Category: Tips and Tools

Debt can be a huge burden if you are struggling to keep up with payments. You might be considering bankruptcy. However, many business owners have assets that they want to hold on to. Unlike a chapter 7 bankruptcy process, the chapter 13 filing allows you to keep your assets and make monthly payments over the course of 36-60 months. Depending on your situation, we will cover when it may be worthwhile to file for chapter 13 bankruptcy.

You Can Keep Your Business Running

In a chapter 13 bankruptcy filing, you can keep doing business as normal. Since it requires a continuous income, you can make many payments rather than giving up assets. Your bankruptcy trustee would collect payments. This allows you to keep your properties and equipment that are essential to doing business. Of course, you can benefit from a chapter 13 filing if you have assets that you need to continue to generate revenues. It can be worthwhile to keep certain assets that are above market value or can appreciate in the long term as well.

Avoid Foreclosure On Your Property

In addition to keeping assets, chapter 13 bankruptcy can prevent you from losing property that is currently in foreclosure. In business, it can be hard to keep up with mortgage payments during slow periods. If this happens to you, a chapter 13 could stop the foreclosure process from moving forward. This would give you time to work out a repayment plan without the additional money stress and catch up so that you don’t lose the property. Moreover, it would be worth it when business picks up and you are able to make all the payments on time too.

Receive Time To Pay Non-Dischargeable Debts

You might have to pay debts that are not dischargeable, but don’t have the money to do so. A chapter 13 bankruptcy could give you the time and the plan to get current with payments again. These types of debt include child support and tax debt. Unfortunately, tax debt is not dischargeable, so you could use a chapter 13 bankruptcy to get on a proper payment plan. Many times, business owners can fall behind in their tax payments while they are running a business. This would be a situation where a chapter 13 filing could help your financial situation overall.

You Have Enough Funds To Pay Your Debts

The key difference to filing a chapter 13 bankruptcy is your ability to pay back the debts on a monthly schedule. You should ensure that you actually have the funds to make that monthly payment. Otherwise, the filling could fail if you do not make the payments consistently. Your income should be consistent enough to keep up with those payments over the three to five year period. If you are going through a rough patch and expect things to get better, than a chapter 13 bankruptcy filing could be worth it to overcome unfortunate financial circumstances.

Unsecured Debt Can Get Discharged

Depending on the value of your assets and disposable income, you could end up paying less of your unsecured debt back to creditors. This could provide a significant financial relief if you were struggling to keep up with payments to begin with. At the minimum, creditors receive a similar amount to a chapter 7 filing. However, it could still be significantly less than the total amount of what you would have had to repay including interest and penalties. Based on how much you can actually afford to pay back, chapter 13 bankruptcy lawyers could help alleviate part of the unsecured debt liabilities.

A chapter 13 bankruptcy filing is worth it for certain individuals. You have to be eligible for the filing. If it works for you, the filing could help you keep your business assets. It can also stop your property from being foreclosed on. If you need some time to repay secured or priority debts, it could help you get back on track when you find yourself in debt. More so, if you have enough funds to pay your debts, you could repay everything over a longer time period. Finally, a chapter 13 bankruptcy could discharge certain unsecured debt depending on your disposable income and asset holdings. Compared to a chapter 7, this filing can help you keep assets that you do not want to give up. With the right attorney, you could make a chapter 13 filing worth it for your finances in the long term.

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Retirement is an exciting time. You’re finally done with your career, and now you get to enjoy the time off that you’ve earned. But what should you do with all this free time? If you don’t make some plans, you may find yourself sitting around the home bored all day. To help you out, here are a few of the most common things people do once they retire and how you can get started with them.

Travel More

For starters, many people who enter retirement use this time to start traveling. When you’re focusing on your career, or raising a family, you don’t typically have the money or the time to do a lot of traveling. In retirement, this is no longer the case.

Take some time to think about all the places you want to go. Do you want to do a road trip across the country? See Europe? Check out the Northern Lights in Iceland? Go on a safari? There are a lot of options out there and you’re only limited by your funds and your taste for adventure. Here are some great places to travel to in retirement if you need suggestions.

