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Susan Devitt and Tom Gallo of GalloLea Organic Pizza Kits

2009 was a tough year for Susan Devitt and Tom Gallo of Asheville, North Carolina.

First, Tom lost his highly specialized ceramics engineering job.

To find another job in that field, Tom and Sue knew they would have to leave their home in Asheville.

At the same time, Sue—a graphic designer—lost her biggest contracting job for an Atlanta company.

She knew that there were no jobs close to home for her, either.

Instead of looking for a traditional position in another part of the country, however, Tom and Sue decided to start their own business: GalloLea Organic Pizza Kits

They’re not alone. According to Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation—a non-profit which studies entrepreneurship, “The Great Recession has pushed many individuals into business ownership due to high unemployment rates.”

According to the Foundation’s research, 0.32% of the population decided to start a business in 2011, continuing the trend of growing entrepreneurship since the recession began in 2007.

But just how difficult is it to become a small business owner after losing a more traditional career? I had an oppo

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One of the challenges of working with aviation customers is that they can usually take up to 60 days to pay their invoices. Offering generous payment terms is a common industry practice and aviation parts suppliers have to do so to remain competitive. The problem is that not everyone can afford to wait that long for payment. Many small aviation parts companies have obligations that need to be met regularly, such as supplier payments, payroll, and other items. Not paying any of these expenses on time could lead to serious problems. This situation can put the aviation supplier in an awkward position where theyre juggling  supplier payments in order to make ends meet.

For many companies a better solution is to accelerate their revenues using invoice factoring. Factoring provides an advance to the aviation parts company using its slow paying invoices as collateral. This provides the liquidity that the company needs to operate with confidence. Perhaps more importantly, it minimizes the payment concerns about offering terms to customers, enabling you to focus on sales.

To deploy a factoring financing solution you will need to partner with a factoring company. The

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Have you kick-started your savings plan?

Savings is defined as income that is not consumed immediately by buying goods and services.

Do you have any personal savings?

The rate of personal savings is way down here in the US.

We just arent saving our money.

Youd think with the recent downturn in the economy and the drop in housing values that people would begin saving more. You just dont see it in the numbers.

So, if you currently dont have any savingsor, maybe you have some savings, but youve stopped and find it hard to get back on track, then its time to kick start your savings habit.

Here are some great ways to do just that:

What are you doing with your 2% tax break each paycheck? Why not use it for savings? Calculate how much youre saving in taxes and apply that money to an automatic savings deposit. Depe

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If you’ve been struggling to get out of debt for a long time and you feel like you’re running out of options, there might come a time when you decide to declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a legal process to liquidate your debts, meaning that you are no longer required to pay back the money that you owe.

Bankruptcy is one of the protections that individual people have as part of our financial system, but declaring bankruptcy has its drawbacks. If you declare bankruptcy, you are basically admitting publicly that you cannot afford to pay your debts, so other banks and credit card companies will be reluctant to lend money to you in the future.

Bankruptcy has a big impact on your credit rating, and it can be difficult to get credit again for a certain amount of time in the future, which makes it difficult to buy a car or get a mortgage to buy a house.

I interviewed someone who recently declared bankruptcy after he could not find a sustainable way to pay off his credit card debts. We’ll call him “Chris” to protect his privacy.

 Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 Bankruptcy?

If you’re trying to decide whether to declare bankruptcy, keep in mind that there are two forms of bankruptcy filings: Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Chapter 7 is

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Here is a common situation.  A small importer gets a large purchase order from a prized client, such as a big box retailer. To fulfill the transaction,  they will have to buy the goods from their foreign supplier, who will ask for a pre-payment. The supplier will then manufacture and deliver the goods to the end customer. And once received, the customer will take anywhere between 30 to 60 days to pay for them. As you can see, these types of transactions have very demanding cash flows, leaving the importer with a serious financial dilemma: if the order is too big/expensive they will risk losing the order and the client.

What can they do?

Financing this type of transaction is very difficult because most financial institutions will not consider purchase orders as valuable collateral. However, there is one financing solution that has been gaining traction in recent years. Its pu

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