Money Questions and Answers

Three Home Business Opportunities To Boost Your Income

Top 3 Home Business Opportunities To Boost Your Income

You need more income to help your financial situation. Cutting items from your budget and watching your pennies each month will only get you so far. You need to attack the other side of the budgeting equation. Many people simply don’t know where to start, but there are many business opportunities from home that you can use to increase your income.

You need a side hustle. But, I’m not talking about selling stuff to your friends in your living room during in-home demonstrations and fake parties. Selling multi-level marketing (MLM) items simply won’t work for the long term. You need a real home business opportunity that can help you make real money.

I know far too many people who hope and pray (and fall prey) to the allure of easy riches of MLM opportunities. My house is full of candles, protein powder, vitamins, jewelry, weight loss wraps, and face wash that my friends have been hocking over the past few years. Your home-based business has to be more than simply selling things to your friend and family. Eventually, you’ll run out of customers. And, the leaders of these types of businesses often don’t communication (or we’re oblivious) to how much real work goes into making them successful.

Many MLM programs are built on you recruiting distributors underneath you instead of actually selling the products. Selling items to customers is often a byproduct of the business. The real business is recruiting unfortunately.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my friends. I don’t mind supplementing their incomes to a certain degree if that’s what will make them truly happy in life. The problem is that these MLM strategies aren’t good enough home business opportunities to earn additional income over the long term for most people. If you’re on the bottom of the pyramid, the income can be quite paltry.

Here are three home-based business opportunities that can help you earn a real income over the long haul.

Home Business Opportunities To Boost Your Income

Create Your Own Website

Okay, I’m a little biased with this home business opportunity. I think everyone needs a website. It’s a great creative outlet. It sets you personally up as your own brand. And, then it can be a launching pad for any home business opportunity that you want.

Do you want to sell items that you create? You should have a website to highlight your products. Do you want to freelance as a copywriter? You should have your own website to showcase your talent.

Everyone needs a website. And, you also need to own your name URL. It took me years to purchase hankcoleman.com. But, it was worth the wait. You should own your own name as a .com and .net. And, for that matter, you should own your children’s names as domain names too. $10 per year (or less in many cases) is a small price to pay when it can cost you hundreds down the line.

A great way to build your website is through sites like Wix.com. Wix.com makes it easy to build your own site, and they show how to make your own website if you’re a beginner.

Wix provides free websites for people with an easy drag and drop system that is geared towards the beginner who isn’t familiar with coding. There is no coding required with their system. They also have designer pre-made templates and photo galleries that you can use to help you build your website.

Wix can help you create an amazing website for free. It’s never been easier since you do not need to be tech savvy. It’s all drag and drop. You simply pick a template, add images and videos (either your own or theirs), making any changes to the layout you want, add text and then publish your site online instantly.

And, if you choose, Wix can help you add secure hosting and domain names to your website. It’s a one stop shop for building your website from scratch with little to no previous experience all wrapped up in one.

How To Learn To Invest With Wall Street Survivor

by Hank Coleman

How To Not Let Investing Intimidate You with Wall Street Survivor

Investing in the stock market is a great way to retire comfortably and make your money work for you. However, there are some risks involved, and it is crucial to learn as much as possible about the stock market before you get started. And, that’s where the Wall Street Survivor comes in! Wall Street Survivor teaches investors how to invest in the stock market and how to buy stocks by playing their stock market game. Their virtual stock market game is the best way to learn to invest initially without risking any of your own hard-earned money. Wall Street Survivor Courses Teach Investing Wall Street Survivor has step-by-step courses that each you how to invest using fundamental and technical analysis. Ever wonder what Jim Cramer … Read more

Should I Open a 529 College Savings Account?

by Hank Coleman

This guest post is by Kimberly Palmer, author of the new book, “Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family”.

For a long time, I resisted opening 529 college savings accounts for my two children. It seemed like a giant hassle, adding even more paperwork to an already complicated situation that included various retirement accounts and a mortgage. I could barely keep up with our current stack of accounts; how could I possibly manage more?

But after delaying the decision for a couple years, I finally decided that I couldn’t pass up the tax savings any longer. After all, if you open a 529 account, the earnings are not taxed, as long as you use the money for its intended purpose of education.

