How to Prepare Your Affairs In Case the Worst Happens
The coronavirus pandemic has brought a death toll in the millions from all around the world. The best way to protect people from contracting the illness remains distancing yourself from other people and staying indoors as much as possible. But people still need to go to work, especially if they’re frontline workers.
However, although the definition of frontline workers needs to be agreed upon by authorities, you may already be returning to your regular workplace. This is particularly hazardous. For example, even if your wellness resort adjusts to the pandemic, you still face an increased risk of contracting the illness and getting hospitalized.
Worse, you may have a preexisting condition and fall mortally ill. The mortality risk of the illness depends on largely on your age, but you never know how it can affect you and your capacity to earn. Although it is a very sensitive and grim topic, you need to learn how to set your affairs in order in case you are hospitalized for a prolonged time or in case the worst happens.
Here are five steps you can take to ensure your affairs won’t be a mess if you fall ill and that your loved ones are take care of.
Locate all Personal Records
You need to set your affairs in order long before you put yourself at risk. Locate and collate all important personal records your family or loved ones may need to check you into a hospital or to access your finances. These will generally fall into three categories: personal information, financial data and medical information
Medical information includes your insurance policy and documents on the coverage of your health insurance. Your previous medical history will also be necessary to guide doctor’s treatments.
Your personal information includes all documents that will help your loved prove that you are who you say you are. Birth certificates, certificates of employment and marriage licenses belong in this category.
Finally, you must collate your financial records. The passwords to your bank accounts, lists of assets like real estate property and investments should all be easily accessible by your family in case the worst happens.
Create a Reference for Important Documents
Naturally, all your documents will be incredibly difficult to parse. This is why you need to make it easier for your loved ones to reference and find them. For example, you can sort out all your files into different clearly marked folders with tabs indicating the contents. You can print out a page identifying which document is which and where they can be found. This will make the process significantly easier if you do succumb to an illness.
Prepare Advanced Directives
If you do catch the virus, you’re more likely to be incapacitated for a long period or even rendered uncommunicative. You may be too delirious to manage your healthcare and finances or unable to speak due to medical devices. This makes arranging advanced directives essential prior to the events. Advanced directives generally fall into two types. A living will instructs people on how you want to be cared or in your illness. The other type is assigning someone who will have durable power of attorney for health care. This designated person will be in charge of making medical decisions for you.
If you own a business or have a lot of enterprises, you may also want to assign someone with durable power of attorney, which will empower them to make decisions for you in any legal task should you be unable to make them on your own.
Come Up with Financial Strategies
Whether you’re running your own business or simply working on the front lines, you and the important people in your life need to come up with financial strategies should you fall ill. This can include where you’re going to get the money to pay for your health care. Which assets are you all willing to part with to fund prolonged hospitalization? Should you sell the car first or take out a second mortgage on your house? Setting these protocols up long before they become necessary makes it less hard for your loved ones and reduces the stress from an already stressful situation.
Contact a Legal Professional
Finally, it wouldn’t hurt to get the advice of a legal professional. Have a lawyer go over your affairs such as your will and check if everything is in order. This can help you spot any issue that could reduce legal entanglements if you’re unresponsive or worse in a hospital. Their help will also be necessary if you plan on changing your will.
Yes, it’s not pleasant to discuss what could happen when the worst happens. But bad things, like serious illness, can and regularly do happen, especially in these uncertain times. Not discussing the probability and how to handle such events helps no one. Learning how to set your affairs in order will give you and your loved ones some peace of mind in these troubled times.
Purchasing a house can be a long and arduous task, especially for first-time homebuyers. Unless you have help from wealthy parents or are making big bucks yourself, chances are that the process won’t be as smooth sailing as you’d like it to be.
Home sellers, for instance, may say no to your offer or give you an unfair deal. Another scenario is a mortgage loan provider not giving you the interest rate you need.
When the home buying process gets tough, how do tough homebuyers keep going? Here are a few tips you can follow to stay motivated, disciplined and focused during the entire home purchasing journey:
If your friends or family members aren’t supportive of your decision to purchase a home in the current market, hear their reasons and arguments. Then, check if the facts they’re providing are true.
Also, don’t get discouraged when people warn you with home buying horror stories. If you find out some buyers delaying or changing their home buying timeline because of a specific problem, this doesn’t mean that their situation will automatically apply to you. Every home purchase is different, so don’t assume that things will end up badly when you see one or two aspiring buyers not doing well on their journey.
Although you need to be realistic with the house you can afford to buy, this doesn’t mean that you should settle for the next cheap house you see on the market. When people become exhausted or frustrated from their house-hunting efforts, they often begin to lower their standards. This way, they don’t have to experience the hassle of searching anymore.
If you’re getting annoyed about not finding the home you want, never settle for less. Take your time and be patient.
House hunting in a demanding real estate market can be a challenge for a lot of homebuyers. Once you’ve found an ideal property, chances are that someone else thinks that it’s ideal, too. This results in bidding wars, increased prices and raised stress due to competition.
Instead of getting annoyed at other homebuyers for wanting the same house, take steps to stand out from the crowd. Make offers that property sellers can’t refuse. Also, see if you could submit an offer that’s slightly above the listing price. This is helpful if you want to purchase a home that’s in demand.
