When a small business needs fast money, it’s easy to whip out a credit card to make the purchase. Every entrepreneur relies on them. Why not, when they’re convenient and easy to manage? But the line between personal and business credit can be blurry. When is it appropriate to open a business credit card, versus continuing to use personal cards? These milestones signify it’s … [More]
Common-Sense Income Strategies
The subtitle may well be Common-Sense, Purpose-Based Investing for Your Retirement with Steps and Strategies to Help You. This book begins with the idea that when we reach the age of 50, we need to change from a portfolio filled with stocks and growth investment strategies to step-by-step strategies to build out our retirement income. Eastham’s book is based on the golden rules … [More]
Protect Against the Top Three Financial Scams in Arizona
The typical business loses 5 percent of its annual revenue to fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Financial statement fraud causes the greatest median loss, with an average of $975,000 per scheme. As a financial institution concerned with protecting our customers from scams, we bring experience in identifying scams and preventing being taken in … [More]
Banking on Your Business
Tales of usurers make for enduring literature (Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a notable example), but it’s an indisputable fact that commerce would not exist without reputable financial institutions and loan opportunity. Of course, banking has evolved to be much more than a lending resource. For instance, as Toby Day, chairman of the Arizona Bankers Association and … [More]
Diversity Trends in Small Business Investing
Maria Contreras-Sweet, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration and the voice of small business on President Obama’s Cabinet, last month heralded the release of “Measuring the Representation of Women and Minorities in the SBIC Program,” a groundbreaking SBA study showing the racial and gender makeup of investment boards is tied directly to investment decisions … [More]
SBA Awards $18.8 Million to Support Small-Business Trade Growth
Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, last month announced $18.85 million to support export growth among American small businesses. The funding was awarded through SBA’s competitive State Trade Expansion Program. The share for Arizona businesses in Fiscal Year 2016 is $299,903. Calling it a boon for America’s small businesses, … [More]
Captives Can Help Contain Costs
Business risk is on the rise — from the danger of a cyber-attack to the potential failure of a crucial supplier halfway around the globe. In response, companies are increasingly creating their own insurance companies to mitigate those risks. A “captive insurer” is a company that provides coverage solely to the firm or group of firms that sets it up. Captives have long … [More]
NAPA Revamps for Retail
NAPA, which, for more than 90 years, has built its name on being a wholesale auto parts distributor serving largely auto repair businesses and fleets, is looking to grow its retail side. It is rolling out the program in 20 markets around the country, and, here in the Valley, the Gilbert store is one of the first to get the makeover. In addition to new signage, furniture, … [More]
Financially Serving the Hispanic Market
There’s more to serving the Hispanic market than simply translating messaging into Spanish. Language is a component, “but you need cultural relevance,” explains Luis Soto, a driving force in Vantage West’s recent designation of “Juntos Avanzamos” (“Together We Advance”) from Texas’s Cornerstone Credit Union League. “Vantage West is the first credit union outside the … [More]
The Expanding ATM Network
Allpoint recently added QuikTrip as a retail partner to serve the Phoenix area. The company works with banks and credit unions to provide surcharge-fee ATMs to the institutions’ customers at convenient, premier retail locations — the kind of well-known and trusted retail brand names that are already part of people’s daily routines. Financial institutions are moving to a … [More]
Considerations with Funding a Company
Determining the best capital structure for a business is one of the many difficult decisions owners and founders must make. Capital structures vary widely, and what may work best for one company may be completely wrong for another — depending on the industry area, resources available and management team. Different capital structures include bootstrapping (completely financed by … [More]
Keeping Business in the Family Way
Earlier in May, Cathy Hughes, an attorney-adviser for the Estate and Gift Tax Policy Office for the United States Department of the Treasury, sent shockwaves into the tax and estate planning community by announcing that new regulations would be implemented to make it much more difficult for families to transfer a family business to the next generation utilizing business … [More]
Business Strategies
Businesses create revenue and income relative to how they utilize assets. When a business owner goes into the marketplace to try to raise money, the bigger the business’s asset base, the better its position to do so — whether it needs to buy things to sell or make things to sell, says Michael Denning, Ph.D., professor of practice, marketing, at the W. P. Carey School of … [More]
Raising Awareness of Financial Resources
According to a recent Wells Fargo/Gallup national study, “Diverse Small-Business Owners Share Their Experiences,” 71 percent of women business owners say they feel very satisfied as a business owner and 89 percent would own a business rather than do anything else. Yet, surprisingly, the survey also found that women are largely unaware of the many resources available to help … [More]
Equity Crowdfunding Comes to Arizona
Arizona’s new crowdfunding law, which is intended to give small companies in the local Arizona economy greater access to capital, took effect on July 3, 2015. Arizona joins a growing number of states that have recently enacted laws permitting some form of equity crowdfunding. For startups and other emerging growth businesses that may not have ready access to traditional sources … [More]
Sweepstakes Offers: Legal Promotion or Illegal Gambling?
Many businesses look to hold sweepstakes, raffles, poker tournaments and other contests for marketing purposes. They don’t realize that these activities can amount to illegal gambling. “Gambling” generally means risking something of value for a chance to win a prize. With only limited exceptions, it is against the law for an Arizona business to benefit from gambling. … [More]
No More Fundraising Excuses
It is official. Philanthropic giving in the United States is not only on the rebound, it has fully recovered since the recession, marking the highest levels of giving in the country’s history. Yes, even despite weak and uneven economic recovery. According to the Giving USA 2015 report, charitable giving has risen 7.1 percent over the last year, totaling $358.38 billion. … [More]
Finance: Employee Wellness Benefit
Financial wellness is increasingly a concern of employers for their employees. “There’s almost universal awareness now that financial problems affect business,” says Mike Sullivan, director of education with Take Charge America, explaining that people do not attend to business as well as they would if they didn’t have financial problems on their mind. “So businesses need to … [More]
