Business

Where to Safely Park Your Cash

Article by Sharon Hayut.

In a financial landscape marked by rising interest rates, investors and savers find themselves presented with both challenges and opportunities. As central banks respond to economic conditions by adjusting interest rates, individuals must reassess their strategies for managing cash. This article explores viable options for parking cash in today’s high-interest rate environment, balancing safety and returns.

High-yield savings accounts have emerged as a reliable haven for individuals seeking to preserve liquidity while earning competitive interest rates. These accounts, offered by both traditional banks and online financial institutions, often provide interest rates that outpace those of standard savings accounts. With the added benefit of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protection for up to $250,000 per depositor, high-yield savings accounts offer a secure and accessible option for parking cash.

Certificates of Deposit (CDs) remain a stalwart choice for those who prioritize stability and a fixed interest rate. With various maturity terms available, individuals can choose the duration that aligns with their financial goals. While CDs typically offer higher interest rates than regular savings accounts, the trade-off is the inability to access funds without incurring penalties until the CD matures. For those with a longer-term investment horizon and a desire for predictable returns, CDs provide a valuable option.

Money market accounts strike a balance between liquidity and returns, making them an attractive option in a high-interest rate environment. These accounts often provide higher interest rates compared to standard savings accounts while maintaining accessibility to funds through checks or electronic transfers. Like savings accounts, money market accounts are FDIC-insured, offering an additional layer of security for parked cash.

For investors willing to take on slightly more risk in pursuit of higher returns, short-term bond funds present an option worth considering. These funds invest in a diversified portfolio of short-term debt securities, providing a level of stability while offering higher yields than traditional cash equivalents. While not entirely risk-free, short-term bond funds can be a prudent choice for investors seeking a balance between potential returns and risk mitigation.

Municipal bonds issued by state and local governments can be an attractive option for individuals in higher tax brackets. These bonds often offer tax-exempt interest income, providing a tax-efficient way to generate returns on parked cash. While municipal bonds carry some level of risk, particularly related to changes in interest rates and the financial health of the issuing entities, they can be a strategic addition to a diversified cash management strategy.

In an environment where inflation is a concern, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) can be a valuable tool for preserving the purchasing power of cash. TIPS provide a hedge against inflation by adjusting their principal value in line with changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). While they may not offer the highest nominal yields, TIPS can provide investors with a real rate of return that outpaces inflation, making them a prudent choice in uncertain economic times.

In today’s high-interest rate environment, individuals must carefully assess their financial goals, risk tolerance, and liquidity needs when deciding where to park their cash. Whether opting for the safety of high-yield savings accounts and CDs or exploring slightly more dynamic options such as short-term bond funds and municipal bonds, the key is to strike a balance that aligns with individual financial objectives. By diversifying across these options, investors can effectively navigate the waters of a changing interest rate landscape, safeguarding their cash while seeking optimal returns.

About the Author:
Joining Magnus Financial Group in 2022 as Senior Managing Director, Sharon Hayut, boasts a distinguished financial career. Formerly Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Sharon Hayut earned a spot on Forbes’ Top Women Wealth Advisors list in 2021 and 2022, as well as Forbes’ Best in State Wealth Advisors and Working Mother‘s Top Wealth Advisor Moms lists. Previous honors include Forbes’ Best-in-State-Next-Gen Wealth Advisors list for New York City in 2019 and Forbes’ Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors in 2018. Beyond finance, Sharon Hayut champions charitable events, promoting financial literacy and community well-being.

How You Can Cut Your Business Costs

Article By Wesley Virgin

Businesses are in existence to make a profit, and cutting fees and expenses is one way to do this. Instead of spending money wisely to maintain the high quality of your product or service, the secret is to cut unneeded costs. Here are some recommendations for efficient cost-cutting.

Reward Employees For Cost-saving Efforts

Do not make coming up with cost-cutting ideas your exclusive responsibility. Develop a resource-conscious workplace culture that won’t squander any resources. Employee motivation for essential work that some may find tedious is increased when employers reward them for considering cost-cutting measures. Include impactful cost reduction in the research and development activities of your business.

Go Digital

Cutting costs for paper and ink from your budget is a relatively simple way to save money in the modern corporate world. Even if you may still occasionally need hard copies of documents, it is nowadays extremely simple to convert the majority of your documents to an electronic or digital version. Rather than letting them take up precious office space, store bills and other paperwork on your computer.

Have A Budget

Although it is perhaps the easiest piece of advice on this list, this is one of the most crucial to remember. Without a budget, it’s simple to get into the habit of blowing money without taking your company’s expenses into account. Knowing your boundaries will help you avoid trouble in both life and work.

