ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT

People always say that investment is a money game with the playing rule of "high risk with high return and low risk with low risk". You may want to invest in an investment portfolio that is able to give a good return and stock market is always the best choice in term of high return. But you aware that investment in the stock market will cause you to lose all your money as well, because the game rule said "high risk is high return and low risk comes with low return". Hence, stock game might not suit your risk profile; you may want to look for an alternative that can give comparatively good reward but with much lower risk than stock. If you are categorized in this group, then mutual fund can be your game.

A mutual fund is simply a financial medium that allow a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective. The pooled money will manage by a fund manager. The fund manager is a person who is widely expert in stock and bond markets. He/she is responsible to invest the pooled money into specific securities, usually stocks and bonds. When you are buying shares of mutual fund, you will become one of the fund's shareholders. All the gains and losses will be shared among the fund's shareholders. Hence, mutual fund is a risk sharing game.

Compare to stocks and bonds, mutual funds are one of the cost effective and an easy playing game. You do not need to really expert in stock andbond market because the fund manager will take care of it; and you do not need to crack your head to figure out which stocks or bonds to buy, because you have the expert, thefund manager to make the decision for you.

You do not need a lot of money to get your start the game; you decide the amount of money you plan to invest into the mutual fund. Some mutual funds may even let you start with just $100. The best part is the cost effectiveness. By pooling money together in a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much lower trading cost. The biggest advantage of mutual funds as compare to stocks or bonds is "diversification".
Diversification Will Lower The Risk

Investment experts always advise that if you want to invest you money, "Don't put all your eggs into the same basket; else if the basket fall, all you eggs will break", some will happen on your money, if youinvest in one stock, if the stock perform negative, you loss all you money. Diversify your investment to spread out your money into many different types of investments. When one investment is down, another might perform in up trend.

Hence, with the diversification of your investment, you will reduce your risk tremendously.

You can diversify your investment by purchasing different kinds of stocks and bonds instead of one. But it may take weeks to buy all these investments. In contrary, you can get these done by purchasing a few mutual funds and mutual funds automatically diversify your investment across many stocks and bonds.

Mutual fund is a risk sharing investment portfolio, it's provides you a medium of investing your money into a high earning stock & bond market while automatically diversify your investment to reduce your risk. Hence mutual fund can be your alternative of investment portfolio that will give you higher reward and lower risk.
The future of equipment leasing is firmly hand in hand with business development, small, large and everything in between. Equipment leasing is synonymous with possibilities and what business does not benefit from possibilities? Equipment leasing offers businesses: Financial Options, Growth or Expansion Options and Business Potential.

Financial Options - Businesses need financial capital to grow. Capital provides a business with options from loans to investments. Equipmentleasing is tax deductible, whereas initial large investments are deductible the first year but only a percentage thereof is after that. Businesses hire accountants and tax experts to help them maximize their capital. The future of equipmentleasing is in the financial options they offer to businesses, large and small.

Growth & Expansion Options - Small businesses and the self-employed may find their growth and expansion options limited without the options equipmentleasing can provide them. From construction to accounting to medicine, equipment leasing provides a future for both. The rapid growth industry for equipment lessors is matched only by the needs of lessees.

What a company needs more than anything else is capital to invest not only in themselves, but also their future. Equipment leasing keeps the capital in their pockets and helps physicians, engineers, computer specialists and even writers develop their businesses. The future of equipmentleasing is tied firmly to the package that is the American Dream.

Business Potential - While financial, growth and expansion options are definitely part of the future of equipment leasing. There is an untapped source that will find its future in equipment leasing. That source is the business potential in the entrepreneur. More and more business entrepreneurs are leaving the wildly hectic corporate world to start their own business.

When you go into business for yourself, there are a lot of trepidations. First and foremost, starting a business can be a risk for the individual and the family. Equipment leasing can help an entrepreneur minimize their risks, plan for a future and deal with unforeseen eventualities.Equipment leasing can be the difference between achieving a dream and being stuck in a dead-end job. There is a surge in the growth of small business in the country, specializing in personal services from web building to direct marketing to selling homemade clothing. Equipmentleasing can make all those possibilities happen and for fraction of the cost it would take to purchase the equipment outright.

