Do You Believe God Has A Purpose for Your Life? Fall 2018

Do You Believe that God has a Purpose for Your Life?

By: Pastor Susan Chigwada | Sister2Sister International | Republished from 2018

Do you believe that God has a purpose assigned to your life? Do you want to impact the world? Do you need a platform to help you achieve your goals? Do you need a sister to go there with you? Sister2Sister is a faithbased women’s organization that believes in supporting, developing, and encouraging the purpose God placed in a woman’s life. Religious debate aside, are you able to answer the above questions as it pertains to your life? Addressing these questions and more is a quest to empower women. Women are working together to advance personal assignments to have a strong effect and impact on the world.

God created all people with a purpose inside of them. Your mission goes beyond yourself, family, region, and the nations. Women are to take part in positively influencing what is known as “the seven mountains of society” sometimes referred to as pillars or spheres or shapers namely:

1. Education 2. Religion 3. Family 4. Business 5. Government 6. Arts/Entertainment 7. Media

We believe that every woman can achieve a measure of their life’s purpose on their own. Women because of various reasons which include but not limited to upbringing, level of education, religious beliefs, geographic location, do not believe in themselves or their life’s purpose. Sister2Sister affirms women; thereby giving each other the confidence needed to impact their sphere effectively or to “occupy their mountain or sphere.” In addition to affirmation, there is a need for a positive impact on each other. It provides women with the necessary strength that is needed to do business in their spheres of influence effectively and with added confidence.

Women are taking their rightful positions in the world. In ancient Jewish history, Deborah was a Judge; she owned her own “Palm Tree of Deborah” where she used to sit under and hear community cases brought by the Children of Israel andpassed her judgments. The ancient proverbs speak of a businesswoman who bought and sold in the marketplace. She would go out and survey land and purchased real estate.

Multiply your impact as sisters through coming together and connecting using the “the multiplier effect” it ranges

from sharing of information to forming partnerships or being each other’s customers. Sister2Sister’s goal is to impact and change the world. You do not have to be a conglomerate to impact the world; you need to know sister influencers in a different part of the world. To achieve this Sister2Sister has chapters in different parts of the world. Connections are vital. The world is a “global village” operations in one’s sphere should be able to influence another part of the world. In Sister2Sister we open doors for each other by having sister connections in different parts of the world. With a local contact, you will know the requirements of that country. We encourage identifying and having a desire to provide needs no matter how small your business.

Learn more about your life’s purpose at www.Sis2Sis.org

The Bottom

Line

Financial intelligence the journey of how money works, amass, secure, invest, and handle it, is the bottom line.

Understanding your FICO score.

by : Ruth VanDerostyne | Financial Tax Strategies | Republished from 2018

Collections

1. If you pay a collection account, it will drop your credit score. If you want to pay a collection account that is currently on your credit report, it will drop your credit score because it makes the date of activity current. It is best to ask the collection company if they will stop reporting to the bureaus if you agree to pay the bill. 2. It does not make a difference on the FICO score if you settle the account versus paying the bill in full. If there are collection accounts to settle, do not let a mortgage credit be run. Experian has a program where they notify the collection companies if your credit has been run. If you run a mortgage credit report before you settle the collection, you will not get a good deal to settle. They know you want to purchase a home and in order to do that, you need to pay the collection. 3. Settle a collection at the end of the month, so you will get a better settlement.

Collection companies have quotas they need to meet, and if you wait until the end of the month, you will pay less for the debt. If you have a collection company calling, tell them “do not contact me by phone” if they continue, you can sue them. If you have a robot calling your cell phone, that is an automatic reason to sue them also. 4. If you have one or more accounts to settle, do not let a mortgage credit be run.

Amount of Tradelines you should have:

You should have four accounts in good standing to optimize credit score. It is best to have a home loan, car loan, and two credit cards. If you don’t have a home loan or a car loan, you should have four credit cards. Student loans, if not in deferment count as one of the four trade lines active on your credit report.

Credit Card Balances:

It is important to keep your credit card balances under 30% of its limit (15% is even better). If you keep your balance under 30% of the credit limit, you will receive 5 points to your FICO score, If you keep your balance under 15% of the credit limit, you will receive 15 points to your FICO score. Once you go over 50% of the credit limit, it will drop your score 18 points (per credit card).

Inquiries:

5-9 inquiries in a two-year period will drop your score 20 points. Don’t let anyone run your credit. You can run your credit on the free websites, show that report to the person you are applying for credit and see if they can do the deal. If they can, then allow them to run your report through their company.

Don’t close credit cards:

Once you have eight years worth of credit history on your credit report, you get 40 points added to your FICO score. So don’t close credit cards. If you want to do a “transfer balance” to another credit card, that is ok, don’t close the credit card you moved the balance from. Don’t let the creditor close your account. Use your credit card once every 4 to 6 months, then pay off the balance.

Authorized User:

The authorized user still works today. Example: Mom has great credit, and she wants to help out her son. She can add him as an authorized user on her credit card, Mom’s great credit will go on the son’s report, son’s bad credit will not hop on Mom’s credit report. The authorized user works for car loans and credit cards. If you want to open a home mortgage, you need to have your own credit established.

Types of Credit Cards:

If you only have major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, and American Express), you will get 16 points added to your FICO score. If you add a department store card to your credit, you will then have 27 points added to your FICO score.

Bank Accounts:

If you have a checking account, it will give you 5 points added to your FICO score, savings account gives you 10 points, if you have both, it will give you 20 points added to your FICO score.

Preparing Small Businesses for Grant Funding Competitions

By: Margaret Jackson I Publisher & Radio Personality I https://smallbusinessconcierge.biz/

In today’s world of uncertainties and learning to adapt to living with a pandemic, increasing operating expenses, grants have become more available to small business owners. Grant funding is a competitive process. You will compete against other small businesses for that grant money. It takes preparation and time to compete formidably for grant funding. Winging it does not work. If it is a crisis and the grant funding need is immediate, you will not compete well. Competing for grant funding under pressure, stress, and urgency is not a combination for success. If you want to compete well for grant funding, start preparing for the competition before you need the funding. Thinking it through and getting ready to compete is critical to successful grant submission. Are you ready to compete for a grant? My top five steps to get you started with grant funding competitions.

1. Do not submit a grant unprepared.

Thinking about how you want to compete in the grant process is essential.

Start by creating a funding plan. 2. Assess the need. Assessing areas that need funding will help you determine an organized order of funding the goals. 3. What are your funding goals, and are they ongoing? How much money do you need to raise? Use an Excel spreadsheet to calculate each funding goal. 4. Learn grant language. Do your homework. Grant funding opportunities come in options and topics. For example, seed money, matching funds, research, scholarship, endowments, program development, technical assistance, and many other phrases. Be aware of the terms and language used by the grantors. 5. Hire a seasoned grant writer. Make it a collaborative effort and learn the grant writing ropes. Do not ask grant writers to write for free and pay them on the back end. Many grants will have language in the grant announcement on not using the funds to pay the grant writer. It is your responsibility. Pay the grant writer and learn the ropes.

A great way to get your grant writing feet wet is to apply for grants that have short online applications. However, do not blaze through it like a bat out of hell, thinking it will be easy to win that $5,000 grant. Take time and think through your responses, every question matters, and every response matters. It is a competition, and you will not win them all, but you can win a lot using the best grant writing practices.

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