US Finance World

Thousands of fishermen have suffered thanks to the latest pensions scandal.

Yet another pensions scandal has come to light. This time, it’s fishermen who are losing out

A pension scheme was established for distant water fishermen (aka trawlermen) in 1961 and anyone who entered the industry from that date onwards was obliged to join the scheme. Fishermen had to contribute sixpence a day to the scheme – 2.5p in ‘new’ money – and carried on making contributions until 1979.

That all sounds fine but there was a big problem. The administrators of the scheme were shockingly lax and didn’t keep proper information about the scheme’s members. The only records kept were their surnames, initials and dates of birth. No addresses and no National Insurance numbers.

As a result, many fishermen who had reached retirement age weren’t getting any payments from the scheme.

The scheme is now operated by Aviva, and, in fairness, the insurance giant has tried to sort out the mess. It launched

Read more…

I am pleased to announce INDIE Beauty Networks new Local Directors! Since IBN launched in 2000, it has expanded tremendously, and today there are nearly 800 Full and Supplier members in 50 states, Canada and the US Virgin Islands, and over 7,000 participants at our niche social networking site. Through the years, I have considered formalizing local branches, but the time never seemed to be quite right. Now, I know why: because the time is right now.

Meet IBNs first Local Directors, from left to right: Grace Antares, serving in Portland, Oregon; Susan Mann, serving in Boston, Massachusetts; and La Shonda Tyree, serving in Newark and Northern and Central New Jersey. I will tell you more about each of these amazing ladies in a minute, but first, I want to share why I am leading IBN in this new and exciting direction.

Mission Critical!

Consistent with my personal and business mission to empower and encourage women to maximize their potential through small business ownership, I structured IBN to facilitate enduring relationships and personal connections that are at the heart of a womans life and her business.

Read more…

I think a lot of people have false ideas about what entrepreneurship is all about. Apparently, so does Carol Roth. In her book, The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks and Rewards of Having Your Own Business, she lays it all down for anyone considering starting a business. Roth covers all the reasons people want to start a business:

• Itll make me rich
• I want to be my own boss
• I want to do more of what I love
• I can work when and where I want

Then she essentially shatters these myths. Think youll be your own boss? Think again. You have to answer to your employees, customers and vendors. Getting rich? Very few strike oil in their first year (or three).  The book is designed to scare the bejesus out of you, and if you finish it without screaming off into the sunset, you just might be cut out to be an entrepreneur.

The Honeymoon Period

Roth covers what she calls the honeymoon period. T

Read more…

Everywhere you turn on the interwebs people will give you advice about getting found in Google. One of the keys to being successful is to ensure you have links coming into your website. Thats a pretty tall order when you consider the web grows by leaps and bounds every single day.

There are many tools that have been created to help you with this task. One of them is the Link Builder tool created by the good people at WordTracker. I havent tried this tool, but it looks like it may be helpful with reaching your link building goals. Right now they are offering a risk-free 7-day trial of Link Builder if you want to take it for a spin.

Ken McGaffin, the CMO of WordTracker recorded a helpful webinar on How to Build Links To Your Website that would be worth your while to watch. Ive included it below so you can see what hes talking about.

Read more…

Low-rate cards are not just more simple, but they can even be cheaper than 0% cards!

Anyone who gets a 0% card and then sticks with it after the introductory deal expires will typically pay around 18% interest thereafter. If you can’t picture how expensive that is, let me tell you that it is a very expensive debt indeed!

Yet there are those who can’t be bothered to hop around from card to card, chasing the best interest rates all the time. They just want a single, fair rate for both purchases and transfers, with no fees, combined with the usual benefits of a credit card: the ability to borrow and repay flexibly.

And those are just some of the benefits that low-rate credit cards can offer. Another is that low-rate cards can be even cheaper than 0% cards, but I’ll come to that later.

Read more…