Farmers and Other Opportunities - There's a lot of focus placed on equipment leasing for private physicians, medical practices, construction companies and computer and Internet technologies. Another untapped market that benefits from equipmentleasing is farmers that work small and large farm operations. Equipment leasing can keep the small farmer moving on a tractor or helping to rebuild a damaged barn.

Large equipment like tractors, backhoes, ditch witches and scoops are a hefty investment. Farms are a tricky operation and take a lot of backbreaking work and labor investment. When a piece of heavy equipment breaks down, farmers have a choice to repair it or do without. If they can't affect the repairs themselves or afford them, then it is more than likely they can't afford to go out and buy a new one. Equipmentleasing would provide the farmer not only with the equipment to get the job done, but also to the maintenance support without the huge output of cash.

The future of equipment leasing is in business, industry and primarily people. It only takes a small investment to get started and that small investment returns the dividends to the lessee as their business and financial opportunities grow.
There are a lot of worries involved with running your own business. From wondering whether sales will meet expectations to dealing with employees, worrying about bad checks and verifying the age of customers so you aren't selling adult products to minors, there are many potential problems that could come up any day.

Fortunately, technology can get rid of some of these worries. While it can't solve your disputes with employees, it can make it easier for you to accept payments with confidence and monitor the age of your customers.

The first and most vital piece of technology for making your business life easier is a credit card terminal. If you're not accepting credit cards, you really should be. People these days love to pay with plastic, and you'll turn some customers off by not offering the option.

While you're looking at merchant accounts and payment processing equipment, see if you can get a card reader that allows customers to put in their PIN numbers as well. This will allow you to accept debit cards, providing even more flexibility for your customers (and lower transaction rates for you).

Next, if bad checks are a worry for your business, you'll want to look into getting a check reader. This is sort of like a credit card machine for checks. Just insert the check into the reader and the amount of the check is automatically debited from the customer's account.

You get the payment within 24 hours and it's deposited directly into your account you don't even have to drive to the bank and physically deposit the check! Using acheck reader can give you peace of mind because you'll know before the customer leaves your shop if they can afford the check they just wrote.

A final piece of technology that is a great addition for people who sell tobacco, alcohol or other adult-oriented products is age verification hardware. Electronic age verification is done with the help of a device that looks like acredit card terminal and scans the barcode or magnetic strip on state-issued identification cards.

The machine then tells you whether the person is of age to consume whatever your product is. This takes the guesswork out of reading IDs and is a lot faster than having a person inspect each patron's identification and do the math to make sure you aren't selling to minors.

In some ways technology can seem like it makes our lives more difficult, always giving us more to read, watch and do. But in the case of your business, picking up some new technology can certainly make your life a lot easier.

How To Open A Business
Everyone that starts a business has to begin somewhere. There are several items on this page that I believe will be useful to you as you begin your quest for a successful business. I have included questions for you to think about when considering opening a business. As you begin, you will want to travel to the various merchandise shows in Chicago, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and New York. I have been to many of these shows and found most of my sources at them.

One of the biggest problems faced by people that want to open a business is not knowing where to start. In this article, I give you several questions to answer. Some of them are easy to answer, but some of them need lots of research. No one that I know likes to make other people rich. But where do you begin when you want to open your own business. I will attempt to have you thinking about what will be the best idea that you can start that will have long term benefits. There are thousands of businesses that open one year and are closed by the next. What will make yours different? Before you begin, ask yourself the following questions:

What do I want to sell? This is a straight forward question, but one that takes a lot of thought. What interests you? Sometimes, what interests you is not the best business to be in due to competition. However, it is a good place to start.
Where do I want to open the store? Location, Location, Location!

Who will be my customers? Am I taking them from my competition, or am I creating a new market?

Do I have enough money to get me through the slow times? There will be slow times. Can I still pay my bills?

Is there lots of competition? If there is, can I be better than them?

What can I do better than the competition? What points are they missing?

Do I want to have a website? Is my business suitable for online business?

Where can I get fixtures for a good price? New ones are very expensive.

Are there any restrictions at the location? Make sure I can open my business where I want to.

How do I buy items wholesale? Last but not least, where do I get my items?


