Category: FINANCE

How long has it been since you did a Google search of your name? If it hasn’t been for some time, you should do that right now. You should do this given that you can be sure others are Googling your name. Years ago, very few people worried about their online reputation. This has all changed.

Your internet reputation is very much like your cover letter, resume, business card, and a portion of your private life, all rolled into a central location.

With plenty of critical information about our lives online, it is no surprise our online reputations act as such a central part in job hunting, college or university admissions, finding new customers and even getting first dates. One somewhat astonishing statistic is that close to 74 percent of business HR departments do an online search of candidates. It also turns out that about 65% of Human Resource professionals have rejected candidates based on records they found doing a Google search.

In essence, a great number of people are missing out on jobs and college admissions, all depending on the way they appear in Google search results. You probably understand your online reputation makes a difference. However, you may not realize precisely what you can do regarding strengthening it.

The first task to strengthening your online reputation is to determine your situation. Everyone’s online reputation is unique — and you aren’t able to fix things you don’t know about.

Conduct a Google search on your own full name to see what is listed on the first few pages. Determine if there are many other people with the your name in the search listings. Gauge the number of unfavorable, good and neutral websites show up regarding you. You’ll want to additionally look at the images and see what kind of pictures appear for your name. If you’ve previously been arrested there’s a great chance your mug shot will turn up in the images.

In a study carried out in 2016 80% of organizations acknowledged using social media while recruiting. It’s highly likely that hiring supervisors will check your social media profiles. For this reason it’s essential that you figure out just how much information you are willing to share openly.

Because social platforms regularly change their privacy controls, you will want to take a glance at each social network to verify who is able to see your account information and posting history. For Facebook, check out an area named Privacy Settings and select the Limit Past Post Visibility choice to conceal your complete personal content. Look over the permissions of social media apps that are installed on each of your mobile devices. These typically differ from personal computer versions of the same social networks.

An online reputation management (ORM) provider like Fix Your Search Results can manage this challenge of pushing unfavorable sites off of the first page of Google. On top of that, they’ll conduct some other activities in order to get undesirable results down from the top of a search — steps which include migrating existing, good web pages up in search rankings to basically replace undesirable listings off the first page. Fix Your Search Results will compose so much good stuff that people aren’t able to come across the detrimental stuff.

You could be tempted to set your social account profiles to private. The plus of doing that is if employers aren’t able to unearth any facts in regards to you besides from the details available in your resume, they’re not about to stumble upon info that reflects badly on your reputation. On the other hand, repressing your appearance excessively places you in peril. The hiring manager could very well quit the search entirely and proceed to a prospect who’s created a healthy online reputation by publicly sharing their social networking profiles.

Once you go with online visibility, you have to filter your social networking posting history. Research your social networking profiles in detail. Should you locate any kind of content which might damage your name, just get rid of it. Concealing these types of possibly harmful postings or images can be precarious. Remember that other individuals could take screen shots and upload this content widely with your name tagged. Anytime you are curating your social networking profiles, maintain content that contributes to the qualified reputation you’ll be creating for your job application.

If you don’t currently have accounts on the significant social media networks such as Instagram and Twitter, forbes.com states that you should develop such accounts now. You’ll need these types of profiles to let you have a social background for people come across, and you likewise need these types of profiles given that these have always been the types of websites Google loves to rank for a search of a person’s name.

Having social media profiles in which you manage the composition, you generate content of a positive quality which will be displayed when people do a Google search on your name. When you at present have damaging results turning up when carrying out a search of your name, these kinds of online pages could turn up above the weak results in the search. At bbc.com they say that this basically squeezes down the adverse web pages whereby they become not so visible to people. That’s a worthwhile thing.

If you happen to presently have social networking web pages, but they do not rank high up in search results, you may want to try to move these properties up in the search rankings. This will require acquiring links to the social media web pages to provide them with a good deal more importance to Google. While possible for a person to accomplish, it is an exercise you might prefer to pass on to the specialists.

