Have You Written A Will?

More than half of us haven’t written a will, even though this means we could leave a terrible mess behind when we die. Many assume that if we die without a will our estate will still make its way to the right people, but this is not true. When there is no will your assets are split according to the rules of intestacy. This means that if you are married anything you own jointly will pass to your spouse. But everything else won’t.

In England and Wales your spouse will get the £270,000 and half of the rest. The remainder is then split between your children, or if you have no children your parents and siblings. There is no such thing as a common-law partner under UK law so even if you have lived together for decades, if you aren’t married (or in a civil partnership) and you die without a will they will get nothing.

If you are unmarried your estate will pass to your children, parents, siblings, distant family … or even Prince Charles. Prince Charles ends up getting plenty of money as a result of our general failure to write a will. If you die without one and have no family your estate goes to the crown, unless you live in Cornwall where the Duchy of Cornwall – Prince Charles – gets your assets. This has resulted in Prince Charles receiving over £1m, which he has handed on to charity.

The only way to ensure that your money goes instead to the people you want to receive it is to make a will. You can stipulate not only who gets what from your financial assets, but it also provides you with the opportunity to distribute your treasured possessions to the people who you think will most appreciate them. In order to ensure you get a legally binding will that reflects your exact wishes you should see a solicitor. You will typically pay around £140-£240.

If you and your partner both need a will you can keep your costs down by getting mirror wills. This is where both wills are exactly the same leaving everything to each other or your children and you just reverse your names on them. Alternatively, March and October are Free Wills Months. In these months anyone aged 55 or over can get a will written or updated by a solicitor for free. You are encouraged to make a donation to charity in your will in return for getting free legal advice. If you are worried about inheritance tax, note that if you give at least 10% of your estate to charity you’ll reduce your inheritance tax charge from 40% to 36%.

Once you have a will, don’t rest on your laurels. Review it at key stages in your life: births, marriages, deaths or the end of a relationship. Bear in mind that when you divorce your ex-spouse is automatically removed from your will, but if you only separate, they could still benefit even if you die years later. When writing your will be aware that anyone will be able to read it after you die. All wills become public documents that can be found via the Gov.uk website.

Become An Online Expert

If you’re an expert in something…and most of us are an expert in something or other…you can offer your advice online and turn it into profit. Small business owners are particularly well placed to cash in on this opportunity because they tend to know their field very well. Michele Gorham, owner of Cookie Central Bakery, is one small business owner who has turned her expertise into online profits. 

She has created hundreds of blog entries about how to build a business, run a bakery, and other helpful topics, and she answers customer’s direct questions through various social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. Because of Gorham’s content contributions, her listings on various sites are highly trafficked and are regularly found by search engines – generating more sales for her business. 

Is this a strategy you could emulate in your own field? Give it some thought. You may have a great deal more to offer than you at first realise. 

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL DRINK WINE DAY!  

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

FINALLY REVEALING IAN’S
“INCOME FOR LIFE”
SECRET!

 Hello.          

Are you worried you’re going to have to “work until you drop”? 

      Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy? 

     Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

 Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life. 

 And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this blueprint in your spare time. 

     Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

   www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes  

John Harrison 

For most of us the New Year heralds plans to get fit, eat better and generally be a better human. But have you thought about what you could do to improve your finances in 2020? There are a several simple steps that could make you significantly better off next New Year’s Eve.

Firstly, this is a good time to reassess your investment portfolio. Gauge whether the spread between different asset classes still suits your appetite for risk and the time you intend to be invested. The asset classes you choose to invest in will ultimately determine how your portfolio performs, usually more so than the specific investments you choose.

While you are at it check what fees you are paying; these can greatly reduce long-term returns. You may be able to save thousands by the time you retire by switching to a cheaper investment platform, in which case it would be daft not to do it. When it comes to your household finances, plan to tackle one bill at a time. Millions of people have lapsed from their initial-offer rates onto standard rate for all manner of bills, from electricity and gas to TV services and the gym. Pick one bill each month and cut the cost.

Your mortgage is likely to be your biggest monthly expense so take strides towards paying it off. Plunging interest rates mean now is the time to strike to knock years off your home loan term or save thousands in interest. Find out what interest rate you are currently paying and whether you would pay any charges to switch now.

Then look to see if you could get a lower-rate deal. If you can get a lower rate – which you probably can in the current market – switch, but keep your mortgage repayments the same. Moving from a rate of 4.24% to 1.39% but keeping your repayments the same would allow you to shave seven years off a £150,000 mortgage, saving £8,871 in interest. Finally, keep an eye on your credit-card statements. It’s so easy to sign up for things on trial, then forget to cancel. Check your spending, cancel any subscriptions you no longer use and raise any suspicious activity with your card provider.

Testing Your Business Idea

Just read an article by Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software, which reminded me of something incredibly important for anyone thinking of launching a business.

Cohen says that many would-be entrepreneurs invest huge amounts of time money and effort into their business idea without doing something very fundamental – they don’t ask people whether they would buy from them. He argues that if you can’t find ten people who say they would buy from you, you don’t have anything. Most would be entrepreneurs simply don’t ask the question before committing to the business they’re scared of getting a negative response.

