Personal and Business Loans

You’ll almost certainly need to raise money to start up your company, unless you already have sufficient capital yourself. The typical costs of starting up are in obtaining premises, manufacturing your product if you have one, buying materials, stock or equipment, marketing and fees for external consultancy such as legal help, accountancy etc. Then when you’re off the ground, you’ll need working capital to keep you afloat in the gaps between paying your own invoices and receiving payment from customer invoices.

Again, your business plan is essential at this stage of setting up your business. In it you will already have scoped out what your money needs are and how you plan to raise the capital, and you’ll be using it to persuade potential investors and lenders of the benefits of funding your company. Your financial calculations in your business plan therefore need to be thorough and accurate and presented with confidence. Read the rest…

Getting business credit can be a dificult thing to do. Lenders do not want to finance your venture if they don’t believe you have a stake in the business. However, if you can overcome their doubts, you will be able to get separate credit in your business name. So, what do I have to offer?

I have started four businesses over the last 13 years. In that amount of time, you can learn a lot of lessons about business. One of the biggest is how to get credit for a business without my personal guarantee. From experience I know that having business debt on your personal record does make your debt to income ratio a sight to behold. Now, there is one thing I did learn about lenders. Read the rest…

As the credit crunch continues, more and more business owners and entrepreneurs are turning to less traditional methods of business financing. Usually, the requirements for receiving these non-traditional business loans are not as strict as bank requirements, even during times of a booming economy. Now, as people who would normally qualify for bank loans are facing bank denials, the various non-traditional business financing sources are experiencing an influx of qualified applicants.

Peer-to-Peer Lending

Wikipedia describes peer-to-peer, or P2P lending, as a lending system that “…occurs directly between individuals (“peers”) without the intermediation/participation of a traditional financial institution.” Read the rest…