Stop Smoking and Save on Life Insurance

For insurance companies, deciding how much to charge any given individual for life cover is all about calculating the level of risk involved in insuring them. Insurance companies assess this risk by taking medical histories and collecting information about lifestyles, physical health and other factors. Looking after your health, therefore, is one of the best ways of reducing the cost of life cover-and the smoking habit is one of the single biggest lifestyle factors that drive the cost of insurance up.
The Higher Cost of Life Insurance
The average smoker will pay at least 40% more for life cover than they would if they were a non-smoker. Some insurance companies are more forgiving than others, but depending on the company you choose, you could pay up to 55% more for your life insurance. Being a smoker affects all forms of life and health based insurance, including critical illness cover and income protection.
Quitting cigarettes can amount to huge savings on your life insurance premiums. For example, a 35 year old male smoker with a policy benefit of 100,000 might pay 19 per month for the cover, whereas a non-smoker might pay only 10. Over twenty years, the non-smoker pays 2,400 for their life cover, while the smoker pays 4560 - that s an extra 2160 over twenty years. That may not seem like much, but when you consider that the average British smoker spends 1,500 a year on cigarettes, quitting smoking for any reason adds up to sizable savings and lower insurance premiums are the icing on the cake.
Getting your Premiums Reduced
If you re currently a smoker paying these astronomical prices for life cover, you can still reduce your premiums to a more affordable level. Most life insurance companies require that a smoker who has recently quit must remain a non-smoker for a full year before requesting an evaluation of their premium to take their new non-smoking status into account.
Don t think you can fool your insurance company into thinking you re a non-smoker when you haven t given up, however. Ex-smokers who want to switch to a non-smoking premium rate will have to fill out a new application form, go through another medical exam, and relate their recent medical history as well. Your insurer may even request that you take a cotanine test to prove your non-smoking status. Any false information invalidates the policy, and as with all types of insurance, absolute honesty is the only way to go.
Take the Opportunity to Shop Around
Remember that if you decide to have your status as a non-smoker evaluated to reduce the premiums on your current policy, this will be a good time to shop around and see if you can find an even better policy elsewhere. The best savings might not even be with your current insurance provider, and you might be able to save even more money by checking out your options.
Interestingly enough, kicking a smoking habit can even save you money on your home insurance. With more than half of home fire claims attributable to cigarette-related causes, non-smokers can save on home insurance premiums, too.
Discover how and where to get cheap life insurance quotes at discounted premium rates at life-saver.co.uk. Instantly compare policies and premiums from up to 20 UK life insurance companies with savings of up to 40%.



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Solutions to Reduce your Accounting Expenses

A good number of small business owners overlook the basic importance of accounting and bookkeeping to curtail regular expenditure. You may often come across many other small business houses that are in constant search for lower and lower account expense. Every small business owner knows that major portions of account management costs are eaten up by accounting software and accounting professionals. Is there any solution that can save our accounting expenses!
Using Accounting Software
If you are not using a small business accounting software, consider using it right now. Small business accounting software will empower you to manage your accounts and financial information effectively. It will also reduce the time and money spent on overall accounting. Effective use of small business accounting software can make it possible to review all the data relevant to accounts payable, accounts receivable, invoices, and inventories. Such software may also be used with other popular software such as Microsoft Office for better results. By reducing personnel needed for accounting not only are accounting expenses reduced but also the possibility of errors in accounting is reduced drastically.
Outsourcing Accounting to an Offshore Service Provider
Outsourcing accounting and financial related tasks to an offshore service provider can reduce accounting costs significantly. Small business owners can avoid hiring full-time or part-time accounting professionals; instead they can use an offshore accounting services provider for all their accounting tasks. Many small businesses have reported savings of thousands of dollars by outsourcing to a reliable and competent service provider capable of providing accounting services like bookkeeping, business taxes, accounts payable, accounts receivables, and account settlement. One such example is of a real estate company in St. Paul, MN that benefited from the expertise and experience of Cybelink, an offshore service provider. Cybelink translated the company s accounts, which were mainly in Excel files and converted them into QuickBooks. This change in accounting allowed the client to review easily the weekly, monthly and yearly reports of financial transactions of the business. The accounting system set up by Cybelink allowed the client to communicate easily with their CPA and helped the real estate company to make informed business decisions.
Accounting Processes Standardization
Small business owners should see their entire accounting processes and standardize them within their company. The standardization should occur within their accounting processes and in their technology. For example, if two different employees engaged for accounts receivable and accounts payable and say if they use the customer list stored in two different computers, it is a problem. As a small business owner you should ask following questions: Can these two different processes be combined? Why the customer list stored in different computers? If you look around the company you may see several inefficiencies in your accounting processes and how it is carried out. Fixing them will save you time and money.
Financial Controls Financial controls are used to ensure that financial transactions are recorded accurately and the financial management system is not tampered with intentionally or unintentionally. Mere generation of accounting information is not enough, it is also important to make use of it for the growth of the business. All business owners should understand basic accounting and they should be able to read financial statements like balance sheet, profit and loss statement, and cash flow statement.
Indirect Expenses Related to Accounting By creating a systematic and efficient accounting setup a small business can also lower the costs it would bear for tax return preparation or the fees to pay to the tax professionals. All the required information and data is easily found and well presented. For example, say you use QuickBooks for all your accounting and financial transactions, then with a click of a button you can export all the data to sent to you CPA for year-end tax purposes. If you are keeping your financial data in different software like Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word it is difficult to consolidate the data, it will be a time-consuming and error prone process for the staff to prepare the data to send to CPA.
If you want to reduce accounting expenses, than streamlining the whole accounting procedure is a better idea than cutting corners. However, if you follow the steps mentioned above, you can easily save a lot of money.
Mani Malarvannan is cofounder of Cybelink, a company specializes in small business financial and accounting outsourcing like Bookkeeping, Tax, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, etc. For more info visit http://www.cybelink.com



