The best way to plan for your retirement financial needs is to estimate your monthly budget and then give it a test run – live on that budget for a while. Two things become evident:

• How to plan your Private Employer Benefit Plan, 401(k) or IRA monthly withdrawals, and
• If you need to begin saving and investing more money now to live the lifestyle that gives you the greatest freedom and happiness.

Once you have figured your monthly budget, add in seasonal costs (holiday season, anniversaries) and then calculate what your annual needs will be.

Next, review each of your retirement accounts to see what the rules are regarding withdrawals, any penalties or taxes that may be expected, and what any mandatory distributions are. The rate at which you withdraw funds from each account determines how long the account will last.

While figuring your budget, keep in mind the past historical trends of inflation and the cost of services that may impact you most, such as healthcare costs. As articles in business magazines suggest, other economic factors which may cause your retirement funds to last longer is considering if moving to a locale where the cost of living is lower than where you currently reside. Many ex-patriot communities from Costa Rica to Thailand grew due to their excellent level of health care and the low cost of living.

Another economic variable is how well your investment stocks perform. From studies done by Standard & Poor’s analysis of the stock market’s overall performance over the past eighty years, a sustainable withdrawal would be between 5 and 6% per year. They estimated this on a somewhat conservative mix of investments with 60% in US stocks and 40% in Treasury bonds. If you have a percentage invested in overseas emerging markets your rate will most likely vary.

If stocks seem a poor retirement alternative, consider a Private Employer Benefit plan. Small business owners can contact USBFC advisers to see if your company’s budget and needs for insurance, tax liabilities, potential areas of tax deferment, retirement plans as well as the family’s education funding and estate planning needs would benefit from a Private Employer Benefit (PEB) plan. Your PEB retirement plan can be a way to get the most out of the equity you have built into your company. By creating a PEB retirement plan for you and your employees, the time you spend building your business rewards you doubly by also funding your retirement.

Once you have calculated your annual withdrawal rate from your annual budget, you can estimate what amount of additional funding is necessary to add more years to your retirement nest egg. Making budgetary adjustments now will afford more leeway in budget adjustments once you retire.

Construction companies and handyman companies utilize their company credit card as a line of credit to get the wood, hardware and material for their job sites. Every month the cards get paid off from the customer payments on the jobs. The use of the credit card versus an in-store line of credit gives the businesses perks such as free airline miles and hotel stays.

However, every contractor runs into the situation where “Life happens”, a customer goes into the hospital, leaves on vacation, gets laid off, or something happens that impairs their ability to make an on-time payment. With the reverberations of tight credit and foreclosures rippling back and forth through the banking community, banks and credit card companies are moving sooner than later to reduce credit limits. No longer a three strikes and your out, more of a one to three days late and your credit limit could be reduced by 50 – 90%, severely impinging on your ability to get needed material to the job site.

By accepting credit cards for building and repair jobs, contractors benefit in three ways:

• their customers can use their credit card companies instead needing the cash to cover the work;
• the contractor’s credit card does not carry all the upfront job costs; and
• the contractor can use his average monthly credit card sales amount to qualify for a business cash advance.

By leveraging future sales, contractors can make sure their credit cards are paid on time,safeguard their current credit limits, and keep available a sizable amount of buying power to move quickly to get supplies on to a job site or meet emergency financial situations.

US Business Finance Corp helps owners of small and medium size businesses, such as home builders, law firms, medical practices and retail stores, quickly turn their prospects of future Visa and MasterCard sales into cash – usually receiving the business cash advance into their bank account in less than 10 business days. Faster for repeat customers.

Contact US Business Finance Corp’s small business financing experts today to see how your business can benefit from opening a merchant credit card account and using business cash advances to smooth the ups and downs of your cash flow.

With the stock market devaluation and Washington’s questionable ability to have Social Security meet the surge in its retirement obligations due to Baby Boomers exiting the workforce en masse in the next decade, many business owners and their employees are looking to their own devices to assure themselves of a beneficial quality of life during retirement.

For retirement purposes, USBFC has added Private Employer Benefit plans to its financial services. Additional tools for meeting unexpected economic reversals that USBFC offers are life insurance, mortgage insurance and critical illness insurance – these help business owners’ families continue to live in their home and bills get paid should anything untimely happen to the owner.

To assist an entrepreneurs needs as well as those of their business, USBFC advisers take into account the company’s budget and needs for insurance, tax liabilities, potential areas of tax deferment, retirement plans as well as the family’s education funding and estate planning needs. USBFC views your retirement plan as a way to get the most out of your most precious asset: your time. By creating a retirement plan for you and your employees, the time you spend building your business rewards you doubly by also funding your retirement.

At USBFC, we work with you to make sure your business avoids the setbacks that employees of major corporations face when their retirement programs disappear in financial reorganizations. Entrepreneurs enjoy running small businesses in order to better control the dynamics between work and profit. Control your retirement plans and deferred compensation strategy, contact USBFC’s financial services advisers and match your business to a suitable, stable Private Employer Benefit plan today.

Business cash advances have proven to be both the timely and the cost-effective way to meet the heavy cash needs of business start-ups or expansions. When time to implementation is the key to the success of a sale, business cash advances is the only way to meet the need. Bank financing, if available, takes far too long to consummate. As one teleconference company owner said, he “could not believe how fast and simple the process was. Although this type of financing is more expensive than a traditional business loan, it enabled us to grow our business dramatically which made the cost well worth it.”