After conducting some basic research about our available state plans, I went ahead and opened the accounts. Here are three reasons why you should also consider opening up a 529 college savings account today:

The tax savings: The most obvious reason is also the most important: An analysis done by Vanguard for the New York Times showed that if you put $5,000 a year into a 529 savings account that grows 6 percent a year, then after eighteen years you’ll have $179,140 in the account for education expenses. (You can also play around with your own numbers using college savings calculators at FINRA.org, Bankrate.com, Fidelity.com, or your own financial institution.)

It forces you to save the future. It’s so easy to let daily and monthly expenses eat up your entire budget. But if you set up a college savings account and commit to making regular deposits into it, you’re setting money aside for the future and guaranteeing it won’t be spent on restaurant meals or new outfits instead.

It gives you a chance to talk to your kids about your educational values. Ever since we started actively saving for college, the topic has come up more in dinnertime conversations. Our kids are interested to hear that we want them to go to college one day, and even though they are still just learning to read, I think it gives them a good goal to plan for. They also are starting to grasp that college is expensive and that finding a way to pay for it one of our priorities, so we might make some other sacrifices in the short-term to get there.

Where Your Money Goes After You Spend It – Infographic

by Hank Coleman

Have you ever wondered what happens to your money after you spend it? Do you assume that cash just passes hands until being deposited into a bank? Or, that electronic transactions disappear into thin air? Where does your money go after you spend it?

The reality is, all currency is part of an intricate cycle. When it comes to cash, that cycle begins at designated printing facilities in the United States and ends between three and 15 years later when it’s taken out of circulation.

The life expectancy of cash depends largely on the type of bill it is. For instance, dollar bills have a life expectancy of 5.9 years while twenty-dollar bills have a life expectancy of 7.7 years. Over this time, bills can pass hands 55 times each year, and travel multiple miles every day.

Electronic money is slightly different. When you purchase an item with your debit card or receive a paycheck that is directly deposited into your bank account, the change is only recognized by numerical adjustments to your bank account. Many people also prefer to send money electronically because of how quick and convenient it is. Plus, learning how to send money online is so easy these days, anyone can do it.

These transactions may make it difficult for you visualize how electronic money fits into the currency cycle, which is understandable. Just know that regardless of how you spend, borrow, send, or receive money, it all plays an important role in our money system. If you’d like to learn more about how your money moves, check out this infographic.

7 Reasons You Should Consider Life Insurance Prequalification

by Guest Contributor

When To Buy Insurance

Have you considered life insurance prequalification? The following is a guest post by KJ Price. KJ Prince is an insurance agent and the founder of Insurance Engine. When he’s not writing about insurance he enjoys technology, design, CrossFit, and fly fishing. If you’d like to submit a guest post on Money Q&A, please check out the site’s guest posting guidelines.

Life insurance prequalification is a process top-notch life insurance brokers utilize for uncovering important information about life insurance applicants. Prequalified life insurance quotes are not guesses or estimates, they are accurate rate quotes based on your actual life insurance risk profile.

In this article we’ll cover 7 reasons you should consider life insurance prequalification and how the process works. By the end of the article you’ll understand why you should get prequalified and how the prequalification process works.

You Should Consider Life Insurance Prequalification

So let’s jump right into the first reason you should get prequalified….

Life Insurance Prequalification is Usually Free

This is a no-brainer folks. Life insurance prequalification is usually free and without obligation. If your broker asks you for a fee to pre-qualify you, you should find a new broker.

The best life brokers utilize prequalification as part of their normal process. But not all insurance brokers are created equal. If you’re working with an impersonal, call-center brokerage then they probably won’t bother going through the lengthy (and costly) prequalification process.

These types of insurance brokerages are focused on getting you in and out of their agency as soon as possible. In fact, we’ve heard that some agencies monitor how long their agents spend on the phone with each client and incentivize them to spend LESS time with you! Therefore, they skip some of the most important parts of the prequalification process, which we’ll explain later.

Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step 6 – Pay Off Your Mortgage Early

by Hank Coleman

I wrote an overview of Dave Ramsey’s baby steps system from his book, The Total Money Makeover, and I have been dissecting each of his individual baby steps as well. Today, we’ll talk about baby step 6, paying off your mortgage early. The Total Money Makeover is a personal finance book that I highly recommend and one of the greatest personal finance books to read. Today, we will look at Baby Step 4 in more detail which is to invest 15% of your income for retirement. There are seven Dave Ramsey baby steps that you should follow in order that will lead you to financial peace. Dave Ramsey’s baby steps are… Baby Step 1 – $1,000 Emergency FundBaby Step 2 – Pay Off All Of Your Debt With … Read more