About Wesley Virgin

Internet celebrity and entrepreneur Wesley Virgin has made millions of dollars by leveraging his desire for success. Wesley Virgin went from being a college dropout to becoming an overnight millionaire by acquiring skills in Internet marketing, trading, and wellness.

 

How to Use SEO Best Practices in your Website Content

Today’s businesses are searching for every possible advantage in order to succeed in this rapidly changing economy. The World Wide Web has made its impact upon the way we all interact and do business and that impact must be monitored for its ever-changing volatile nature.

One of the key aspects of doing business on the Internet is Search Engine Optimization. Suddenly, businesses from Los Angeles to Malaysia have realized the importance of optimizing the text in their website content.

Javier Loya of OTC Global Holdings comments, “Today it’s impossible to build a good brand and marketing strategy without using SEO.”

OTC Global Holdings in Houston, Texas, is the largest independent OTC commodity brokerage in the world and has been quite successful over the years.

In the beginning, website owners were convinced that all you had to do was cram as many keywords into your text as possible and voila! Your website would mysteriously appear on the first page of the major search engines. While keywords are certainly important, one critical piece of information must be remembered: humans will eventually read (or not) your website content.

OTC Global Holdings understands this concept. You must write for people, not search engines. But your content does need those keywords in order to rank well. It’s a careful balance between amazing content and SEO keywords.

Placing keywords into text is an art. In fact, writing is itself an art. Unless you are an experienced writer, then you are probably NOT qualified to write your own website content.

Javier Loya grew up in El Paso, Texas and now lives in Houston, Texas with his wife and two daughters. He the founder and co-CEO of OTC Global Holdings, the largest independent OTC commodity brokerage in the world. He graduated from Columbia University in New York and is a minority owner of the Houston Texans football team.

What Does Creating Abundance in Your Spirit Look Like?

The article was provided by The Global Spiritualist Association

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet and philosopher from the 1800’s who said the following:

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

This quote means that to create wealth, you have to define what wealth specifically means to you. This becomes even more interesting when you share your life with a loved one, life partner or family.

Many spend their time and hard work searching for something they already have. Money is just a form of energy that we all acknowledge as an appropriate exchange for goods and services. What does wealth mean to you and those close to you?

Be specific in answering those questions. When you find the answers, write them down. Record your answers because as you go on your journey through life, you will experience challenges on your way to achieving what you desire. Every now and then, you need to remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing, by reading over what you have written down.

It’s vital to create your plan to become successful but remember that wealth has nothing to do with money. Wealth is about learning to enjoy the life you’ve created. It’s about being grateful every day that the sun came up and you were able to get out of bed.

What are people truly seeking? For many, it is inner peace. For some, it is true love. For others, it is peace of mind. Many of us have a very vague concept of what money is and what we will do with it once we get a lot more.

The Global Spiritualist Association was founded by teacher Zhang Xinyue in the year 1999 with the goal of bringing in the best Spiritual Teachers from various professional fields around the globe. The Global Spiritualists Association is well-known for focusing on creating a platform with international impact to exchange ideas for spiritual growth.

How to build and protect your business’s online reputation

Article provided by Revdex.com

Reputation management has become an integral part of business success. Not only do most customers shop online, but they also read customer reviews before they decide on a purchase. Research similarly suggests that customers trust online content and reviews as they believe that they are unbiased.

Reputation management concentrates on managing and improving how a business is seen online. There are three main aspects of reputation management and they include:

Building your brand

Maintaining your brand

And Handling negative content.

When building a brand, it is important to focus on the needs of the target market plus the industry’s standards. To understand these aspects of a business, look at new developments, your competition, and the company’s goals.

To monitor a business’s reputation, use search engines to examine the first page of a search result. Apps like Google Alerts will send you an email if the company’s name appears in a search result, which can be helpful to identify negative reviews. Negative reviews can hurt a company’s image. To manage reviews many companies use websites such as Revdex.com to detect and respond to customer reviews on one platform. To further reduce the impact of negative reviews a company should invest in training their customer service personnel to confidently handle disgruntled customers.

A brand’s authentic identity begins with the company’s ability to create relatable content that suits its target market. If customers feel that they can trust the brand, they will be more likely to purchase its products and services.

Uploaded content should therefore engage and provide the customer with a solution to a problem or satisfy a need. Engaging the target market by offering stimulating content can encourage the customer to communicate with the company whereby strengthening its relationship with the brand.

Revdex is an online business directory. Revdex’s aim is to improve the connection between consumers and businesses. They provide the customers with an opportunity to browse and post negative complaints and reviews about businesses and they make it easier for their voice to be heard by the companies.

