where people have more choices than ever before, the personal factors are more important than ever.

With over thirty-five years of experience working and growing revenue at Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and other Fortune 100 companies, I created a clearly written guide for salespeople and CxOs that defines the most important ‘outside the contract’ factors that decision-makers care about the most when deciding to make the initial purchase and those critical repeat purchases. You’ll never be left asking yourself,” What do I do now?” because you’ll have a framework to answer that question quickly and correctly.

5 Ways to Become Indispensable in Business

These are the critical factors that keep people coming back for more. Here’s a summary of The Five Abilities:

1. Optimize Your Visability*

Be consciously and consistently seen in the right way, at the right time, by the right people. Perfect your messaging so you know you can get people curious in less than 30 seconds, delivering heightened value-add that surprises them and exceeds their expectations.

Design every communication so that every time people see, listen to or watch something by or about you, they will quickly pay more attention, and naturally step in, bring you closer, and focus on learning more about what you can do for them.

2. Demonstrate Your Credability*

Show your creds! Demonstrate superior knowledge and utilize your experience in ways that prove you know how to help people. Then deliver what you’ve promised. In fact, deliver more than what you promised.

Impress every prospect, customer, decision-maker, and influencer and make it a total commitment to offer and give helpful advice and assistance that goes beyond your stated product or service. Be consistent and you will get referrals and achieve loyalty that opens the doors to new opportunities.

Five Reasons to Arrange Your Funeral Plans

by Guest Contributor

Many of us give very little thought to our mortality, but should the unexpected happen, it may mean that you are leaving many of the decisions about your funeral to your grieving loved ones. If you are still unsure about making funeral plans, here are five reasons why it is worth some serious consideration.

Easing the Burden on Your Family

If your family are unsure about your wishes, they will need to make some difficult decisions. It is very common for there to be a lot of disagreements and confusion if someone has passed away without pre planning their funeral. By planning in advance, there will be no confusion during this trying time, as all your family members will have the assurance of knowing exactly what you did and did not want.

Taking Financial Responsibility

Another burden of arranging a funeral is the financial element. Funerals can be a costly process, but by planning in advance, you can ensure that the costs have been completely covered. Even if you have left money, your survivors may not be able to immediately access it, and most funeral service providers require payment on or before the funeral. A funeral trust or insurance ensures that your family benefits from the financial planning options you have arranged.

Money on a Runaway Train? First Stop – Financial Awareness

by Guest Contributor

Bankruptcy: A Love Story by Janet Lombardi

The following is a guest post by Janet Lombardi, author of Bankruptcy: A Love Story about financial awareness. If you’d like to contribute an article for Money Q&A, check out our guest posting guidelines. “I’ve got to get my finances together!” At some point, most of us have made this promise, whether it’s fueled by out-of-control credit card debt, off-the-leash student loans, or paycheck-to-paycheck living. I was aboard the runaway train myself several years ago when I secretly discovered my husband had been hiding hundreds of thousands in debt, emptied our accounts, let life insurances lapse due to non-payment, and other money chaos. Financial Awareness My memoir, Bankruptcy: A Love Story (Heliotrope Books), due out in June 2017, tells the … Read more

The Stock Market: An Average Joe’s Mini Guide to Investing with Great Success

by Guest Contributor

Tips and Hints for Your First Stock Market Investment

Lots of people have heard stories of people making serious money investing in the stock market. Yet they believe stories like that only happen to people who are already rich or financially smart. They think the stock market is too complex for them to understand, so they don’t tend to view it as an option for building wealth.

In reality, anyone at all can invest in the stock market. You don’t need to be rich to start. It’s possible to begin with small amounts of capital. You also don’t need to be a stock market expert to get started.

All you need is the desire to invest for your financial future and the willingness to learn some basic investing principles.

An Average Joe’s Guide to Investing in the Stock Market

Here is a quick guide to successfully investing in the stock market for the average investor.

Educate Yourself

Once you start learning the basics of how the stock market works, you’ll soon find it’s not as daunting as it first appeared. The more you learn about buying and selling stocks through your share trading platform, the more comfortable you’ll become with the process.

However, it all begins with education. There are plenty of tutorials and educational tools available. There are also lots of sites that allow you to learn about new price information or apps that let you monitor market movements in real-time.