As an added benefit, a business cash advance is paid back far faster than a bank loan, leaving the company with a better looking balance sheet when seeking investors or traditional loans for long-term capital needs. By tapping into the ability to leverage future Visa and MasterCard sales, business owners can utilize the services of US Business Finance Corp to quickly get a cash advance. Typically, over the next six to eleven months the merchant cash advance is repaid from a percentage of the credit card sales – usually 15% of the sale amount.

Communications companies can take advantage of the market change as businesses reduce expenses on hotels, meal and travel and shift resources to support the more cost-effective technology of videoconferencing for company meetings and educational seminars. Successful teleconferencing companies have secured merchant cash advances that have allowed them to meet their inventory costs, and server and software upgrade expenses.

Contact US Business Finance Corp small business finance experts. We can help you set up your merchant Visa and MasterCard credit card account or utilize your current credit card sales volume to access business capital in the form of a timely company cash advance.

Don’t let your business opportunities disappear just because the banks are looking to Washington for their business opportunities! Turn to your trusted merchant cash advance specialist at US Business Finance Corp for a personalized education on how your business can benefit from a merchant cash advance and succeed, even in the current business climate.

Business owners adapting the franchise business model strengths to improve their company’s financial success find business documentation a challenging task. In US Business Finance Corp’s experience assisting small businesses start on a solid business foundation, from arranging sources of operating capital to finding the best merchant credit card processing services,  we evolved a simplified solution to this task. First diagram and document the company culture and second document the money trail from sales to payment.

Training Increases Credit Card Profitability

The foundational training is centered on the company culture, which covers the basics such as dress code, using the time clock, calling when there are changes in schedules, and use of company property. Make sure there are no “unspoken rules” that carry greater weight than the documented rules. Unspoken rules can undermine the success of the best systems.

When training employees, by following the money trail, the employee has a logical structure to frame their new found knowledge. Start with product training, possibly on a graduated basis for more involved products, so they know what the company offers – and what problems the products solve.

The next step in the money trail is sales. Sales training ranges from operational steps such as working the cash register and credit card terminals to the customer service area of handling irate customers, finding the right product for clients to soliciting customer feedback. US Business Finance Corp knows how important it is to protect your merchant status with Visa and MasterCard, so we provide training on all aspects of handling credit card transactions for all our merchant credit card account processing service clients.

Invoicing & Cash Advances Offset Slow Bill Payers

The last steps are usually the back office steps of handling payroll, invoicing and bill collecting. Though maybe somewhat tedious, one place most businesses have room for improvement is timely billing on their outstanding accounts. The sooner invoices are sent, the sooner clients will send their payments and keep the cash flow at the necessary level to meet the business’s own bills. When clients are slow to pay their bills and create cash flow emergencies for business owners, our business cash advance option is a fast safety valve to bring in cash with a pledge against future Visa and MasterCard sales. No personal guarantee or collateral necessary, US Business Finance Corp takes on the risk of the cash advance.

Documentation can be as simple as block diagrams or photographs of steps in the process – as long as the steps are clear. Simplifying steps aids in the ability of employees to remember the processes. An added benefit of simplifying steps is the time to document and maintain the documentation so it remains current to your business’s innovations and improvements is reduced.

US Business Finance Corp realizes the tremendous benefits to consistent training having financial safety valves set up before your business runs into a cash flow emergency. Our team provides training to our merchant credit card account clients and our business cash advance option provides peace of mind for business owners. We believe credit cards and business financing sources should benefit your company with greater income! By helping to minimize “operator error” through training and setting up your business for quickly accessing a cash advance when you need it,  we can help improve your business and protect your profit margins.

A traditional business loan takes time to process and gain approval, adds a liability on the business, and increases the owner’s risk, since both a personal guarantee and collateral are necessary to secure the loan. Banks can loan money at attractive rates only because they have mitigated their risk exposure – often leading new business owners to believe that the only companies that can obtain a business loan are the ones that don’t need one.

Alternative financing looks at the underserved markets of businesses that have an element of risk involved in the loan. Alternative business funding companies such as US Business Finance Corp know that the more profitable a business is, usually the higher its risk in business. That element of risk is what drives the American entrepreneurial spirit! Taking into account the element of risk and the business owner’s proof of ability to repay a cash advance based on their Visa and MasterCard credit card sales history, US Business Finance Corp can quickly offer qualifying companies a business cash advance. Instead of a personal guarantee and collateral, the business owner pays US Business Finance to take on the risk and repays the advance from a portion of Visa and MasterCard sales!

An additional benefit of alternative financing is its short time for approval and speed of funding the approved cash advance. For emergency working capital situations, time is of the essence. For first time businesses, a company cash advance is wired directly to the business account within 7 to 10 working days of approval.

In addition, your cash advance can be used any way you need to meet your company’s needs. Unlike business loan conditions, a cash advance can be used to pay taxes, improve your infrastructure or pay overdue bills. It is entirely under the control of the business owner.

Contact our business financing professionals at US Business Finance Corp today to see how quickly you can tap into our cash advance financing. Our business cash advances are available to help your business any way you see fit!