My Personal Finance Blog » Guesswork

Isn’t It Time You Started Your Own Business? A Franchise Provides a Proven Business System

admin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:22:14 +0000

One of the key factors to consider when starting a business is the ‘how’; how does this business work and make money? When you invest in a franchise the franchisor provides you with a business system that has been proven to work and provides all the answers to ‘how’.

All franchises will have an established business system in place that you must follow. These systems are designed to improve overall productivity and increase sales of each franchise. Having a proven system already in place eliminates the guesswork and costly errors faced by the typical start-up. As part of the system, franchise companies will have determined the best combinations of products and services for their market.

The franchise company will have typically spent a great deal of time and money developing and perfecting this business system and it is this very system that has enabled what was once a single business to develop into a successful franchise. This perfected business system is what you are paying for when you buy a franchise. When my company is working with clients who want to turn an existing business into a new franchise this is the first question we will ask; how does this business work, what is your business system and can you describe it accurately and succinctly?

Another important piece of research conducted by the franchisor to support the system will be demographic data to determine the most lucrative locations for franchises. These are often described as territories and many franchise companies will be actively recruiting for new franchisees in unoccupied territories.

The proven business system approach will lead us to a very important decision point on the road to determining if a franchise is the best way forward for a client. When you buy a franchise you buy a system that you will be expected to follow, if you are not the type of person that likes to follow a system, if you are a ‘go it alone do it my way’ type, then perhaps a franchise is not for you.

If you decide you can comfortably follow the business system and decide to invest in a franchise what can you expect? To get the new franchisee on the road to running a successful business the franchise company will provide a complete detailed system on how to successfully operate the business. They will also provide training, continuous company support, a peer support network and marketing support. Marketing plans for pre-opening as well as ongoing operations are also components of the overall system that is presented to new franchisees. I know of several franchise companies that will provide staff to support your grand opening and help you through your first week to get you up and running more quickly

So what is the benefit of going into business for yourself but not by yourself by investing in a franchise with a proven business system? Research demonstrates that overall franchises have an approximate success rate of over 90% as compared to small businesses started from scratch at only about a 15% success rate.

Some auto insurance companies blame fraud for premium increases

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:07:46 +0000

Let’s start off with a simple explanation of why fraud costs us all money. Insurance companies employ people called actuaries. They spend their time calculating how many traffic accidents there are likely to be and predicting how much all the claims will be worth in a year. That total is divided among all the policy holders as the premium. It’s all guesswork but they are good guessers. Except that, when thousands of people make false claims, the insurers suddenly find themselves short of money to pay out. What is the result we see? Premium rates go up for all.

How bad is the problem? In New York, the number of suspected cases of fraud has risen by one-third from 2007 through 2009. Across the state, the insurers identified 13,433 probable cases of fraud in 2009 alone. To pay for this, the premium rates rose by an average of 6.3% in 2009. The most common frauds are staging an accident to claim medical expenses. This has caused the average value of each claim to rise to more than double the national average. That’s millions of dollars paid out and millions of dollars that have to replaced in the capital reserves. This problem is not, of course, unique to New York. It has become a well-recognized way of raising cash as the recession has deepened. So, if people find their household budgets under pressure, they can report their vehicle stolen or become the victim in a phantom hit-and-run.

Ah, but you are saying all this needs support from attorneys and physicians prepared to push claims knowing or suspecting their clients are faking or exaggerating. Well, let’s keep this real. The FBI and local law enforcement agencies regularly run undercover sting operations to catch the fraudulent. In Philadelphia, for example, a recent operation resulted in long jail terms for an attorney and thirty-four individuals falsely claiming millions based on fake medical evidence. In Santa Clara County, California, the police recently prosecuted more than twenty body shops for supplying false estimates to insurance companies. An undercover officer driving an undamaged Honda Civic explained he had reported the vehicle vandalized to pay for a new paint job. The body shops supplied an estimate under $3,000 – insurance companies do not inspect damage for “small” claims.