The real estate market isn’t always constant or balanced. Sometimes, it favors sellers. Other times, the market favors buyers. Get familiar with how the housing market works in your area. This way, you’ll face fewer surprises and disappointments during the home purchasing process. What’s more, you’ll know the ideal time to proceed with your buying transactions.
Placing your best financial foot at the start of the home purchasing process is an effective way to infuse positive energy into the entire buying journey. Start by coming up with a realistic budget for a new home. Make sure that you take into account the following expenses:
Having a sound budget will give you a good grasp of the range of houses you should be viewing.
As you’re getting ready to buy, you’ll want to work on your financial health. A few measures you can do include:
Many dream of having a house of their own. Unfortunately, not everyone knows exactly what to look for in a house. When they can’t find what they want, they may likely settle for a residential property that isn’t ticking off all the boxes. Eventually, they’ll end up hating their new home before they even get to unpack.
So save yourself from frustration and disappointment by knowing exactly what you want in your dream home.
A good way to do this is to create a vision board. Start by pasting a picture of a dream home on the board.
Alternatively, you could put photos of the various parts of your dream house, such as the bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. Then, add specific details to these areas. You could, for instance, write down that you want a sofa, a coffee table and hardwood flooring in your ideal living room.
By creating a vision board and putting up pictures of your dream home, you’re training your mind to stay focused on what you want to achieve.
A positive mindset makes a lot of difference when finding and buying a great home. When you need further motivation, get someone to guide you through this life-changing journey.
Factors to Consider When Sanitizing Your Workplace
COVID-19 vaccines from multiple pharmaceutical companies are being distributed across the globe. However, recent mutations of the virus and the limited supply of vaccines continue to slow down progress towards everyday life being back to normal. As such, social distancing and proper cleaning and disinfection are still essential when working in the office.
The virus is dangerous, especially for children and older adults who have compromised immune systems. Its symptoms range from mild instances like coughs, fever, and colds to full-blown respiratory infections and kidney failure. It spreads easily, too, when an infected individual speaks, coughs, or sneezes. These actions spread their infected respiratory droplets in the air. If another person breathes these droplets in, they could get infected, too. And when the virus settles on surfaces, it can stay alive for a few hours to days.
Cleaning Your Office
With so many surfaces for the virus to settle on and the different common areas your office has, it can be daunting to clean and disinfect your workplace. If you want to make your office safer, here are important factors you should consider.
The Different Definitions
First, you and your cleaning staff need to be familiar with cleaning and disinfecting because they can be used interchangeably by others. There’s a huge difference between them.
Cleaning involves removing dirt, grime and other impurities from a surface. This gets rid of germs and viruses not by killing them, but by removing them from the object they’re clinging onto.
Disinfecting, on the other hand, involves using chemicals like diluted bleach or isopropyl alcohol to kill or deactivate germs and viruses. This doesn’t necessarily clean the object of any dirt. This why it’s often the second step after cleaning.
The Plan
You and your team should have a routine to make sure that every surface and corner of your office are consistently clean and disinfected. Start by identifying the high-traffic areas in your workplace. These include the lobby, public bathrooms, and the main workspace.
Prioritize your cleaning and disinfecting efforts in these regions of the office, as employees constantly breathe in the air and touch the appliances in them. Make low-traffic areas, like storage spaces or maintenance closets, lower on your list. When a few people enter these areas, they only stay there for a short time.
The Protective Gear
The virus can easily spread from person to person or when an individual interacts with respiratory droplets on a surface. Plus, your workers also have to deal with chemicals like bleach or alcohol, both of which can be dangerous when too much of their fumes are inhaled.
This is why it’s vital for you and your workers to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) during the clean sweep of your office. Appropriate PPEs include an isolation gown, gloves, face mask, and face shield. These minimize the chances of your workers inhaling the virus or getting it on their skin or eyes. This gear also protects them against exposure to potentially toxic chemicals. You may want to hire a skip when disposing of your PPEs, so you can get them off the premises immediately.
The Tools and Materials
As with any task, you’ll need the right tools and materials to ensure your regular cleaning and disinfecting tasks go smoothly.
Here’s what you’ll need.
Cleaning
Sponge or rag – You can use a sponge or rags sold in wholesale quantities. These are efficient at cleaning off dirt, but they do wear out with use. As such, it’s important to have a constant supply of them.
Buckets – You’ll use these to store water for soaping and rinsing.
Soap and water – This combination is always effective in cleaning off grime and dirt on almost any surface, be it concrete walls, wooden tables, or tile floors.
Disinfecting
Spray bottle – A spray bottle lets you cover a large area by dispersing droplets of disinfectant quickly in multiple directions. Make sure to get one with a large chamber, so you don’t have to refill after just a few spritzes.
Disinfectant – There are a variety of EPA-approved disinfectants. The most available ones are bleach diluted in water or 70 percentisopropyl alcohol. These will get rid of viruses and germs on a surface easily.;
Even with vaccines being rolled out, the COVID-19 pandemic still shouldn’t be underestimated. The threat of infection is still high, especially if your workers still commute to and from your office. Make sure they’re safe and protected by knowing the best practices in cleaning and disinfecting their workplace.
