1. Earn

Always look for ways to make extra money on the side. A vital key to success is to wisely trade your time for money and keep moving toward more scalable and passive income sources. Earning more money increases your cash flow, which gives you more money to save, invest, or pay down debt. Also, your finances needs to be well established for investing to generate any meaningful income.

2. Spend

This key principle here is to practice the habit of “Spending less than you earn”. To better manage your expenses is to know where you’re spending money. Building  good smart spending habits helps you to spend the least amount of money for products and services you use often. You need to learn to spend money wisely, cut out any unnecessary expenses, and minimize your taxes. Budgeting helps you keep track of your income and expenses. It helps group your expenses into different categories to make it easier to identify expenses that can be either eliminated or reduced.

3. Save and Invest

It is a good practice to save up 3-6 months of living expenses so that you have money to fall back on for emergencies, and during times of crisis. Keep this money in a safe and accessible place like a high-yield savings account. Then move on to setting up financial plan and incorporate it with short-term and long-term goals. Figure out When do you need the money? How much money do you need? How much money do you need to save to accumulate the desired amount? And the best investments to help you reach your short and long term goals? Make sure to learn the basics of investing before getting started.

4. Borrow

It is actually possible to live without borrowing any money, but borrowing money is not necessarily a bad thing. The challenge is that most people borrow more than necessary and for the wrong reasons. Hence, you need to understand the difference between good debts and bad debts, and put together a strategy to pay down your bad debts and eventually pay off your good debts.

5. Protect

Insurance are products designed to help you protect against loss and liability. The four basic insurances you need are for life, health, auto, and home. However, do not use an insurance product as a substitute for saving and investing.

Good luck!!!

Every business needs a business plan. It serves as a roadmap for your business. If you’re looking to save money, you may want to try writing your business plan yourself instead paying a someone else to do it for you. And If you’re planning to take your business to the next level and want to bring in investors to raise working capital for your business you’ll need to have a strong business plan that includes strong financial statements. Your business plan can cover any time period, but the most common is five years.

What Your Business Plan Should Include:

A business plan can include many different aspects of your business. It can be as detailed as you want. But it should majorly contain theses;

An Executive Summary: This is where you describe your business, its mission and its objectives.

A Company Summary: Here you provide more information about your company, including its history as well as recent financial statements.

Products and Services: Be specific about what it is your company does. That is, the products or services you provide for your customers.

Market Analysis: Here. you describe your target market, and how you are reaching it. You also describe the competitive market environment and analysis.

Operations Plan: In this section, outline how your company operates and why it is or will be successful. Include your competitive strengths, marketing and sales strategies, sales projections and also previous successes.

Management Description: This section introduces the running key components of your business, and can also include brief resumes of each team member.

Future Projections: this is where you introduce where you are taking your business, the anticipated risks involved and how you intend to handle them.

On a final note, if you’ve finally decided to write your own business plan, source for any free templates you can find online to serve as a guide or better still go for a business in a box software and find a template that works for you. And make sure to keep your business plan regularly updated.

Good Luck!!!

If you have already decided which business to start, here is a checklist you might find very helpful:

1. Business Plan

Firstly, you’ll need spell out exactly what you’re planning to do in your business. This will help you think through how much money you’re going to need, who your customer is and how you’re going to get your product or service to your customers. You can either hire a professional or get a software to do develop your business plan for you.

2. Raise the Capital

If you don’t have enough working capital and start-up capital, you run a very high risk of crashing. You must understand that if this is a new venture for you, there are many surprises that are ahead of you. So have to make sure you know how much you need to start your business, and then set aside about have 25% more than you need.

3. Licensing and Insurance

You should check with your local city government to make sure you have the proper licenses and insurance in order to protect yourself as you start your business. Make sure you are structuring the company correctly. This is very key especially at the planning stage of your business.

4. Marketing

Without marketing, your business won’t bring in sales. Without sales, there won’t be enough revenue to even run your business.  Have a marketing plan before you spend money setting up. This plan should involve both physical and online marketing strategies. The online marketing plays a major role in your business especially in this era. You stand a better chance to reach more customers by having a business website and building a good online presence for your business on social media channels.

5. Hiring 

If you are looking for more ways to save cost, look for opportunities to hire contractors instead of staff if possible at this start up level. But if you hire people too soon if not necessarily required and all they do is sit there without engaging them, it’s a huge waste of money and time.

6. Facilities

A great way to save cost and keep your initial expenses as low as possible is to have low-cost facilities if your business requires a physical office. Better still you can sublet or work out of your home or settle for just your online presence depending on the type of business you are in. If you are starting a professional business, find an office that will allow you to rent month-to-month. Never sign a long-term lease if you are starting a new business. You might have a great plan, but you don’t know how sales are actually going to turn out.

