Category: Insurance

It takes more to get ahead in a company than just doing the basics.

“Simply meeting expectations is not enough if you want to get ahead,”

writes business trainer and consultant Cy Wakeman in her book, The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace.

If you want to climb the ladder, strive to be a low-drama, high-value employee, Wakeman says.

Victor Lipman agrees, and he’s an author and management specialist with more than 20 years of Fortune 500 experience.

“Be relentlessly reliable,” he says. “Reliability is a cornerstone of business and a fine core personal attribute. Businesses may not often need brilliant bursts of artistic creativity, but they always need the trains to run on time.”

For example, try to become a go-to person by developing as many skills as possible. The more you can do within a company, and the more you can learn about its operations, the more relevant you are to its goals.

Your attitude and willingness to work do matter too. Try to be consistently collaborative. In projects involving multiple participants with conflicting views and opinions, the person who can react effectively with all kinds of people is appreciated.

Also, create strong, enduring relationships. In the corporate world, networking has been and always will be an influential factor regardless of an individual’s status in the company. As much as others may profess that professional advancement is based on merit, individual relationships do have their roles in any company, large or small.

Think about ways and means of resolving an issue that may have been gnawing at the company for years. Although some of these problems are unique to each organization, the more common challenges include containing costs, improving production processes, and discovering new markets for established products.

Be a self-starter. Try to identify obstacles before they get worse. Try to be valued as a team member who tries to make difficult decisions easier.

Keep in mind that any solution you propose is likely to be met with skepticism; if not, the issue most likely would have been solved long ago.

Should you succeed–or even make noticeable progress–your efforts could advance your career in ways you had not imagined.

Finally, try to make your boss look good (and if possible, his boss too). This sense can set you apart, showcase potential, and promote an ability to think beyond current circumstances.

This year, people who wisely manage their checking accounts could see an increase in their credit scores.

The new UltraFICO credit score will let some consumers offer their banking activity as proof that they are credit worthy.

A credit score has never been based on income. A person who makes $20,000 per year — and pays loans faithfully — could have a higher credit score than a person making $200,000, who doesn’t pay loans on time. The credit score tries to predict if a person will pay back a loan and pay it back on time.

Some people, especially younger people, may not have much of a history of loan payments. Those people pay for things mainly in cash, and through their checking accounts and debit cards, which aren’t counted toward a credit score. If they do apply for a loan, their lack of credit history could put them in the subprime category, scores below 670. They might be denied credit.

With the UltraFICO scoring system, a lender can offer to recalculate a consumer’s score based on banking activity. People who have had a checking account for some time, maintain a balance of about $400, and don’t overdraw are likely to see their score rise, possibly high enough to get a loan and therefore build credit history.

One caution: those who do overdraw their accounts could see their scores go down in an UltraFICO calculation.

Since the subprime mortgage crisis, banks have been focused on only the most creditworthy borrowers. In 2018, a record 58.2 percent of U.S. consumers held a score between 700 and 850, the FICO maximum. These high-score consumers aren’t taking out as many loans these days and lenders have been eager to find responsible borrowers.

Fair Isaac Corporation, the creator of the widely used FICO score, estimates 7 million people with thin credit histories could benefit from an UltraFICO recalculation. Another 26 million people could see an increase, and 4 million could see their score increase 20 points.

Insurance is something that you should always have in place to help protect your business. That being said, sometimes your needs change or you no longer need a commercial policy and instead have the need to cancel. The issue comes when you need to cancel your policy. For those that live in the Cypress, TX area, the agents with InsureUS can help you to cancel your policy and adapt it as needed.

For the most part you can cancel any type of insurance policy at any time for any reason. The issue comes if you are legally required to hold they type of insurance policy that you are canceling. For instance, if you have a car and you cancel insurance on it, you are going to have to take out another car insurance policy to remain legal. The same goes for a home that you owe a mortgage on. For a business, the stipulations are a bit different.

You are not required to hold a commercial policy on a business at all. It is always beneficial however as it protects your business, your employees, and the building in which the business is housed. You can cancel your commercial policy at any time and you may not have to take out another depending on whether or not you owe on the building or the inventory. You should take the time to find out what type of policy you are going to need and what type of legal need you have in regards to your particular business.

For those that live in the Cypress, TX area, the agents with InsureUS can help you to find out what type of policy you are required to hold if any and what type you need to be fully insured.

The holidays are often filled with extra spending on things like travel, gifts, and food and many people end the year feeling weighed down in the financial department.

Popular blog Frugalwoods suggests that people make January an ‘uber frugal month’ by spending as little money as possible. Although the challenge sounds rather simple, it will require a bit of preparation.

Before starting, analyze all of the currently expected spending for the month. Then, divide those expenses into a discretionary list and a mandatory list. Rent, for instance, is non-negotiable, while a Starbucks latte can be easily skipped. Entire areas, such as entertainment, need a plan to decrease spending by substituting free or cheap options for the normal routines. Plan to stay frugal for the whole month for maximum savings. In the end, with the frugality meter reset, it will be up to participants to decide which behaviors they want to keep using in the future to save money over the long run.

According to Bankrate, using these no-spend periods isn’t just about saving money but also learning to control impulses. Being able to separate actual needs from simple wants will go a long way toward creating sustainable spending habits as well as provide an excellent jumpstart to a more frugal lifestyle.

For people that can’t manage a full month, blog Believe in a Budget recommends starting with a week or even a day. Their favorite, the no spend work week, allows a person to focus in on miscellaneous expenses that pop up during this time such as the before work coffee, expensive lunch at a restaurant, and unnecessary trips to the grocery store after work. It might feel a little strange bringing a bagged lunch to work, but it is also a great way to find more money for savings and investing in the things that are truly important.

Not just Florida: Consider the world when planning retirement

Living in North America offers access to an unprecedented standard of living, stable employment, safety, and entertainment.

But it comes at a high cost. What if you could retire in style at a fraction of the cost? Enter geo-arbitrage which means taking advantage of the cost of living in different locations.

To make retiring early feasible for the average individual, Business Insider points out that American dollars can buy a lot more in other countries than they can at home. As an example, most retirement calculators are based on about $40,000 per year in annual retirement income to compute their savings goals. This assumes that the person is using the standard 4 percent withdrawal rate from their retirement savings. To manage that number, a person would need $1 million in the bank to retire. This amount of money will require diligent saving and strong market performance to achieve.

Conversely, an individual might only need about $12,000 per year to live comfortably in a place like Guatemala. This means that they could retire with the same standard of living while only having $300,000. This could literally shave more than a decade off of a person’s working life. Sure, the standard might not be an exact apple-to-apple comparison, but many resources are available online that help to provide direction and information for would-be expatriates. Many from these groups are already living abroad and have helped pave the way for this trend to flourish.

Now, this type of lifestyle change might not be feasible for everyone, especially families with children still in school, but options exist outside of the traditional method of working until the age of 65. It would pay to take notes anytime someone is traveling abroad on how they might like to spend the rest of their lives in that location. For someone up for adventure and yearning for financial freedom, geo-arbitrage might just be their golden ticket.