Business and Financial News

SmartMoney reports there are now seven different credit scores for sale available on more than 20 websites inevitably leading to confusion among consumers. Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax each sell their own credit scores. The FICO traditional score is the one used by the great majority of lenders.

A class action recently filed in a federal court in San Diego alleges that Experian’s subsidiary Consumerinfo.com that operates www.freecreditscore.com is deceiving customers in selling Experina’s PLUS credit score. The lawsuit alleges the score is not one typically used by lenders.

Read more: Which Credit Score is Best? – SmartMoney.com http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/debt/which-credit-score-is-best-1302212043057/#ixzz1JEVwu8Eh

Expert Reveals Tips for Launching Your Start-up Right

Cynthia Kocialski loves start-up companies. “I love start-ups and all the wonderful gizmos and gadgets they make,” said Kocialski, a veteran of three start-ups and author of Startup from the Ground Up (www.cynthiakocialski.com). “The problem is that most of these wonderful things never make it because the entrepreneur is in love with the technology, and they lack an understanding of the technology business. It’s one thing to develop a new gadget or piece of software that does something cool, but entrepreneurs need to ask themselves if it actually solves a problem. Cool doesn’t sell. Meeting the needs of consumers and businesses does. In the final equation, it is the business of technology that determines the ultimate success or failure of the product.”

Kocialski’s experiences have led her to create a series of tips for anyone considering launching or financing a start-up company. These tips inc

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 A “T”, or technical foul, is part of the game of basketball. If you’re a fan of the game, you know it’s any infraction of the rules which doesn’t involve physical contact such as unsportsmanlike conduct. 

The retirement plan equivalent of a “T” is when an employer misclassifies a worker in situations regarding whether:

• The worker is an independent contractor or an employee, or
•  An employee hired through a staffing agency/Professional Employer Organization (PEO) must participate in the client company’s  retirement plan covering other employees.

The referee equivalent in these situations could be the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Labor, State agencies, or all of them who have stepped up enforcement.

The financial consequences of misclassification could be costly in terms of income tax withholding; other employment related payments such as FICA, FUTA, state unemployment, and workers compensation; and retroactive inclusion in the retirement program. 

Staying with the basketball metaphor, I cover the issue of independent contractor vs. employee in

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The statistics may say that the U.S. economy is out of recession, but many small and mid-sized business owners will tell you that they’re not seeing a particularly robust recovery, at least not yet.

There are various reasons for the slow pace of recovery among small businesses, but one is becoming increasingly apparent: A lack of cash flow caused by longer payment terms instituted by their vendors. Dealing with slow-paying customers is nothing new for many small businesses, but the problem is exacerbated in today’s sluggish economy and tight credit environment.

This is ironic given the fact that many big businesses have accumulated large cash reserves over the past couple of years by increasing their efficiencies and lowering their costs. In

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In today’s unpredictable and diverse economy, both corporations and individuals are on the lookout for a sustained and stable profit plan, along with a consistent strategy of growth. That’s when merchant banking steps in and provides financial advice and services, helping clients achieve a sustained growth, which is long term as well. Merchant banks operate in various nations throughout the globe, thus presenting a distributed network to corporations and individuals, so that they can go about exploring opportunities, pertaining to alternative options of finance.

Various operations of merchant banks include portfolio management, acceptance of credit, credit syndication, and acquisitions and merger counseling. Inv

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When it comes to live help software it is almost an indisputable fact within the ecommerce community that helpdesk software will help you increase your sales by twofold. This is due to the fact that you can really reach out to your customers after installing the valuable software that will help expand your company sales forward. When you engage a customer in conversation or invite them to do the same with your live help software you form a bond and a temporary relationship that will influence their final decision to finish the sale.

Of course, in order to do this you have to make sure that they are aware that there is helpdesk software on your website that they can choose to use. This means that you have to make sure that the customer notices the live help software chat box.

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When I’m Sixty-Four is, of course, one of the classic songs by The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and released in 1967 on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

The theme is about aging with a young man singing to his lover about his plans of them growing old together.

It was also one of the songs in their 1968 animated film, Yellow Submarine, the video for which follows:   

But that was in 1967 when retiring at that age was still a reality. No yellow submarine today – not with Americans’ confidence in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement at a new low. The “75″ in the headline is a reference to Olivia Mitchell, a professor of insurance and risk at the Wharton School, who says that some employees may have to stay in the workforce to age 75 or older. 

Retirement preparedness, or lack thereof, will be the focus of my new weekly column for BenefitsPro the new blog published by Benefit Selling Magazine. Here is a li

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