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
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.
A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing
Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.
The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.
It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!
With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.
With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.