Wherever you look right now, there is bad news on the economy. Unemployment higher than for the last twenty years and more. Personal levels of debt almost unmanageable. Foreclosures crashing like waves on the suburbs and exurbs, washing away property values. However you try to spin it, this is a bad time. Some people have stopped talking about a crisis and are hedging their bets on a depression. What a difference a single letter can make! So what should entrepreneurs do. Those with good ideas could sit on their hands and try to wait out the recession before starting up. Those already in business... 

What does this old saying mean? It does not matter who you are, you can always be fired or replaced. This even applies to the hardworking owner. As and when retirement beckons and the business is put up for sale, a buyer can come in and continue as if nothing had changed. It’s all a matter of specific skills and personality. If people feel comfortable around you and you drive the business forward, you are the key person for now. Ask anyone and their immediate reaction may well be that “you” are the business. They will shake their heads and worry what would happen if you should... 

Most of us hesitate to change something in our lives. We give ourselves excuses and prolong things that could be done today - postponing them as much as we can. Why do we need to wait until the 1 of January to start something new? When it comes to our health we always wait. We wait to start taking care of ourselves. But just think of how much money we could economize if took our health state seriously. Here are three simple advices that will help you save your check and improve your health. 1. Take care of your health situation. If everyone took care of his health doctors would have no work.... 

We’re into murky waters with questions about losing or switching employment. No-one wants to think about times of uncertainty, but if the economy continues its current problems, you have to plan round the jobs you have and can get. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which took effect in April, 2003, was designed to give you some protection for health insurance coverage when you are switching between jobs. To get HIPAA coverage, your most recent cover must have been through a health plan. In total, you must have had at least eighteen months of continuous... 

SOHO stands for Small Office, Home Office and it’s used to refer to people who work from home. With the cost of business premises still high even though the housing market is in free fall, it’s natural to base start-ups in the spare room and the garage for storing inventory. With computers, people can easily work from home. Employers cut their expensive office overheads by having their full-time staff telecommute. The self-employed freelance or run e-commerce sites. Unfortunately, most people seldom think about home insurance. They have their home insurance policy but never read the... 

It may already be obvious that our modern society involves careful planning in order for us to survive; gone are the days of barter exchange where the ability to easily and accessibly trade goods. The fact that we have adopted money as a medium of exchange in many ways allows for more enterprise, flexibility and development, but also requires that care be taken when making financial decisions. There is now a universal need to create assets or to maintain the ones we already possess and, once this is addressed, it provides a solution as to how to pay for our liabilities and sustain our existence.... 

The myth put about by men is that they are the superior gender when it comes to driving. Every comedian peddles the same jokes like the woman who backed her car out of the garage one morning completely forgetting shed backed it in the night before. Its the usual sexism with men trying to cover up their own inadequacies. Although, truth be told, men may have better spacial awareness so they may have a slight edge when it comes to keeping the vehicle going in a straight line. But, looking at the international statistics, men are three times more likely to die in traffic accidents than women. Why... 

At one time or another, we have all walked into a car rental office and met with one of the counter staff on a mission to hard sell insurance. It’s like a knee-jerk reaction. See customer, sell additional insurance. The most common add-on is called loss damage waiver (LDW) and that can seriously boost your daily rate. So what is this mystery product and should we think about buying it? Well, let’s start off with a few of the basics. LDW is a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, covering you if you put a dent in the body work or run the car off a cliff. No matter what happens, you’re... 

There are times when people complain about the number of laws there are in this country. How is anyone to keep track when Capitol Hill keeps adding new laws to the statute books? Even the lawyers find it hard to stay on top of all the changes. That leaves ordinary people with no chance at all. Yet, in some areas, the laws can be very helpful to ordinary people. They may not even need to know if government changes the way in which business is regulated. The people can be protected without them ever being aware of it. So the lobbyists start to work. This is big government not little government. This... 

Whenever you start talking to your broker or to a company direct, it’s easy to assume you know exactly what insurance is. You pay a premium and, when you get into trouble, the policy pays out. Except, sometimes, it does not pay as much as you were expecting. So let’s have a quick look at the nuts and bolts of the machine and see what makes it work. According to the experts, insurance is a way of managing risk. What happens is that individuals or businesses pass their risks to a purse holder. Each individual or business pays a premium into this purse. Think of it this way. The premium...