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How To Make Money From Internet Auctions

If your business is not using eBay and other Internet auctions, you could be missing out. Here are just a few ways of generating additional income, profits and cashflow from online auctions.
1. Convert Excess Assets to Cash
Sell personal or business items that you no longer use. For example, are there slow moving inventory
items in your store? A major camera store chain sells their slow movers, quite successfully, through eBay.
2. Buy and Sell Anything
Sometimes people put things out in the garbage because they don t need them anymore and don t know anyone who could use them. You can successfully sell some of these items by Internet auction.
As well, if you pick up bargains from garage sales, flea markets, importers, wholesalers, closeout dealers or other sources, these items can also be sold through online auctions.
3. Drop Shipping
There are suppliers who will ship one item at a time for you. You don t have to stock any inventory. You simply pay your dropship supplier out of the money you receive from your auction sale. They will ship the product directly to your customer.
4. Self-Publishing
Do you have expertise in a specialized area of interest to people? Then, you could publish your own information product.
A very popular format for self-publishing information products is the electronic book (or e-book). E-book compilers, some of which are free, are readily available on the Internet. When people buy your e-book, they can download it from your website or receive it by e-mail.
You could sell such self-published information products on eBay and other Internet auction sites.
Incidentally, online auctions are an inexpensive method of testing the market for your information (or other) products.
5. Reprint and Resale Rights
You may not want to produce your own information products presently. Or, perhaps, you may already
have an information product, but would like to supplement your income with additional, related product offerings. This is where reprint and resale rights come in.
You can buy the rights to reprint or resell excellent information products created by other people. Some of these rights are inexpensive.
In addition to selling these products from your own website, you can use Internet auctions to create extra sales. Another advantage of online auctions is that they can create additional traffic for your website.
6. Sell Your Services
Do you design logos or websites? Do you sell consulting or other services? These, also, can be successfully sold through eBay and other auction sites.
7. Run an eBay Consignment Shop
There are still people who don t have a computer or who don t use eBay. You could sell on a consignment basis for them, taking a commission on the successful sale. You would need to charge for advertising expenses incurred, such as eBay listing and selling fees.
8. Promote Affiliate Programs through Auctions
Some affiliate programs have brandable e-books that contain your affiliate link. When people order from the e-book that they bought from your online auction, you get credit for the sale. As well, some of those purchasers may sign up as affiliates, earning you additional commissions.
Some of these e-books have valuable information that is worth the nominal value you would sell it for on eBay. In other cases, such an e-book is readily available for free. In this latter case, you might consider selling another related product and offer the e-book as a free bonus.
9. Supply Fellow Online Auctioneers
During the gold rush days, it is said that those who sold picks and shovels were more likely to make money than those panning for gold. Similarly, since there is such a big market for online auctions, you can make money supplying eBayers with information and auction tools to help them start and grow their own online auction business.
10. Internet Auction Consulting
As you gain experience and expertise in online auctions, you might consider charging for your knowledge.
Consulting services, seminars, information products and other ways of packaging your knowledge can earn you additional income streams.
These are just a few of the ways you can profit from Internet auctions.



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Free tools for individuals,companies and customers on MoreWorld.com

Free tools for individuals,companies and customers on MoreWorld.com MoreWorld.com provides its users with tools for individuals and companies to make day to day business just a little easier. The MoreWorld personal schedule allows users to maintain their appointments online. Maintaining ones schedule on MoreWorld has several benefits. Users can view their schedule from anywhere with an internet connection. They can also setup email reminders for their important appointments. Users can even have us send them an email each day with their daily schedule and other important information for each day. Users can add arbitrary appointments to their schedule or they can confirm an appointment when they purchase a service with a local business that is registered with MoreWorld. The MoreWorld To Do List allows users to keep track of everything they need to do. Each To Do item can have a due date. User s To Do List will be included in their daily email, and they can be sent email reminders when their To Do items are coming due. MoreWorld has a variety of email reminders to keep users on top of their world. MoreWorld can send users a daily email with their schedule, To Do list, and list of invitation. Users can also setup email reminders for appointments and due dates. MoreWorld is available on the web at www.moreworld.com.



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