Community Magazine December 2009

LowPremiumHealth Insurance – Now Even without a new government healthcare package, health insurance may be more affordable than you think. Under a special program from Emblem, Oxford and some others, $815 a month buys full family health care coverage in New York, including medication and doctors in and out of the network, with 100 percent coverage of in-network charges. The network is one of the largest in New York and includes Sloan Kettering. The deductible for small medical bills is somewhat higher than average, but the plan still leaves you secure knowing that more major medical needs will be paid for in full as soon as the deductible is reached. Joey Sasson, Garber Atlas Fries and Associates Inc. The Free ComputerWell-Check An unexpected hard drive failure is one of the worst things that can happen to your PC. You may not only lose your disk drive, but permanently lose all the data on the drive. For many users, this can be totally disastrous. Many hard drive crashes are indiscriminate , but others are predictable – and preventable. That’s because almost all modern drives implement a monitoring technology called S.M.A.R.T (Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) that continuously passes readings on the hard drive condition. Up to 30 drive parameters can be monitored by S.M.A.R.T, including read and write error rates, seek error rate, spin up time, temperature and more. To analyze this mass of data, you need a special hard disk health monitoring program. Such programs can give you valuable advance warning that your hard drive is about to fail. This should give you time to backup your critical data and start looking for a replacement drive. Most of these monitoring programs are commercial products, but there are several capable free programs available. I like Active@HD Monitor.Afreeware version can be downloaded at disk-monitor.com. It combines S.M.A.R.T. checks and monitoring with general disk information, a scandisk utility and many options to configure. Surely a lot of value for no money. Hal Husney, Superior Development Center NY Re-Factoring the Facts Credit may seem like a commodity in which the lowest cost option is always the best. But that may not be the case in searching for a merchant factor to take over credit and collection functions. Direct factors, which are cheaper, usually require an exclusive relationship. For a wholesaler, this could be risky should they stop approving a specific retailer that buys your merchandise. A factor’s refusal to extend credit could damage your relationship with a key customer and present an open door for your competition. Additionally, the strongest direct factors will usually require that your company have annual sales in the $25 million range before they approve your account. The second option, which involves factors that broker credit with direct factors could cost a little more but offers access to multiple companies – which translates into more credit approvals to retailers. Not all re-factors have the volume necessary to work with a wide variety of direct factors, so be sure to review how much volume they do in your industry. Perhaps even more importantly, find out and how many different factors they represent and how much business they do with each to determine just how much pull they can get you. David Heskiel, Merchant Factors Thrive in this Economy: Six Focused Steps Revisit your business plan and ensure that your vision, values and 1. cash flow projects are on track. Any gap, whether intended or not, should be acknowledged and an active choice on how to proceed should be made. Get organized. Know where your business is spending its money 2. and where it is not. Get control of your bills, vendor pricing, and financials. Stop doing anything that is not working. Stop paying bills late. 3. Stop worrying about meeting payroll and start creating long- term solutions and making tough decisions to finally solve the problem. Analyze your expenses. See how you can reduce the top three 4. expenses by 10 percent and possibly eliminate the bottom three expenses. Highlight whatever is working well in your business and replicate 5. the model for other facets. Keep in constant contact with your vendors, banker and creditors. 6. Don’t wait for a financial crisis to force you to call. Randy Joy, Randy Joy Consulting, LLC It’s Your Busine $$ Do you have a killer business or personal finance tip? Send your contributions to business@communitym.com 84 Community magazine