I worked as a Finance Manager for a number of years. Over that time I oversaw a number of complex collections groups and at times we outsourced our collections to factoring companies.

There is a right time and a wrong time for a company to factor their invoices through a Factoring Service. The decision should not be made lightly but can be advantageous both for your company’s bottom line but also for the credit of your customers. Factoring invoices and outsourcing the collection on those invoices to a company specializing in those services can save you time and money and overhead. Your invoices are not something that can just be handed off and forgotten about soon after. It takes a good amount of time to properly plan the transition and plan the management of the new relationship with your future factoring partner. Any company that does their homework in these two areas, can definitely save money, save overhead, offer their customers lower prices and help their customers build out better credit. Factoring prices are reasonable and can be comparative to the costs that many companies reserve for bad debt and pay for inhouse collections. However, if a company attempts to hand over the invoices and ignore the partnership no savings will be found. To put it a different way, you do not want to outsource a broken inhouse process. Fix your culture and your process first, and then factoring can be a useful service.

Note. For anyone considering factoring services, I have offered my consulting services in this area since 2005.

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If you are not currently covered with travelers insurance by your employer nor covered by your credit card company, or if they do not cover you fully for a number of different scenarios you may want to consider picking up travel insurance when you travel outside the United States or the country that you reside in.

A recent press release by TravelSafe Insurance, a company that has been providing Travel Insurance for the last 37 years, highlights the benefits of a person can receive from protecting themselves with travel insurance.

When you travel abroad, your health insurance does not always cover you in hospitals located in foreign countries. Even if it does cover you sometimes it cannot pay for the service upfront and you must do that in cash or with a supplemental policy. American Express may reimburse your travelers checks if they’re lost, but sometimes it takes travel insurance to reimburse you for lost luggage and clothing. Furthermore if you have to cancel the trip because of the hurricane or some other event, travel insurance can reimburse you the cost of the plane tickets.

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The gold standard was replaced with a floated currency during the Great Depression after the stock market crash.  This was a US only activity and the rest of the world did not follow suit (even though some countries did eventually.)

There was a time when using gold for engineering purposes was considered a good thing due to the maleability and condutivity of gold.  But advances in technology have decreased the engineering benefits of gold a bit.

This has reduced the potential that someday world governments would natioanlize gold to be used solely for engineering purposes, a move that in theory could have decreased the value of gold significantly.

Our sponsors at the Monex Deposit company have recently provided a release discussing the historically continuation of a trend where the value of gold continues to increase.

They offer collectors the ability to purchase artistically rendered gold coins and ingots made of gold, silver, and other precious metals.  These artistic renditions may someday have a value greater than the market rate of gold (this is where the collectibility factor comes into play and its not something that you can look at if you are a pure investor) but if you like to gamble on collectibles MDC provides a wide selection of products that you can purchase.

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Many years ago I read a story about a man that journey’s back in time to the present with gold wire wrapped around his waist as a belt. In the future gold has lost its investing appeal and is only used for engineering purposes. If that future were a possibility, then people would need to sell their gold now.

History has shown us however that gold investing is likely to continue for many years to come as people for thousands of years have demanded gold for many reasons that are not always practical. Our sponsor Monex, through their recent press release, continues to offer gold ingots and bullion for investors trusting in the human propensity to continue demanding gold for many many generations to come.

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In 1967 A.E. Feldman Associates, Inc. founded and created a staffing and recruiting firm which has become dedicated to providing service across the nation for firms and corporations looking to fill executive positions from the associate level to the partner level and from the top executive level down to the middle management level.

They cover many different roles and positions within an organization from legal services, to communications, technology, finance and risk management.

They focus on providing services for industry leading clients and high-quality candidates. According to their latest release their forty years of experience helps them to find a way to place the best candidates for the roles targeted by their clients.

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