Cash The Checks

Here’s some more info on micro businesses.

Micro business are usually online sites or the types of business that start out of someone’s basement or garage. Or by someone offering their personal services (like a car mechanic, party coordinator, for example).

The benefits of a micro business are that you can have many micro businesses since they’re so cheap to start. So you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. Micro businesses are great for those who have many ideas. It gives you an opportunity to try out a lot of new small businesses and see which ones become successful.

I have a feeling the US is headed more towards everyone having their own little micro business, instead of working for large businesses. All of the big businesses are taking their jobs overseas (outsourcing). With the internet services like MySpace (people with their web page/profile), YouTube (people uploading their own videos), and sites like Blogger (people with their own blogs) continuing to grow in popularity, people are more tehnologically capable of starting their own website, and thus micro business, online. Maybe micro businesses can be the solution to the eradication of the middle class in America. You never know..

What is a micro business?

A micro business is a business that is much smaller than a “small business”. There needs to be more ways of describing a business than a big business and small business. A small business can be a local flower shop that gets started with $20,000. That’s still a lot of money.

What about getting a spot at a swap meet (flea market) selling your own custom designed tshirts? Or how about getting a domain name and writing about video games and putting up advertising links to sell those video games from Amazon.com for example.

These are smaller than your typical definition of a “small business”. So that’s why I’m calling these: Micro Businesses. So what exactly is a micro business? Here are a few characteristics..

1. Low starting funds (Under $5,000)

2. Very high Return On Investment (ROI)
3. No employees, self employed.

There’s a thin line between running a successful business and taking advantage of your customers. Let me give you some examples of situations where there’s a thin line between good business and taking advantage of someone.

1. You buy a tshirt for $2 and you sell it for $25.

2. You loan someone you know, who has bad credit, money at 20% interest.

3. You have a very strict return policy

4. You make it difficult for customers to cancel their recurring accounts.

5. You have excessive early termination fees.

Which ones are good business and which cross that line?

I got my Capital One No Hassle Rewards Points Card in the mail today and activated it immediately. This is the first time I’ve ever been with a card that has a points or rewards system. Now I just don’t know what to buy first just to see if I see the points added to my account. I know it’s all just extra motivation to spend more money, so you can pay them more interest. But it’s still enticing.
I like what Bank of America has, if you buy something that costs $17.42, they add $0.42 into your savings account. That’s just a win-win situation for everyone involved.

I got to thinking of all of these bank fees that banks charge, and one of the steepest of them all is the wire transfer fee. That one can be avoided though. Google has a new service, GPay I believe it’s called. You can send money through that if I’m not mistaken. You can send money with PayPal as well. You could write an old fashioned check and just wait until it clears. If time is of the essence, a money order mailed overnight might even be cheaper than a wire transfer.

I got a returned check a while ago, my bank charged me $6. I thought it was kind of steep. I have no experience with how much other banks charge though. One time I got an overdraft charge, a whopping $25 fee. Then I wanted to write a money order, there’s another $5 charge. With some accounts, if you don’t have enough money in there, bam another monthly service charge. I guess when they said free checking, they didn’t really mean free did they.

Many times people just check their checks and cash them, but everybody makes mistakes, so it’s good to take a look at your paycheck stubs to see that everything’s OK in them. You might also want to look at a paycheck calculator to see if your employer is taking out the correct amount for medicare or social security. Who knows maybe they’re taking out too much and pocketing the rest of the money.

I was just browsing around and came across a site with a list of paycheck calculators. Pretty useful for a few different reasons, including budgeting your funds.

Check it out: http://www.payroll-taxes.com/calculators.htm

So you open up a new checking account or your checks are going to run out. It’s time to order some new checks and maybe make a change and get a new check design. I’ve never been a big fan of fancy check designs. The simpler the better I say. After all, checks are made to pay things, not so the banks can earn some more money by charging extra for these designs.

The only place where I’d see a check design as useful are company checks. There I think you’d want to place your logo on the check, it seems to give your company credibility. In a strange way, the people you do business with will be more likely to accept a check from you, since it’s a professional looking check with your letterhead on it.

I see these commercials on TV all the time. They always seem to come on local television around 11AM-3PM. I never see them on at any other time. It seems like they’re trying to target people who are at home being lazy instead of working, apparently. All I see in these commercials is the promise of easy money (and Gary Coleman).
Since I’ve never gone to one of these companies I’m not sure how the process works, but I do believe you give them your bank information, you probably need to show them some recent paycheck stubs, who knows maybe they want some collateral too.

I can’t help to think that they take advantage of the poor by lending them money and then charging them an extremely high interest rate. But I guess that’s the American way.

It’s advisable to open a savings account when you have money to spare as you might need it in future. Alternatively, you can invest it in stock shares or can start your own small business . It always pays off and helps financing your needs by yourself rather than looking for debt finance options. So, you don’t have to look for a mortgage or other financial solutions for long term financing needs when you are backed up with personal funding. Such personal funding can be used to pay off credit card bills through secure online credit card transactions.