Gaining financial independence often is the enduring desire of numerous investors. Some people espouse the long-established model of being employed right up until you turn 65, after which they race to compensate for everything missed through preceding decades. I don’t.

I also don’t subscribe to the minimal process to arrive at economic independence. I think it’s great that many are able to reside in a trailer, or carry all of their property in a suitcase. Should you wish to accomplish early financial liberty, then you will really have to become just a little more rigorous about it.

Regardless if you earn a huge income or a slight income, the most critical point of attaining financial liberty is spending less than you take home. All it calls for is a bit of investing and saving. I have previously prescribed a savings point of at a minimum 12%, just so that you will avoid catastrophes, however, when you are interested in timely financial self-reliance, you need to be much more aggressive than this. I’m sure that 45% of net income is a serious, but suitable mark to aim for.

Most people function financially at what’s often described as a neutral place, characterized by a consistent state where a individual lives paycheck to paycheck. You could be receiving a sufficient amount of of money to pay bills. Basically,, you are ostensibly stuck in neutral, and just not really proceeding anywhere. You have got the choice of traveling the path headed for monetary opportunity or the route on the way to economic hopelessness. It is based on just what you do next.

Step one when it comes to economic independence takes place when you start to live beneath your means and you set about to save money for your future. How far you go and the time that’s needed is up to you.

I can recommend 20% as the very lower limit, however the more, the nicer. There will be reasons why you would probably want to cache away your money past just merely accomplishing financial flexibility. Getting a cushion of savings leaves you better equipped for later, nowadays, and the unidentified.

Initiating a side income is an excellent technique for closing the time frame demanded to accomplish financial independence. Diversity is invaluable as it pertains to wealth, however it is equally noteworthy in terms of income. The second state will start as soon as you bring in adequate side income to decrease your required expenditures. This means that you’re no longer required to work a ordinary day occupation in order to make it.

A large number of us are fully dependent on our jobs, which in turn makes us vulnerable to the impulsiveness of our employers. Employment is a particularly central wealth generating tool, however, when you depend on it all of your life, you’ll end up putting your success in the power of other people.

You are still bound to work in this second phase, but at least there is the opportunity to work on your own and manage your own future. For many folks this will be already a fabulous amount of financial freedom.

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To begin phase three, you’ll want the right amount of capital to not ever need to work another day . I really believe this in considered the optimal embodiment of monetary liberation.

To be able to understand exactly how much capital you must have, divide your annual expenditures by three percent in case you’re conventional, or four percent in case you’re more aggressive. This is the percentage of capital that you would withdraw of your portfolio annually. See this investors.com article for more on this topic.

A 4% is considered a little more extreme as there are periods on record where this would have ended in a speedily decreasing portfolio. A portfolio with a 3% rate of withdrawal, conversely, has in the past never gone broke after fifty years of withdrawals. A portfolio at a withdrawal rate of three percent is virtually an endless portfolio, with proceeds rising in the solid years and regressing less through the poor years.

Although phase three is the crowning period of monetary freedom, it’s also a more or less conservative period.

Deciding to take your company from sole trader to Limited is a daunting decision but one that can extremely benefit your company in the long run through the thing we all hate the most…taxes. First of all, get your new business company registered, otherwise not only will you be subject to fines if you aren’t registered, but you won’t be able to reap the benefits of tax.

Being self employed, the line between business money and personal money is hard if not impossible to distinguish. The instant benefit of being a Limited Company, a separate entity from it’s owners, is that the liability is transferred from the shareholders onto the company itself, making it an attractive and safe investment for shareholders. This means that with the company being a corporate body it is liable for payments and debt.