The truth is there’s an epidemic of fraud and it’s not only established criminals or those on the fringe of legality like street racers. But, sadly, it’s also becoming a mom-and-pop crime. Why? Because the cost of investigating every claim as possible fraud is too expensive for the insurers. It’s cheaper to pay out all the smaller claims and absorb the losses. This is one of the main reasons why it’s getting harder to find cheap auto insurance. The volume of fraud is driving up the premium rates for everyone. But there’s a secondary problem. Outside California, insurance companies still use zip codes in setting rates. Where the levels of fraud are high in some areas, the rates reflect this. So, those who live in the Bronx and Brooklyn pay more than other parts of New York because there are more fake claims. This does not mean it’s impossible to find cheap car insurance. You just have to work harder, using a site like this, to identify those insurance companies offering good discounts. As another self-help step, you could report all those you know are making false claims. If the police and FBI cannot stem the flood of fraud, it’s up to every law-abiding citizen to step up to the plate. The result will be lower premiums for all.

The World’s Largest Financial Market

admin — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:17:56 +0000

by P.D. McCloud

Forex trading systems take much of the guesswork out of the foreign currency exchange market. You can begin the process with as little as $50 and quickly see the profits begin to accumulate. Forex trading involves high risk and you can lose a substantial amount of money, but as millions of people do, you could also gain a substantial amount of money as well.

Forex trading is not a hobby, hobbies cost money. Forex trading is basically trading currency of one country with currency of another country. Since the rates between the currencies usually keep changing, you can generate increased value while you hold the currency and then resell to earn the profit. Forex trading is usually conducted with relatively small margin deposits. This is useful since it permits investors to exploit currency exchange rate fluctuations which tend to be very small.

Forex Trading is the world’s largest financial market with an estimated daily average turnover between $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion that we cannot doubt. If we want to make profit from this investment, there is some related knowledge that we definitely need to know. Forex trading opportunities are a reality for more and more people everyday — people just like you and me. Forex trading is highly leveraged, since low margin deposits normally are required, an extremely high degree of leverage is obtainable in foreign exchange trading. A relatively small market movement will have a proportionately larger impact on the funds you have deposited.

Forex is traded through a broker (a bank or any other regulated company), just like stocks, options, and other commodities. The difference to trading stocks, where you buy and sell shares of one company, in a forex trade you always buy and sell currency pairs, at the same time. Forex currency trading market is a worldwide market with 24 hour trading capability. It is currently the largest financial market in the world with 2.7 trillion US dollar worth trades a day; more than 30 times over NYSE and NASDAQ together, and more than 10 of all equity markets together. Forex, or foreign exchange, is the business of exchanging of one currency for another and making a profit in the process through ever-shifting exchange rates.

Automated Forex software is mathematically designed to monitor the market, set trades and even place stop losses for you. It is automatic, executing profitable trades you may be missing while you are sleeping or away from your computer. Automated Forex trading is becoming one of the best and most spoken ways of making huge money working from home today. This has been made possible with the introduction of automated Forex trading software, Forex trading robots and artificial intelligence software.

Trading bots are pieces of software that automatically trade currency based on a hard coded set of rules. A coder will write the system and money management rules into a variety of programming languages to produce software that could provide a more regulated steady rate of return for the managed Forex account than the manual trader. Trading bots really do the work.

Two Successful Bots:

FAPTurbo’s drawdown is 0.35% which explains why the equity graph is so smooth on the statement page on its website. FAP helps you find the trades you need without having to go through the manual, tedious choosing of the trades. Another plus to the FAP Turbo program is the price. FAPTURBO has done for many to double their real money in within a month and this is consistently obtained by using proper strategy and money management set into the robot. Using the member’s forum which can be access after purchasing the robot is one big advantage.

IvyBot’s main advantage is that it is an improvement on FAPTurbo. Based on a solid earner (FAPTurbo), IvyBot has taken it a step further and instead of being limited to just one of the four computer systems that handle Forex trading, it watches and provides relevant data from all 4 systems at the same time. FAPTurbo has doubled an investor’s real money within a month. IvyBot does this consistently with a lower drawdown percentage than FAPTurbo has.

Word of Caution:

Forex trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Please do not trade with borrowed money or money you cannot afford to lose.

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