It’s great to start out with these prior six steps but you shouldn’t stop there. You need to always confirm how your plan is working and constantly readjust them to achieve your goals.  You can go all over how things have gone so far since you launched. Check for what’s working and what’s not? What has surprised you? What challenges you are still facing? What are the unforeseen challenges? How can you overcome them?

Learn about the Industry your business belong to. Also Identify and Learn from your competitors. Look out for any other necessary steps you need to take to make sure you kick off your business correctly.

Good luck!!!

It is very important you learn to use your choice of card properly by minimizing unnecessary purchases while keeping an eye on the accumulated rewards, welcoming bonuses and paying off your balance every month. Below are five good credit cards for online shopping you may want to put into consideration.

Costco Anywhere Visa Card

Costco Anywhere Visa Card is a great card for online shoppers. It offers a low regular APR and gives all cardholders 4% cash back when they use the card at qualifying grocery stores with 3% for US gas stations.

GAP Rewards Credit Card

GAP credit card usually charge a high regular APR and doesn’t have an intro offer and its welcome bonus comes in the form of a 20% discount, as opposed to a cash bonus. Besides, if you’re a top fan of the Banana Republic, Athleta or GAP, using your card anywhere here will earn you 5 points for every $1 that you spend.

Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card

The Amazon Prime Rewards card is a Visa Signature card that comes with lots of insurance and protection benefits, and it also offers a bonus in the form of a $100 gift card.  The Amazon Prime Rewards Credit Card offers a flat rate of 1% on everyday purchases as well as 5% on all purchases made at Whole Foods and Amazon.com. The Prime membership is needed to get the most out of this card.

Discover It Cash Back Credit Card

Discover It offers a cash back rate of 5% for all qualifying purchases up to a quarterly maximum. The rate then drops down to 1%, but over the course of a year the 5% rate will apply to a total spend of about $6,000. Which means that at the end of your first year of use of the card, you’ll get a cash rewards bonus of up to 10% as all your cash back will be matched by Discover It.

Walmart Credit Card

The Walmart Mastercard rewards you every time you spend money in Walmart stores and at Walmart.com. Walmart rewards (5 points per $1) every time you use your card to make online Walmart purchases, with 1 to 2 points per $1 offered elsewhere. Featured in their Rewards Program is a chance to get up to 5% back during the first 12 months and also earn 2% in Walmart stores and Murphy USA Fuel Stations, as well as on dining and travel purchases.

Blue Cash Everyday Card from American Express

The Blue Cash Everyday Card from AmEx gives you 3% every time you shop at US supermarkets, with a limit of $6,000 per year. You will also get 2% for gas purchases and 1% everywhere else you use your card.

Chase Freedom

Chase Freedom has a bonus that goes as high as 5% for specific bonus categories. Cardholders also get a bonus of $150 when spending $1,000 within 90 days of account opening. The standard rate is at 1% with a sizeable return every year. On their Rewards Program, you get 5% on certain bonus categories up to $1,500 and earn 1% on everything else.

Another version of Chase Freedom is the Chase Freedom Unlimited which offers a flat rate of 1.5% on every cent that you spend, as well as an account opening bonus of $200 instead of $150.

Finally, you actually don’t have to limit yourself to a single credit card. There’s benefit to owning a multitude of credit cards without having a multitude of bank accounts. But you must still choose the right card (s) for your necessary use.

Most Successful people possess a combination of certain skills that put them ahead of everyone else, some of which you can develop as well if you want to be successful in your profession or business. Learning some of these skills will help you advance in life, career and business.

Marketing

One of the reasons most businesses fail is their inability to market their products and services. Marketing has to do with knowing the needs of a buyer and providing solutions. It involves reaching the right clients, and with the right resources.

Networking

Networking is one of the best ways to achieve professional and personal success. Depending on your network, you are exposed to more opportunities, job leads, and the chance to progress in life.  The more people you know, the more informed you are, and the more opportunities are thrown at you. A valuable network consists of people you interact with who can assist you to climb to the top in your career or business.

How to sell

Learning how to sell is a vital business skill everyone should possess. We are selling every day, and even when you go for a job interview, you are trying to sell yourself and your skills. Knowing how to sell will position you a step ahead of your competitors.

Public speaking

We are in an information age where the ability to absorb information and communicate is one of the most valuable skills you can have. The ability to teach, inspire, and motivate others is a very much sort after skill in this era. Most successful people in the world are some of the greatest speakers.  They are able to communicate their passion and value to their audience anytime.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is more about your ability to show empathy. It helps you to make your employees feel valued and appreciated, and they are motivated to work harder to achieve the company goals. This skill helps you to properly attend to your team members or employees in a way that helps them succeed and also make you a successful Entrepreneur.