I think Cohen is right up to a point, but he doesn’t really go far enough. In my experience, it’s not enough to have someone say that they would buy if the product/service was available – you need them to make a real commitment. It’s very easy to tell someone what they want to hear, but less easy when there’s real money at stake.

I can’t pretend this is easy for all businesses, but if you can find some way to get a real financial commitment from your perspective customers, you’ll get a far better idea of the potential of your business idea than by merely asking a question.

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL NO ONE EATS ALONE DAY!  

         

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

FINALLY REVEALING IAN’S
“INCOME FORLIFE”
SECRET!

 Hello.          

Are you worried you’re going to have to “work until you drop”? 

      Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s  YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy? 

     Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

      Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life. 

     And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep  your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this blueprint in your spare time. 

     Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

   www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes  

John Harrison 

Not every product is attractive in either appearance or function. Many fall into the yucky-but-necessary category. So how do you go about selling them? The makers of Naposure, a saline product designed to wash out a mucus laden nose, (apologies if you’re eating!) faced just this problem.

Their solution was to soften the whole thing by using attractive children in the advertisements, demonstrating the product. The cute and funny videos they made seemed to do the trick of making an unglamorous product visually attractive to the target market.

It’s a trick that toilet paper manufacturers have used for decades of course. What Labrador puppies have to do with the quality and effectiveness of Andrex is anyone’s guess, but they serve the function of making the product attractive, while very subtly conveying the benefits.

Perhaps if your product lacks a little glamour, you could think about making it more attractive and appealing by associating it in customer’s minds with something more acceptable. Something o give some thought to.

As an aside, I just discovered that toilet paper was first marketed in the United States just 150 years ago, and up until that point in time, everyone made ‘alternative arrangements’. Just give some thought to that the next time you’re bemoaning the fact that some modern day luxury you’ve become accustomed to isn’t working quite the way it should!

What’s New?

Almost every would-be entrepreneur I speak to is looking for something ‘new’…a product or service nobody has thought of before. But what exactly is ‘new’, and is this a realistic ambition? 

In the early part of the twentieth century, long before the internet, The Boston Globe had an instant real time news feed product, backed by advertising. Breaking news was chalked up on huge boards and placed in the newsroom window which backed onto the street.

The news was usually conveyed by a headline (140 characters or less!) and behind it were paid advertisements. In addition telegraphed communications of boxing matches or football matches was shouted out by employees using loud hailers, round by round or play to an eager audience. Early multimedia in action!

Okay, it’s not quite Twitter, but the point I’m making is that the demand for news of events as they happened was always there, and there was a product to fill the demand. What’s available on the internet today is just a modern day manifestation of a product meeting the same demand.

Rather than looking for something completely new and unique, a more fruitful route to a lucrative business opportunity might be to look at what was popular in the past, and then how it can be given a modern twist. Technology changes, but underlying inbuilt human needs wants and desires do not.

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL JUNK FOOD DAY!  

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

This Will Make You Money, Guaranteed 

Hello,

I know, I know – It’s very big claim in that subject line.

But this really is one of the few extra income ideas where I genuinely believe you can use the word ‘Guaranteed’!

Look, I don’t want to beat about the bush with this.

I’ve had many years experience with these types of systems and this is one I can strongly recommend. 

Take a look today: 

www.streetwisenews.com/variant6 

Best Wishes  

John Harrison

Just read a list of expensive mistakes that businesses make in Forbes magazine, and one error in particular struck a chord – making wildly optimistic sales forecasts.

One of the recurrent head-in-hands moments for me, is when someone hoping to do business with us says something along the lines of…”If just one person in a thousand who reads our ad places an order, we’ll make…”It sounds logical, it sounds viable but it rarely is. It’s usually based on nothing more than guess work…surely one in a thousand will be easy. Most of the time it won’t.

The bottom line is to always make sure your sales forecasts are based on hard facts rather than what ‘common sense’ tells you what should be a viable response from a big target market. It rarely works the way you expect.

Are You Doing Too Much?

Sometimes, what seems like a retrograde step turns out to be quite the opposite. When Terri Urbash left her job as a court reporter to start a family, she expected her income to go into reverse, but in fact the opposite happened. 

You see, the assignments continued to come in, and because she couldn’t now deal with them personally, she started farming them out to other court reporters. Then a large insurance company was looking to hire a deposition service. Urbash assumed it would go to a national competitor, but she applied for the contract anyway, and she got it. Network Deposition Services has soared since landing the client, expanding throughout Pennsylvania and now moving across the country.

What Urbash discovered perhaps by accident, is that you only start to make some real money when you stop DOING the work and start ORGANISING the work. There are only so many hours you can personally work each day or week, but when you start organising the work of others, you can profit from an almost infinite number of hours worked.

Are you guilty of spending too much time doing it, and not enough time organising it? 

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL LAZY DAY!  

