A home based business is an answer to the retirement worries that everyone is facing when retirement funds are shrinking. Few Americans have saved enough money so that their retirement can last for more than 30 years. People are outliving their money. So what is the answer? Well, you have 3 choices; a delay in retirement by working longer, learn to live on less money, or start a home based business that will be able to give you a residual income to last the rest of your life.Let’s look at all the choices.First choice is a delay in retirement. In order to live at a lifestyle that you are comfortable with, you will have to work past your expected age of retirement. How much longer depends on the kind of lifestyle you want. It also depends on the economy and the cost of living at the time of retirement.Second choice is to learn to live on less money. Here are some steps you would have to consider:Downsize your home – less mortgage and lower maintenance costs
Give up one car – a couple will have to learn to live with one car which lowers cost of insurance and car maintenance
Must Spend Taxable Accounts First – you must use the funds that are taxed each year before you touch your 401K and IRA’s. This will reduce your tax burden.
Hidden Fees – Avoid banking fees, ATM charges or overdraft charges on your checking account. Check out any mutual fund fees or penalties for early withdrawals; make sure you have one of the lowest ones. Pay all your credit cards in full, so you can take advantage their offers (travel points). Don’t retire with debt!
Sign Up for Medicare on Time – you must sign up during the seven month period beginning three months before your 65th birthday. If you don’t, then there is a premium increase of 10% for each 12 month period of delayed enrollment after age 65. If you are still working past the age of 65 and receive health insurance benefits from your employment, then you must enroll within 8 months of leaving the job to avoid the penalty.
Find a Prescription Drug Plan – you must check out-of-pocket costs of the prescriptions you are receiving not just the cost of the plan. Compare all the plans. Seniors can only switch drug plans during open enrollment, which happens only once a year, so be careful.
Delay Signing Up For Social Security – benefits start at age 62, but benefit checks are reduced by 20-30% for workers who claim their checks at this time. Full retirement age is now 66 (if you are born from 1943-1954) and you can then claim full benefits. If you are born after 1954, full retirement age is now 67.
Leave Expensive Cities – now that you are no longer tied to your job, you should consider moving to a city where the cost of living is much lower, taxes are lower, and housing is cheaper.
Cut Expenses – Get rid of your land line phone, your cable TV, and some hobbies such as golf, bowling, theater tickets, and gym memberships.
Find free entertainment – either by volunteering at your local theater or your local botanical gardens. You will have to look for less expensive hobbies.
Resist Gift Giving – you will have to resist spending money on your children and grandchildren. This is the hardest, because emotionally you want to but financially you can’t.
Eat Out Less And Cook More – you will have to become part of that “early bird” crowd or share meals.Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be because there is a third choice, start a home based business. This can be done either part-time or full-time.Your home based business can give you a residual income so that you don’t have to worry about any of the above. You can live the lifestyle you either are at now or have always dreamed of. The statistics for a home based business failing are high, but a home based business with a great marketing system can give you a great advantage. A marketing plan can bring your business to another level.
How a Home Based Business Could Be Your Solution to Avoid the Retirement Blues
Home Based Business Ideas For Moms – The Sorting Process
Finding home based business ideas for moms isn’t a difficult task. With a quick online search, you can end up with thousands of different ideas. Some of them will be great whereas some won’t even make any sense. In order to determine which ideas are going to be the best fit for you, it is critical that you create some type of sorting or filtering process. This will not only allow you to find the best opportunities but also quickly sort out the options that aren’t compatible with what you are looking for. Here is a quick look at some of the most common variables that are used to find the best home based business ideas for moms.
1. Flexibility
Some moms want to find a home based business that will give them the flexibility to choose when they work, whereas others have a specific schedule or time-frame to follow. If you are looking for an opportunity that will only require you to work certain hours, such as when your kids are at school, then an opportunity like opening a small day care could be a good option. On the other hand, if you need more flexibility during the day, then working online as a freelancer or as your own boss might be a better choice because you can not only work during your free daytime hours, but can also work in the evening. As a busy mom, the need for either flexibility or structure can be a great way to quickly eliminate opportunities that don’t fit your lifestyle.
2. Investment
The initial investment for home based business ideas for moms can vary widely depending on what you choose. Some can be started with little more than a computer and internet connection. On the other hand, some opportunities can cost thousands to get started. Requiring a smaller initial investment doesn’t necessarily mean that one opportunity is inherently better than another, however it can be a factor that limits what businesses ideas can be considered.
3. Income Potential
Income potential provided by home based business ideas for moms is a very important element to consider. As a mom, you might be looking into home based business opportunities simply to generate some extra income to pay for a family vacation or you might be looking at opportunities that will allow you to create a thriving long-term business. By looking at the income potential, it will be easier to choose a business opportunity that meets your needs. If you want a full-time income, then you don’t need to even look at opportunities that will be capped at a few hundred dollars per week.
When deciding which home based business ideas for moms are right for you, it is important follow a set of criteria that will help you identify which opportunities will meet your needs and which will not. There are a wide variety of different variables that can use including flexibility, investment, and income potential. All three of these criteria can help you quickly filter out any opportunities that will not meet your basic needs, while helping you identify the ones that will.
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.