Not the owners, not the shareholders. Corporation tax is only payable when the company makes a profit, and the amount of tax saving depends on the net profit before the tax. This technique can be used to the advantage of many small companies, such as the Greek life app developer OurHouse, which makes a fraternity management mobile app for use by colleges. As far as tax goes, with a Limited company, comes lower corporation tax benefits. Over recent years, corporation tax for Limited companies has increased from 20% to 22% whilst sole traders have suffered from a reduction of corporation tax by 2% taking it down to 20%.

The advantage in tax saving stems from the flexibilities of dividends and being able to determine salaries within a Limited company. A sole trader’s basic accounts are subjected to fixed tax rates. Advantages increase for Limited companies in the tax realm when net taxable profit is above the self-employment upper earnings limit. Money can then be left in the business thus becoming only accountable for the 22% corporation tax rate, completely avoiding paying the 40% tax rate as a sole trader.

By forming your company as a Limited Company, it becomes a clear indication to your buyers, shareholders etc that your business is serious. A private limited company advantages over self employment also extends to long term finance. Companies tend to retain more funds within the business to meet future financial commitments which aids year on year growth, a more sustainable business and medium term profits growth over a sole trader.

That appears to be the central claim of Kevin Warsh and Stanley Druckenmiller in a Wall Street Journal column criticizing the Fed’s asset buying program. The central claim appears to be that because asset prices have been rising, companies have been discouraged from undertaking productive investment.

While Warsh and Druckenmiller are certainly right that the asset buying program has had limited benefits for the real economy, it doesn’t follow that the economy would be stronger without it.

First, they misrepresent the wealth situation when they tell readers:

“The aggregate wealth of U.S. households, including stocks and real-estate holdings, just hit a new high of $81.8 trillion. That’s more than $26 trillion in wealth added since 2009.”

The sharp rise in wealth since 2009 was due to a sharp plunge in the financial crisis. The notion of a “record” is misleading since the economy is growing we expect wealth to continually hit records. The ratio of wealth to GDP was 4.78 in the first quarter of 2014. By comparison, it was 4.86 for 2006. The Fed’s policies have simply brought the ratio of wealth to GDP back to pre-recession levels.

More importantly, Warsh and Druckenmiller seem to turn causality on its head when they say:

“Meanwhile, corporate chieftains rationally choose financial engineering—debt-financed share buybacks, for example—over capital investment in property, plants and equipment.”

Lower Interest rates encourage additional investment spending, which gives the economy a boost in times of slow economic growth. The Federal Reserve Board is in charge of setting interest rates for the United States through the use of monetary policy. According to US News, the Fed adjusts interest rates to affect demand for goods and services. Interest rate fluctuations can have a large effect on the stock market, inflation and the economy as a whole. Lowering interest rates is the Fed’s most powerful tool to increase investment spending in the U.S. and to attempt to steer the country clear of recessions.

Ultimately, the Fed uses monetary policy to keep the economy stable. In times of economic downturn, the Fed lowers interest rates to encourage additional investment spending. When the economy is growing and in good condition, the Fed takes measures to increase interest rates slightly to keep inflation at bay. The Fed controls the federal funds rate, which influences long-term interest rates. The federal funds rate is the interest banking institutions charge one another for overnight loans of reserves or balances that are needed to meet minimum reserve requirements set by the Fed. By setting the federal funds rate, the Fed indirectly adjusts long-term interest rates, which increases investment spending and eventually affects employment, output and inflation.

Changes in interest rates affect the public’s demand for goods and services and, thus, aggregate investment spending. A decrease in interest rates lowers the cost of borrowing, which encourages businesses to increase investment spending. Lower interest rates also give banks more incentive to lend to businesses and households, allowing them to spend more.

Low interest rates encourage corporations to invest in stock rather than bonds. If interest rates were higher, then presumably they would do the opposite. Low interest rates (and high stock prices) make it easier to borrow to finance capital investment in property, plants and equipment. It is hard to imagine why they think firms would be investing more, if it cost them more money to make these investments.