         

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

This Will Make You Money, Guaranteed

Hello, 

I know, I know – It’s very big claim in that subject line. 

But this really is one of the few extra income ideas where I genuinely believe you can use the word ‘Guaranteed’!

Look, I don’t want to beat about the bush with this.

I’ve had many years experience with these types of systems and this is one I can strongly recommend. 

Take a look today:

www.streetwisenews.com/variant6 

In the days before footballers got paid £100,000+ a week, you always knew where you’d find an ex-player after retiring – behind the bar of his own pub. It was the career of choice for any player who hadn’t gambled away his wages. Did you ever wonder why?

I think it’s because people naturally gravitate towards businesses they enjoy patronising themselves. If you enjoy spending your leisure time in a pub, why not get paid for it instead? It’s the same thought process that has led people to open coffee shops, gyms, and myriad retail establishments. But does this make sense?

Well, yes and no. If you’re an enthusiastic consumer of something, you should have a good feel for what the market wants. That’s bound to be an advantage. But at the same time, it would be an extra-ordinary coincidence if the optimum business for you turned out to be the type of business you personally enjoy frequenting most as a consumer. And there’s always the chance that you will metaphorically ‘drink the profits.’

The lesson to take away from this is to thoroughly question your motives for following the business path you’ve chosen. If it’s nothing more than an extension of your consumption preferences, it could be worth a rethink.

Pin-Picking Advice

Let me ask you to choose a number between 1 and 50. Pick it at random. Okay? Now, if, like me, your choice was thirty seven, you are in potential trouble. You have what’s known as a ‘group mind’. Apparently, we all follow the herd.

That’s a problem when it comes to picking a PIN number or a password most of us are very predictable! For a PIN, we pick our date or year of birth. Common passwords are 123456, abc123, qwerty, computer, password and the name of the website we’ve accessed.

Other favourite passwords relate to the names of our partners, children and favourite football team. Bottom line? Stick with the random four-digit number sent to you by your bank or, if you prefer, choose a random one of your own. Likewise, passwords – one for each site etc – should be a random mix of letters and numbers, upper and lower case etc.

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL BEST FRIENDS DAY!  

         

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

Forty-year Betting Veteran Makes Shocking Confession…

“I Still Don’t Have A Clue
  Which Horse Will Win!”

But By Analysing The Result Of Over
100,000Races, I’ve Discovered A Back Door
Route To a £20,000+ Guaranteed Year
Round Profit From Carefully Selected UK
Races…

Anyone Can Copy Me, It Takes Just
Ten Minutes A Day. And You Get To
Choose How Much You’ll Win…£10…
£20…Or Even £50 A Race!

For the full story visit;

www.streetwisenews.com/shotgun

Bulletin reader Bob Gregory received this envelope from a restaurant he’d visited before. Rather than a straightforward discount voucher, this is a bit different. It demonstrates the power of one of the most important influencers on human behaviour – curiosity.  

As you can see, the envelope offers money off  a meal at the restaurant, but here’s the  difference, you only find out how much of a discount after eating the meal and opening the envelope on receipt of the bill. It could be 25% or it could be 50%. It’s a surprise and you’re not allowed to find out beforehand.

Will it work? Well it certainly worked on Bob because he booked a meal, and I can see why. It’s something different to the ubiquitous discount voucher, and there’s an element of intrigue and excitement. Bob won’t know how much he’s saved until afterwards. 

Now he may suspect, as would many others, that the discount will be 25%,  but he doesn’t know for sure. Maybe it will be more. There’s only one way to find out.

Is this something you could use in your business? It seems to me there are many different ways this idea could be used. I’ll certainly be thinking about it.  

You’re Never The Wrong Age

I never like to miss the chance to nail the “I’m too young/old excuse, and Nathan Clark has given me another chance. Eleven year old Nathan was doing his maths homework and needed to find a ruler. He looked down at his pencil and that’s when the inspiration hit – why not combine a ruler with a pencil? 

He went out and found a manufacturer, but their minimum order was 1,000 pencils. Not having the funds to proceed, Nathan made a video appeal and approached a fund raising company called Kickstart to raise the $350 he needed. Three days later over $2,500 had been pledged. 

 Will this make Nathan a millionaire? Probably not, but with the ambition and drive that he clearly has, Nathan will have a big success on his hands at some stage in the future.

Now consider this, if he can do all this at eleven, do you have any reason for not taking action with your own pals? 

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL FLUFFY SLIPPERS DAY!  

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

Forty-year Betting Veteran Makes Shocking Confession…

“I Still Don’t Have A Clue
  Which Horse Will Win!”

But By Analysing The Result Of Over
100,000Races, I’ve Discovered A Back Door
Route To a £20,000+ Guaranteed Year
Round Profit From Carefully Selected UK
Races…

Anyone Can Copy Me, It Takes Just
Ten Minutes A Day. And You Get To
Choose How Much You’ll Win…£10…
£20…Or Even £50 A Race!

For the full story visit;

www.streetwisenews.com/shotgun