A New Year And A New Look For Your Business Website
2021 is here, and you need to welcome it right. For business owners, this means giving your website a complete overhaul. It is even more important because of the shift that the world has experienced, with the digital experience becoming a more powerful part of daily life. If you left your website static this past year, then you need to catch up. Here are some changes that you should be making to ensure your site stays competitive.
Visuals That Pop
Websites are visual mediums, and yours should be a feast for the eyes. When visitors open your site, they should immediately recognize that it is yours. There are various ways to do this. For one, you’ll want to have prominent branding on your website. Logos and prominent positioning should make your site visually unique, an important factor to aim for if you want people to remember your company. Combine this with excellent graphic design, and your site’s visitors will be very impressed.
Don’t stop at the basics either. You need to fill your website with pictures of your products and services at their best. For example, if your business sells expensive fashion accessories, then pictures of them should be a prominent part of your site. It would be best if you made them look good soretouching jewelryphotos to be attractive is part of that. The result is that your website becomes a visual showcase of what you can offer.
An Online Store With Your Products
Many people have gotten into the habit of online shopping during the pandemic. Online purchaseswent up by 30 percent in 2020. Now that the new year is here, that habit is not going to change. Adding an online store to your website allows you to be part of people’s changing purchasing habits.
But a simple store is not going to cut it. You compete with online giants like Amazon. It would be best if you gave potential customers something more than basic products. Offer things like free shipping or additional services.
If your company offers services instead of products, an online store is not exactly possible. But you can allow potential clients to contact you online, which can quickly lead to them hiring you. For example, any potential inquiries about your services can be sent through your website. Following these inquiries up can potentially become an opportunity for you.
Better User Experience
When visitors go through a website nowadays, they wanta smooth user experience. The moment they click on the link to your site, visitors should experience an optimized experience. This means ensuring faster loading times and smooth accessibility. This is whether they are using a desktop computer or a mobile device. Additionally, it would be best if you designed it to guide visitors in the right direction. If a visitor feels like they are in a maze, then your website needs a redesign so that it is less confusing.
Increased Automation
The big push a lot of websites are experiencing is to have more automation. This is more a behind-the-scenes update than something visible. This is because it mainly focuses on the upkeep of the website. Websites often need a lot of attention, with a daily checkup being the bare minimum. You might need to check on it every few minutes to ensure that it is running properly. This is where automation comes in. Security updates being automatically implemented as well as auto-backups are an important part of that.
There is a part that interacts with customers, too. Automated newsletter senders can be integrated into your website so that they can collect visitors’ emails so that they can send them out seamlessly. Additionally, having a review and testimonial aggregator on the website can help promote your business.
Improved Data Protection
Your website also needs to move towards being more secure. Online security is very important nowadays, especially with the increased online presence of people. Several essential changes include moving towards the HTTPS protocol so that hackers would not be able to change website information to secure personal info. Additionally, moving towards a safe website host and upgrading your software can be a good move.
Your website needs to change with the times. Post-COVID online life is much different, with a lot of people expecting more from websites. They have been stuck at home for a year, and they’ve been using it to surf the internet. If your website doesn’t rank with the best, you won’t be getting the same attention as others who have kept up with the changes.
Making money for your business and getting a big sale is pretty exciting. It is something that you will have set up the business for, and is what will help you to get it to where you want it to be. However, getting paid as a small business can be tricky. There can be late payments, meaning you need to chase missing invoices, as well as having to spend time and money and effort getting in contact with people who still owe you. You could even not get paid at all, and cash flow problems are one of the reasons why a number of businesses actually fail.
If you use a B2B model in your business, then the chances are that your customers are going to have particular payment terms. So before you start out doing any selling, it is a must to have some clear policies so that you can ensure payment, promptly and on-time. It can be hard to walk away from a sale, but you need to look after the potential of your business. So here are some things to think about, to ensure swift payments and better cash flow for your business.
It is a must to have some defined policies right from the start. What kind of credit collections will be in place if payments aren’t made? You need to know all of this before you offer credit or allow people to pay you after the service has been completed. You should also think about how much credit you can give without it impacting your cash flow, as well as putting into place the payment terms that you want to set for anything that is overdue.
Automation
When it comes to getting paid, and getting paid by a certain date, you need to make sure that you are getting your invoices out on time. This can be difficult when you’re doing it yourselves, as there are a number of other things that can take up your time as you run a business. Automation in any business, but particularly for something like invoicing, can be a great idea. When the invoices will just get sent out on a certain date, using something like OnPay Solutions, you don’t have to worry about them not being done on time. Then you are more likely to be paid on time, and it will carry on like that.
Communicate your policies
When you get a new customer or a new business looking to use your services, then you need to lay out a clear statement with all of your business payment terms and conditions. This is something that should be clear on all invoices, as well as any contracts that you have with customers or clients. The things to state are penalties for late payments, as well as making sure that follow through with the charges if it comes to it. They can’t complain about it if they have had the policies and fees communicated clearly to them.
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