For example you can file complaint against mobile provider or file complaint about travel services.

 

5 Business Leaders that Meditate

Article by Zhang Xinyue.

Many business leaders agree that meditation can help you become a better leader and achieve even higher levels of success. Here are some well-known CEOs who use meditation on a regular basis:
Russell Simmons

Not your most typical CEO, but the co-founder of Def Jam records is a firm believer of meditation. He has stated that it has been the most critical part of his career. In a recent interview, Simmons spoke up about meditation, “You have to learn to love yourself enough to take care of yourself. Sometimes if you’re lucky you get a chance to change your life.”

Ariana Huffington
This Huffington Post CEO has practiced meditation ever since she was a teenager. She is a huge advocate of meditation, stating that it has played a huge role in her success.

One of my favorite quotes about mindfulness comes from Ariana herself: “Meditation is not about stopping thoughts, but recognizing that we are more than our thoughts and our feelings.”

Pat Flynn
Pat Flynn, an online entrepreneur, who makes six figures net profit every month. At first, he explained how he was first skeptical of meditation. But he decided to try it out and learned how much it was able to help him manage an overwhelming amount of tasks and responsibilities.

Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio, a philanthropist and hedge fund manager, has said some similar things on why meditation practices impact his work productivity, he believes is crucial to making right choices in investment decisions in financial markets.

Joe Rogan
Despite his tough sports persona as a UFC host and the host of the Joe Rogan Show podcast, Joe Rogan is a very vocal meditation advocate. His platform has allowed him to influence and encourage thousands of people to try meditation. Rogan stated that meditation has had a huge impact on his career, his health, and his success. Rogan says it improves his ability to focus on various projects with a clear-headed approach.

The great Teacher Zhang Xinyue is a world-renowned spiritual master born in China; her book Create Abundance 创造丰盛 aims to provide a helpful and healthy approach to life’s philosophical issues. By creating a unique and highly effective plan for body-mind-spirit cultivation, she has succeeded in helping tens of thousands. Check out Zhang Xinyue on twitter.

Working With Your First Freelance Contractor

If you’re an employer looking to hire contractors from outside your home country, there are a few rules you can establish upfront to try and save yourself problems down the road. Here are some of the tips to pay your freelancers in a way that will let you retain the good ones, and get the work you need done in a timely manner.

Set Expectations

Everything begins with the expectations you set during the job posting. You should take time to clarify exactly what you’re looking for, and what you expect your contractor to do. Make sure you cover these basics:

• Timeframe: be clear about what you expect, and when it should be completed. Also, be reasonable, and allow for the contractor to counter with a deadline that fits their schedule.
• Establish the base rate you’re willing to pay for the work done: If you under sell, realize you’ll receive lower quality work. Research some jobs around the Web to see the going rates for what you want.
• Discuss specific qualifications: if you need certain programming languages, or writing proficiencies, state that in the gig so your freelancers know. The more specific you are, the easier it is to eliminate candidates who don’t fit the bill.

Paying Freelancers

If you outsource, your freelancer ends up paying some of the costs to receive a paycheck. This comes out of the digital wallet or payment processor you’re using to pay them. If you can, it would be helpful to look at methods for reducing those rates. Digital wallets that transfer money quickly, or wallets that reduce the rates freelancers pay when exchanging currency would both be helpful.

Blog written by Charge.com. Charge.com helps businesses accept credit cards online and offline. Voted the best company

Listing Requirements for the NASDAQ

Written by Phineas Upham

The NASDAQ is a major stock exchange. As such, it relies on the reputability of the companies it trades in order to remain legitimate. NASDAQ companies tend to have a solid corporate background, and top-notch management.

NASDAQ maintains three basic rules for joining the exchange, and companies must meet at least one of them.

All companies must have a minimum of 1,250,000 shares that can be publicly traded. These public shares exclude those held by company executives, and the initial regular bid price must be set at $4. Under certain conditions, initial offerings can be as low as $2.

Each member of the exchange must also follow NASDAQ’s corporate governance rules, which includes an average trading volume of 1.1 million shares monthly.

Companies must also have aggregate pre-tax earnings from the past three years totaling at least $11 million. If the company has less than that amount, or has experienced a net loss in the past three years, it is inelligible.

Companies should also have a minimum cash flow of $27.5 million, with an average market capitalization that totals more than $550 million. However, the cash flow requirement is abandoned altogether if the company is able to amass $850 million or more in market capital.

Once the company is on NASDAQ, it must maintain these rigid standards to continue in the exchange. The most common reason for a company to lose its place on the exchange is typically a falling stock price, but a lack of market capitalization is also to blame in some instances.

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Phineas Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phineas on his Phineas Upham website