Restaurants use business cash advances to smooth out cash flow.

Self-employed business owners are one of the largest market segments utilizing subprime loans and business cash advances. Prime loans are helpful to those with set incomes treading the 9 to 5 employee path or very well established business. For entrepreneurs, such as restaurant owners pursuing their passion, the element of risk is a factor in their income stream. That element of risk translates into the lending world as higher interest and higher monthly payments for subprime loans - whose qualification levels have increased dramatically recently. Business owners know freedom never comes cheap.

Small businesses face a two challenging financial trends in 2012: tighter credit markets with higher loan criteria and more conservative consumer spending. These two combine to make keeping the level of operating capital on an even keel a weekly discipline. However, the alternative business financing market is thriving in these tough economic times, giving small businesses a solid funding option to the harder to get traditional business loans.

While economic shifts affect many a business' line of credit or ability to access traditional credit markets, merchant cash advances continue to remain a stable source of ready cash. Many merchants have turned to alternative business financing after their traditional financing source changed their interest rates, amount of collateral needed or the amount of credit line available.

Recently CNN Money offered businesses eight alternative funding solutions for small businesses. Missing from their list was business cash advances or merchant cash advances, which are getting used by more business owners as banking credit continues to tighten.

US Business Finance Corp offers alternative funding solutions, such as merchant cash advances, to businesses who are considering factoring as a quick source of operating capital or have not succeeded in obtaining loans from banks. Our merchant cash advance is a far superior alternative funding solution to factoring in several ways.

A quick look on Amazon shows that retiring American business owners have a healthy appetite for researching extended travel or moving abroad for their retirement years. For small business owners who have successfully used their merchant credit card account to boost their company's sales and business cash advances to expand their store and inventory to meet market demands, living abroad, even for a few years can be an exciting change. The "expat" retirement guides have research reports on climate, cost of living expenses, local medical facilities ratings, and readings on how well Americans are received.