The UK vote to leave the European Union whipsawed capital markets throughout the world, but the carnage got so bad in the market for open-ended UK real-estate funds that some managers decided to freeze redemptions.

Now, with some of those redemption halts going into their third month, a debate has surfaced in the industry between the firms that opted to redeem and those that didn’t. The question: Which ones prepared better for the market shock in the months leading up to the Brexit vote and made the smarter calls in terms of opening or shutting their redemption gates?

Consider Edinburgh-based Standard Life Investments, which manages a $2.5 billion open-ended fund that invests in UK property. Standard Life chose to freeze redemptions partly to avoid having to go into the market and sell property at fire-sale prices, according to its executives.

A different approach was taken by Aberdeen Asset Management, which manages an open-ended fund that invests in UK property with assets of about £2.7 billion. Aberdeen temporarily froze redemptions in the aftermath of the June 23 vote, but lifted the freeze by mid-July after setting up new procedures for pricing redeemed units.

Aberdeen also has been able to resume redemptions by selling assets, including a commercial building on Oxford Street. Norwegian sovereign wealth fund manager Norges Bank Investment Management purchased it in mid-July for £124 million.

Maxine Fothergill of Amax Estates notes that Aberdeen fund was marketed to people, many of them small mom-and-pop investors, as an investment that they could buy and sell easily, said Russell Chaplin, chief investment officer of Aberdeen’s real estate team. “They have a reasonable expectation of liquidity in something that’s called a liquid fund,” he said, defending the firm’s decision to continue redemptions.

Experts say there are about 10 open-ended funds that invest in UK property with about £20 billion of assets. About half have halted redemptions. The other half haven’t.

These redemption decisions have got enormous attention following the Brexit vote because many expect UK real estate to be hurt by the country’s decision to exit from the EU. Demand for London office space and residences, for example, will likely weaken if businesses shift operations to continental Europe.

Ms. Fothergill states that the different redemption strategies have clearly become a matter of pride and controversy for the firms. A spokesman for one of the managers, London-based Legal & General Group, said in an email that the firm “is one of the few firms not to close any of their property funds since the Brexit vote and they haven’t been making any fire-sale type disposals”.

Many of those involved in the debate agree that it will take time to determine who was right. Halting redemptions likely will look smart if Brexit’s feared impact on UK real estate doesn’t materialise and prices rebound. But if values continue to fall, selling assets now will look like the right choice.

In any case, the industry’s response to Brexit is expected to be closely studied in the future by regulators and industry participants. A similar review, which took place after the 2008 global financial downturn in which many firms also froze redemptions, led to new regulations and disclosure practices, market participants say.

Open-ended funds have been popular with investors because they offered real estate returns without the volatility facing real estate companies with listed shares. They based their pricing of units on monthly appraisals of the property they owned.

Over the past 10 years, bnnbloomberg.ca says that these funds have outperformed listed real estate stocks, according to John Lutzius, a managing director of Green Street Advisors. They have produced better returns partly because they charged investors relatively low fees and they have kept borrowing low, he said.

But the funds also have suffered from a structural flaw, Lutzius said. “They are making a promise of daily liquidity for assets that are inherently not liquid,” he said.

Some of the funds have dealt with this issue by increasing the amount of the fund that is in cash by selling assets when more redemptions are expected. For example, Aberdeen had increased its cash position to more than 20% of its value in the months leading up to the Brexit vote because the firm felt that the market had hit its peak.

Normally, cash makes up about 15% of the fund. “You never know when these things are going to come,” FPRA.org declares. “But you know at some point, if things are slow, people are going to want to have their cash.”

But increasing cash isn’t enough of a precaution when investors rush for the door following a market shock like Brexit. Aberdeen also is dealing with this through “antidilution” measures that apply an extra cost to investors who want to redeem quickly, Chaplin said.

“It’s no different to selling your house,” he said. “If you wanted to sell it tomorrow, you probably wouldn’t get what you were told it’s value was” by a real estate agent.