The Power of Many – Online Consumer Help Resources

Most consumers don’t have the time or the resources to turn the tide in their favor when dealing with an unscrupulous company. The growth of internet usage over the years has helped shift this tide with the aid of free online consumer resources. As more consumers hit the web to research a product or company before making a purchase, a company’s online reputation is becoming more important than ever.The following are good starting points for researching before you buy, or if you need help in getting a dispute resolved with a company:Better Business Bureau – The BBB.org is probably the most commonly known resource for consumers looking to fight back online. They will forward your complaint to the company within 2 days. If the company fails to respond, they get a negative rating for that complaint on the BBB website. They claim a 70% success rate for resolving consumer complaints.PlanetFeedback.com – This company provides a similar service as the BBB, however they utilize their network of company connections to try and get your complaint letter into the right hands. Their website is also a great resource for researching a company before you buy, as they post most of their consumer letters online in a searchable database.My3cents.com – This site provides a forum where consumers can share their story and get feedback from other members regarding possible resolutions. Consumers can also search their online database of reviews to get the scoop on a company or product before making a purchase.Complaint.TV – For years TV news stations have offered “On Your Side” consumer advocacy teams to help uncover consumer fraud and scam stories. Complaint.TV offers a free service to forward your story to multiple local TV news stations in your area.Complaints.com – With thousands of “complaints” logged in their online database, this site is a valuable resource to checkout before making any large investments with a company you may not know much about. Complaints.com will also attempt to forward your complaint to the business, and allows for businesses to respond to consumer through their site.With so many new consumer scams cropping up each year, it is always recommended to hit the web first before trying out a new product or investment. Be particularly wary of services solicited over the phone or e-mail. When in doubt, search Google for any information on a company you can find. Being proactive in your research can help you avoid trouble down the road.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off

Health Insurance for Self Employed – How to Find Affordable Health Care

Health Insurance for Self Employed – How to Find Affordable Health CareSeems like the cost of health insurance is out of control these days. How do you afford to insure you and your family if you’re self employed? Where can you find affordable health insurance? Here’s a few ways to help you get affordable health insurance if you’re self-employed:Self Employed Health Insurance PlansThere are numerous types of health insurance plans available to the self employed including the managed health care insurance plans. These plans go by the names of HMO, PPO, and POS medical care plans. Managed care plans help keep costs down by using a network of health care providers when you’re sick or injured.As a member of a managed care plan, all you have to do is show your membership card to a doctor or hospital within your network of providers to obtain medical care. Most managed care health insurance plans cover doctor visits, hospital stays, emergency room, lab tests, therapy, and x-rays.In order to keep costs down, managed health care plans usually have a copayment fee for doctor and hospital visits. This fee is typically $15 to $20 per visit. Copayments can also apply to prescription drugs, after which the insurance provider picks up the remainder of the tab.Health Insurance Quotes for the Self EmployedOne of the best ways to find affordable health insurance quotes is to go to a free insurance quote website. There you can get competitive quotes from up to 5 health insurance providers so you can compare plans and prices. After you have your quotes, you can look more closely at the policies and decide which one is the best for you.

Posted in health care | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Brokering Commercial Mortgages – What It’s Really Like