I hope this article gets you to thinking about questions that you may have before you begin your business. You will have hundreds more before you get started. So sit back, relax, and begin your journey. One of the best ways that I know of to find out information on just about any business is through Entrepreneur Magazine. I have been a subscriber to this magazine I guess for 15 years. Check it out. It's well worth it

Finding Additional Support for your Home Business
You might wonder although you really want to start a business, where could you find support for your home business when you have limited start up costs to begin a whole new business? There are many ways to work around this. Here are a few options you can consider. Consider a loan from a family member. While all family loans are not created equal, you never know who will be your biggest supporter in yournew business venture and would gladly loan you a small amount of money for your business start-up.

Investigate small business loans that cater to women and home businesses. Some grants are also available (and you don't have to pay them back!) You must be prepared to undergo credit and reference checks, attend business classes, and disclose financial aspects of your personal and business life.

Try and save in other areas of your life. Not a coupon person? Start using coupons and put the total amount you save with each grocery trip into a special "new business fund". Do you order takeout a couple times a week? Cut back to once a week or once every other week, and put that money into your "new business fund" too. In addition to financing of your home business you need a bit of advice and tips to get you going. Operating your business without a computer will put you at an immediate disadvantage. They are simply too valuable as a time-saving tool. There are plenty of resources on the internet offering support for your home business. These provide handy information with tips and advice, ideas and many more. You cannot be an expert on everything. Get assistance early from as many sources as possible. Talk to people who have similar experiences on doing a home business. Talk to your friends, family and who have succeeded in doing home business. Start networking now! The friendships and alliances you build now could become extremely useful in the future when you launch your business.

Seminars dealing with "special topics" have actually been around for decades, and are an older form of marketing and information exchanges. Seminars are simply a group of people coming together for the discussion and learning of specific techniques and topics. There are a wealth of knowledge usually, presented by many speakers at one time in one place. A lot of "learning" at one clip, with most material compressed into two or three days' worth of time. So don't put off starting your own home business - by investigating some of these alternatives, you may discover that you really can afford to start your own business!
Finding a job online is easier than you think. Whether you are trying to locate work locally or you are interested in work that allows you to telecommute, finding ajob online is simple when you know where to look. In fact, the Internet offers you the unique opportunity to put your resume to work through a number of resume posting sites.

Many companies are looking for skilled individuals. Further, such companies are turning to the Internet more frequently as a resource to locate potential employees. What's more, employers looking to find quality professionals frequently list available positions in job listing websites and if you attempting to find a job online, such websites are an excellent place to start your search.

Finding a job online is made simple by the creators of job listing websites. Job listing websites allow job seekers to locate a job by searching in a particular area, searching for a particular position, or searching their extensive listing with the use of common keywords associated with the type of employment they are looking for. In fact, several job listing websites even allow you to create a job search agent; such agents will send you an electronic notification when a job is listed that matches your pre-selected search criteria.

If you are looking for freelance work, finding a job online is not as difficult as it may first appear. There are literally hundreds of freelance websites online that allow freelances to locate individuals looking to outsource there work. In fact, there are a number of freelance sites that allow employers to post positions so that freelancers can bid on their offer.

On the other hand, if you are interested in working for a particular company, you can locate the company's website online, if they offer one, and sometimes find jobs offered on their website. Thus, again, finding ajob online can prove to be a simple task; after locating the listing on a company's homepage all you will be required to do is follow the instructions pertainingto the posting in terms of contacting the company about their job advertisement.
An excellent approach to looking for employment opportunities online is to visit a number of local college web pages. College web pages will frequently list a number of openings available at the university. At the very minimum, you can often find a listing pertaining to when the job fairs will be held and you can then plan to visit the job fair with your resume in hand!

Finding a job online can frequently be easier than looking for a job in a more traditional fashion. The traditional manner of finding a job involved the prospective employee purchasing a number of local newspapers and skimming through countless advertisements: many advertisements with a good majority of them not being suitable employment for the individual seeking work. Thus, job listing sites have individualized the process of job hunting and have allowed prospective employees the opportunity to narrow down the time they spend searching for a job.

In short, the Internet can be your best agent when trying to find a job online. You can find a number of websites that will allow you to post your resume online so prospective employers can view your experience or you can scour through hundreds of job listings with a built in search engine located on such sites. What's more, you will not be forced to solely rely on traditional job seeking methods and you can thereby increase the probability that you will find the job that you most rightfully deserve!