Starting your own business can be scary. Leaving behind the security of your employer’s group benefits can appear to be a daunting task. As part of our course “Become A Nurse Consultant on a Shoestring Budget“, Going Brothers Financial is our resource to make this process easy for you. They are a niche firm that specializes in working with small business owners in setting up and reviewing their employee benefits packages – all the way from health insurance, retirement accounts, life, disability and long-term care insurance.

For many of these businesses, these benefits programs are done on an individual basis, especially for sole-proprietors who are the owner and the only employee. The health insurance industry is complex and the idea of navigating through the myriad of options can be a scary task. Depending on whether your needs are for yourself and family or for a group of employees, there are solutions that can be cost effective. Because individual and group insurance have different rules on what is covered and who is eligible, the rules can get confusing. We’re here to help. With a little bit of information about what you’re looking for, we can pare down the options to a handful of plans that fit your needs. More importantly, we can give you a rundown of the benefits in plain-English so you understand the pros and cons of each plan.

One of the misconceptions is that people with pre-existing medical conditions will not be able to get coverage. This is not true. Group plans have to cover all pre-existing conditions as long as you have had continuous coverage through a group or qualified individual plan for the past year. So for some small business owners who have pre-existing medical conditions, a group plan might be an advantageous way to go. You only need 2 employees to set up a group health plan. So if it’s just you, we can assist you in finding an individual or family plan to cover yourself or your family members. If any of you have pre-existing conditions, it doesn’t mean that they will be excluded or that you will be declined. However, there are programs through the Federal government – designed for individuals who have no group coverage and cannot qualify for individual coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

Another misconception is that only group plans are tax-deductible to business owners. This is not true. While it’s true that an employer may not pay the premiums for an individual, even if that individual is the owner of the business. However, self-employed individuals may deduct the premiums for themselves and their family on their tax returns, thus giving them the same deductibility as a group plan. Since individual plans can sometimes be cheaper than group plans, this can be an added savings to you as the business owner.

The final topic on health insurance that we should address is that of health savings accounts, or HSAs. These accounts are available to persons who have what is called a high deductible health plan, or HDHP, and can be set up individually or for a group. If you have one of these plans, then you can put pre-tax dollars into your HSA and then withdraw funds from these accounts tax-free if used for medical expenses for you or your family members. Best of all, the balances in these plans roll over each year, so you don’t forfeit the funds. This is yet another way to get you tax savings on your individual or group benefits.

Written by John Going of GOING BROTHERS FINANCIAL

I come to you today, humbly as I have done a lot of introspective work lately.  I started doing work with a company called “Live At Choice” a year ago.  The work is fabulous and very freeing.  We are all in bondage with the things we have made up about ourselves when we were young.  These things have been running our lives and making every decision for us for years.  I look back over the year of doing this work and am amazed at the creation of the new belief system and therefore, outcomes occuring in my life.  I have noted that several of the outcomes that I wrote would happen a year ago, have come to fruition.  One of them happened to be quitting my full time job and moving into full-time entrepreneurship!  My ventures have taken me all over Texas.  One of my favorite places to be is the ocean.  Yesterday morning, I was walking on the beach and getting paid by clients to do so.  If that is not AMAZING, I don’t know what is…This is occuring because I BELIEVED it would…Simple as that.  Ok, well maybe not so simple, but well worth the effort.  Think about it.  Change your mind set.  Change your beliefs and make new outcomes for yourself!  Learn more about this LIFE CHANGING work at www.liveatchoice.com. 

I know, right about now, you don’t feel you have control over much if you are feeling the type of burnout that nurses experience.  Chances are, you are feeling trapped in that nursing job, whether it be at the bedside, in your cubicle or where ever you work.  Some tips to take control over your life and ditch that feeling of burnout:

1.  Exercise—I hear you saying, “But I do not have time to work out”.  If your life depended on it, you would find a way to put exercise into your day.  We all know that exercise increases endorphins.  Thus, those endorphins make us happy!  Just do it!!

2.  Repeat after me, “NO”.  There, now you have said it.  Keep practicing it until you make it a habit.  It takes 21 days to make it a habit so you better get started!!  You are not responsible for making EVERYONE on this planet happy.  So do not say YES to try to achieve this.

3.  Make a change!  If you do not like it where you are, leave.  There is a great chance your services are needed elsewhere.  Life is too short to be unhappy.  Besides, when you are unhappy, you make everyone else around you unhappy too!

4.  Get some sleep.  If you are not sleeping at least 8 hours, you are not getting enough sleep.  That stuff we heard about only needing 6 hours of sleep is bull!

5.  Eat a GOOD diet and take vitamins.  Our bodies are already stressed by the illnesses and stresses of our jobs.  We need to feed them food they can actually use, not food that is working against it.

6.  Work with your colleagues and teammates.  Help each other….we cannot do it all ourselves!  There are plenty of people out there who DO know what they are doing.  You are not the only one who can do it right

Everyday, we make choices.  CHOOSE NOT TO BE BURNED OUT!

Have you ever wondered how people come up with their business names? Some people seem to not put much thought or originality into their business names while others are very creative and show passion through their business name. Do you think it matters? Of course it does!

Think about how you make purchasing decisions. Have you ever gone on the internet to find a business or service and skipped over one simply because of the name? I have. The thought process on that is if they did not put much time, thought or energy into naming their business, they might not care much about the quality of service they deliver either.

The name of your business will be one of the first decisions you make. A good name will have highly rated google key words in it so that people find you easily. You can use google AdWords, keyword search tool at http://AdWords.google.com. Another thing to think about is that the name clearly states what you do. If someone has to guess, they will probably skip over you. If you are stuck for ideas, take a look around at other businesses. See which names resonate with you. Why do they? Lastly, allow your passion to come through in your name.