Brokering commercial mortgages certainly can have its perks. It is generally viewed as a very prestigious profession and brokers get to deal with highly sophisticated borrowers on most of their transactions. The income potential is truly uncapped as well as some of the seasoned commercial brokers bring home over 7 figures. This is without having a lot of fixed expenses or a large support staff to manage. It’s no wonder that so many residential brokers are entering the market as their side of the business is still taking the brunt of the capital market woes.However this is a tough and competitive business and one should not fool themselves that it will be a cake walk. Rather new commercial brokers need to be prepared and need to know exactly what they are doing. One of the main differences we hear from residential brokers is the lack of conformity from one lender to the next, in both process and underwriting guidelines. Also, the lack of broker protection is alarming to many newbie’s as they learn that many banks will not accept deals from brokers or allow them to get paid on the settlement statements. Rather some banks will expect brokers to get paid outside of close and directly from the borrower.New commercial loan brokers have to become very efficient in all aspects of the business but especially in pre screening deals. Every time you work on a loan you are investing your time into it and if it has a low (or no) probability of closing you will quickly be hard pressed. It is so easy to work on un-fundable deals. Often the borrower has been through the “wringer” and will be very willing and pleasant to work with. All along they are playing poker with you and not telling you that they’ve been to 10 other banks and 3 other brokers and no one can get it done. So in protecting themselves they will waste your time. So, the successful broker will collect the whole package, sit down with it for 20 minutes and make a couple of decisions 1. Can I get this done? 2. If yes, do I want to work on this deal.The most complicated part of prescreening loan requests is being able to extract all income out of the borrower’s tax returns that can be used to service the proposed mortgage. A lot has been written about calculating DCR (divide the NOI by the debt service) but how do you really get to the NOI. This is often more complicated on owner occupied transaction than on investment deals. This goes beyond just adding back depreciation or interest. The broker has to be very good at reviewing the entire set of tax returns, which on most owner occupant deals is a combination of personal, business and the real estate entities returns.It’s important to remember that most deals get deigned due to lack of sufficient income.The other major part of this is after the broker has a good understanding of the borrowers loan request, they need to know which bank or lender to take it to. Again this goes beyond just the banks matrix or published guidelines. The broker needs to know what the bank really likes. The last thing you want is the phone call from the bank, 3 months into the deal, that underwriting has canned the deal for BS, random reasons. And, unfortunately, this does happen all the time. Again you need to really know what the lenders appetite is and what they are really funding so you avoid this and get paid for all of your hard work.

Posted in Finance | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Small Business Secret #1 – Build Your Business with The End In Mind

Small Business is the toughest industry to break into. If you were a betting man, you would never in a million years want to go into a small business when the odds for success in small business are so bad, that 70% of all small business fail in the first year. Let me be blunt, if you want to succeed in small business, only listen to those people who have built a small business in an industry they no nothing about and succeeded. These are the people who seriously know how to build a small business.I just happen to be one of those people – I am not a business coach – I offer no consulting on small business, just let me share with you my secret to building 4 small businesses from a three thousand dollar credit card.The first secret when building a small business is this, have the end in mind. When I first started in small business, I was like most business people, I was a technician (bit more than that, but this is how the E-myth would describe me) in the IT industry with the belief I could build a better computer training company than those around me. One thing I can tell you about this industry, stay out of it. It is tough and there is no money in it, well that’s not quite true, but there are far easier businesses to make serious money. In fact I married my wife and I decided I wanted to experiment on whether all business was as hard as the training industry or was it just computer training.My wife and I, after much coaxing agreed to setup a car cleaning and detailing business, we new nothing about the business and were simply doing it as an experiment. Two years on, we have a successful thriving business and we are about to Franchise and expand the business to over 10 cities in Australia.The key to building a successful small business is to have the end in mind and to know when you are going to exit the business. Most people when they start a small business simply believe they are going to have a business to make money, come home and do it better than their boss. If you are going to go into business for this reason, quit now, because your life is doomed.There is more to business than simply doing the technical work and this is what most new small business operators do not realize. When you are first thinking about starting a small business, imagine how it will look when you are finished. For example, what image will you have, what logo’s will you have, what marketing material will you be using, where will you be operating from, how many stores will you have, how many people will be working for you, what sort of profit will you be making and more so, how will you know that the business is complete.For example, let us say you wanted to start up a dog washing business. You saw in a market that there was a massive need for dog washing. How are you going to satisfy the market? How are you going to build your business? How are you going to clean the dogs? Are you going to build the business like other? When will you know that the business is finished?These are all the questions you must ask yourself. In fact, if you don’t ask yourself then you will find that your business may grow but without any focus. It will go so far and then become a huge noose around your neck. By knowing what the end will be, you then have a clear goal of what you want to achieve and you can then build the business based on that vision.Let me give you a really good example of this methodology. If you get a chance watch the movie, Concierge with Micheal J Fox. Micheal plays a concierge that has a vision of building a hotel. He first builds a model of the hotel and then sells the idea to a developer. As he says in the movie he knows every aspect of the hotel he has built.You as a small business owner must do exactly the same thing. Before you rush out and start your small business, you must know exactly what you are building know every aspect of it and how to build it. You must know every job, every role, every procedure and how it will work within your business.By creating your business in this way, you will learn very quickly what will work and what will not.Most people who want to start a small business will say that they don’t have enough money. If you have a clearly articulated vision and you can prove that your vision works, then there will always be someone out there prepared to back you. It may take a while to find someone to support you, but there are people out there who will. Just remember it took Walt Disney, 500 plus knock backs for Disneyland before he found that one group of people that would back him.If you truly want your vision to work, then you must be prepared to be relentless in your pursuit of success. Remember the first secret in small business success, is to build and develop your business with the end in mind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Social Media and Children