Take Up a Hobby

Another thing you can do is take up a hobby. Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn how to do, but didn’t have the time? Maybe you wanted to learn how to play an instrument or how to paint. Or maybe you want to learn about photography or how to make things out of wood. You have a lot of free time on your hands now, so you might as well spend it doing something you’ve always wanted to try.

The great thing about hobbies is that they don’t have to be too expensive. You can usually start small, see if you like something, and then spend more money if it’s something you enjoy. For example, if you want to try photography, you don’t have to go out an get the best camera possible. Start with a beginner camera, figure out the basics, and then upgrade to something better down the line.

Start a Business

Maybe you become so good at your hobby that you want to start making some money from it. Or maybe there’s something you’ve always been good at that you can market as a skill. If so consider starting a small business in your retirement.

For some people, the thought of sitting around idle for all of retirement is not appealing. They want to keep working, even if its not at their past career. Starting a business can be a great option for these people.

Keep in mind, starting a business isn’t easy. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, so think about if this is something you want to do in retirement. However, businesses also require funds and time, something you likely have more of now that you’re retired and collecting Social Security/pensions.

Help Out Your Family

Finally, you may have some family members that could use your help. For instance, maybe you have some grandkids who need watching during the day while their parents work. Or maybe you have a kid that wants to go to college, and you can use your extra funds to help pay for it. Helping other people feels great, especially when its your own family.

How to Bring in More Funds

To do a lot of the above, you might need some more funds. Many people are able to live comfortably in retirement based on their savings but would still like some extra cash so they can do even more. If this is you, you have a few options.

First, you could find yourself a part-time job. There are many places willing to hire retirees and you wouldn’t have to work as many hours. Another option is scale back on your expenses. For instance, you and your spouse may only need one car now instead of two, allowing you to save thousands of dollars each year.

Or you could take out a reverse mortgage. A reverse mortgage is available to retirees and allows them to use the equity of their home to receive cash payments. You’ll want to look into this option thoroughly before you decide anything, so don’t rush into your decision. To learn more, you can look up reverse mortgage lenders by state and find one near you.

Enjoying Your Retirement

When it comes down to it, your goal should be to do whatever it is you want. What would make your retirement a happy one? You’ve worked hard your whole life to earn this moment, so make it about you. Whether it’s traveling the world or getting another job, if it makes you happy, you should go for it.

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Working online can bring you all kinds of benefits that traditional office working simply can’t provide. If you’re looking to change up your way of working and maybe want to become your own boss, online working is certainly something that you need to explore. It could transform your life and help you to achieve what you want to achieve in your career going forward. Read on to find out more about the benefits of working online.

You Can Work From Home

When all of your work is done online, you can work from your home without any trouble at all. That means you cut out the morning commute, you don’t have to worry about making conversation with colleagues you hate at lunch and you generally get to make the most of your home comforts. There’s no doubt about it; working from home is pretty great.

You’ll be Ready for Future Changes in the Labor Market

You don’t know what the future is going to hold in terms of job opportunities. You should be thinking about how you can modernise your skills and integrate into the digital working world though. One thing’s for sure; more of the jobs in the future will be focused online. You can make this transition now so that you’re ready for the future changes in the labor market.

There’s a Lot Less Paperwork

When you work on computers, you can make your working life pretty much paperless. This is fantastic for anyone who’s ever experienced the mountain of paperwork that builds up on your desk. You don’t have to worry about any paper avalanches or important documents getting lost because it’ll all be stored carefully and efficiently on a hard drive instead. It makes life so much easier.

You’re in Control of Your Future

Many people who work from home also work for themselves, and this puts them in charge of their own futures and their own destinies. This has got to be a good thing because no one likes to feel as if they’re not in control. If you want to push on and complete online marketing courses by Squared Online, you should be able to do that. When you work for someone else, you often don’t have that flexibility.

Your Digital Skills Will Naturally Improve

Your digital skills will improve over time as you work online. So even if your skills are not the greatest in the world right now, they will improve from day to day, so you don’t really need to worry about that. If you’ve got the basics down and you’re willing to carry on learning as you work, you’ll pick up more and more skills with each passing month.

Working online might be a new experience for you, but you shouldn’t be too daunted by the prospect. There are plenty of ways to enjoy the benefits of working online, and if you’re not doing so already, it’s definitely something to explore for yourself. It might be a huge turning point in your career.