Social media, in its current form, means a lot more than just a small number of adults spending time connecting with others and researching various topics. There are millions of children that are involved with social media in all sorts of ways.Children’s interactions with social media
There are reasons why the thought of children getting involved with social media may be objectionable (and are certainly not preferable). A great deal of the objections, in all likelihood, come from the parents of those children. Many parents grow concerned if their children start to interact on social media channels because of the potentially dangerous nature of the Internet (at least certain aspects of it).One of the best safety measures is something that parents can make happen. That is education. Adults in a position of authority must educate children, without frightening them, so that they understand what to do and what not to do in order to stay safe. The Internet definitely holds some potentially powerful educational possibilities for children if used appropriately. Part of the education is showing children where they should and should not go online. They also need to understand that the virtual world can quickly become the real world if they venture into places online where they have no control and where their parents and teachers don’t have control either.The positives of children using social media
There are many positive attributes that can be leveraged when it comes to children. One of those is the idea that children can become technically savvy from an early age and that will help them in their future lives and careers. That is extremely important for them. All of that will definitely affect their future in an extremely profound manner. As young adults, they will be able to use social media to build relationships who share common interests and who have networking connections that will benefit both of them. Those relationships will help them to realize their long-term goals successfully. Of course, another thing to remember is that if a child is very young, he or she may be restricted from using certain social media channels. The adults need to pay attention to that on behalf of the children. Of course, those restrictions are in place for good reasons.Another thing that is important to remember is that when you are choosing the appropriate social media channels, you should do so with the idea in mind that you (or the teachers) will not need to monitor every word that the child types. Children need some degree of privacy and the adults need to respect that as long as they children are not allowed to have freedom that causes them harm in any way. Children do not like the idea that their parents and teachers are watching their every move. An appropriate analogy would be if the child receives something in the mail (with his or her name on it). The parent should not open that piece of mail. Aside from being illegal, it is also important to make the child feel that since that envelope is addressed to him or her, he or she has the right to open it.What is being built
There are many positive attributes that are being build by allowing children to get involved with social media and making them feel that they have entered a world that will allow them to grow, learn, and benefit. There is no doubt that the Internet has made all sorts of opportunities available that would never have been available before. Referring back to the networking opportunities and relationship building that occurs because of social media, there is absolutely nothing that can replace that. If children can learn from a young age how to be comfortable with other people and with themselves in a professional situation, they will be one step ahead of the game.Conclusion
Social media and children are a natural combination, although that doesn’t mean that caution does not need to be exercised. As parents and educators, it is important to make sure that children use social media in the most productive, valuable and safe manner possible. It is all in the education. If you do that up front, you will hopefully be able to sit back and watch the children flourish. Social media has many benefits (for adults and children). It allows people to stay connected, form and sustain relationships, share interesting and valuable pieces of information, and develop a personal brand. There are many different social media channels that have been created with children in mind. It is important to find the ones that are the most appropriate and the most beneficial.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off