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When you want to learn new skills, you have to find ways to fit that learning around the schedule that you already have in place. That might sound pretty straightforward, but when it comes down to the practicality of looking after a family, working and learning, it can all get a little more difficult than you had originally anticipated. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not possible because many people in a similar situation to yours have made it work. Here’s how you can too.

Make Use of Helpful Family Members of You Can

If your parents or parents in law are available and enjoy looking after your children from time to time, this can be something that can really work well for everyone. They can be looked after while you work, your parents/in-laws get to spend quality time with your kids and vice versa. So if you do have helpful family members who can help out in this way, make the most of it.

Consider Home Learning

These days, you can learn pretty much anything you need to learn without even leaving your home. This is all thanks to the internet and the wonderful connectivity it provides us with. There are ways to do home learning with Avado Learning as well, so you can still get that professional support if you want to learn at home. It’s something that’s certainly worth looking into for you.

Seek Out Other Kinds of Flexible Courses

There are all kinds of flexible learning opportunities out there. A lot of them will focus on online learning to some extent, but they’re not all 100% home learning. You should survey the options and don’t rule anything out until you’ve learned about it in a bit more detail. The kind of course you need might be out there already waiting for you.

Talk to Your Boss

If you have a job and you’re going to be going into education, it’s a good idea to talk to your boss and see what they have to say. They’ll more than likely give you opportunities to change your hours and work a little more flexibly if you take the time to explain your situation to them. In the end, they might benefit from your learning experience too.

You Can Make it Work if You Want To

Making things work is what life is often all about. You have to just find a way to ensure you’ve always got the chance to go your own way and achieve the things you want to achieve. It’s an old cliche but it still holds true for many people who find themselves in situations like yours: where there’s a will, there’s a way.

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You’ve got to spend money to make money in any business.

Before your firm’s introduced to the public, you’ve probably worked extremely hard to secure funding for prototypes, product testing, market research, stock and equipment.

But too much unfocused spending can jeopardise a new business before it’s even launched — and being thrifty is especially important when you’re balancing baby responsibilities as well as budgets.

So if you’re concerned you’re splashing startup cash, here are three moneysaving tips to stay streamlined.

1. Workspace with childcare

If domestic distractions make working from home unmanageable, but you can’t afford the outlay for an external office on top of childcare, finding a co-working nursery could be the ideal solution.

Co-working spaces have several advantages over leased offices — they can be more economic, often feature functional designs with a mix of social and quiet environments and facilitate natural networking opportunities to meet diverse potential collaborators.

And if you’re the main caregiver for your children, in-house creche and nursery facilities with qualified staff are the cherry on the cake.

Some of these establishments also offer flexible packages allowing you to only order the required hours for each month — meaning there’s no unnecessary expenditure when you’re on holiday or between projects.

2. Remote team

Depending on the nature of your business, whether you’re working from home or in a dedicated environment, you might be able to operate efficiently with a remote team.

If you’re struggling to recruit top talent for your enterprise in your local area, remote working allows you to hire from elsewhere in the country, or even abroad, to build a highly effective team.

But your communications skills will have to be particularly on-point to ensure that everyone’s collaborating smoothly, projects are completed on time and you instil a positive team spirit that bridges the physical distance and combats isolation.

Buying an accessible team communication app is one of the best ways to keep a remote team running like a well-oiled machine — it allows you to keep in touch when you’re on the move and phone contact isn’t viable.

3. Automated HR

Whichever way you structure your team, embedding the appropriate mechanisms for core HR functions like payroll and tax compliance is essential.

And it’s even more important when working across borders with remote teams in different jurisdictions.

Partnering with a reliable payroll outsourcing provider puts paid to any possible discrepancies with salary payments, expenses and tax obligations.

Trustworthy platforms provide greater accuracy than human HR staff, while covering crucial outputs like payslips, management reports and secure exchange of data with relevant third-party systems.

So when expansion justifies hiring a permanent HR partner, you can recruit someone focused on championing company culture and promoting staff wellbeing — rather than wading through admin tasks.

These three moneysaving tips will help your startup trim the fat and stay superbly fit for a successful future — start putting them in place today for peace of mind.

How did you streamline your business? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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