If you’ve been hunting around for restaurant or business loans, Advance Restaurant Finance might be a perfect solution for your needs. ARF specializes in providing loans for small to mid-size merchants including restaurants and retailers who might not have the best credit but are committed to taking their business to the next level.

ARF provides a simple and straightforward application process and funding is generally completed quickly. You know you can trust them because they are an actual company, licensed and regulated by the state of California, with a large, friendly staff to help you. This way, you can be sure you’ll be able to get your questions answered by a knowledgeable employee who’s interested in providing great support.

Visit the AdvanceRestaurantFinance website for more information and find out how ARF can help you improve your business.

There’s certainly a lot of obstacles a new business owner needs to overcome to get a business up and running smoothly. In the past, an expensive phone system might just be one of them. The good news now is that an extremely high quality business phone service can be yours at a very affordable price through the Packet8 Virtual Office.

If you subscribe to their Virtual Office services you can avoid a huge expense since there are no on-site hardware requirements. The system will work with your current broadband service so there’s no need for extensive and costly upgrades on equipment that you’d face with a traditional business phone service. What’s more, you can install Virtual Office in just a few minutes.

Business VoIP has never been better since you’ll get tons of great features coupled with flexible service plans and scalability to fit your particular needs. You can get unlimited nationwide and global calling in addition to all the phone features you’d find in complicated systems like voice mail, call forwarding, caller ID, auto-attendant, 3-way conference calling and much more. Basically, you’ll get all the features you’d expect to find in an expensive phone system from a traditional phone service provider.

If you’ve been looking around for a VoIP solution for your business, don’t settle for a single line plan with poor features and functionality. A Packet8 Virtual Office business VoIP system will allow you to experience a robust phone system for your business without the unnecessary hassle and expense.

Anyone who’s spent some time searching online knows that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different websites and tools related to the subject. The difficult part is actually finding some useful ones. Occasionally, we’ll link to some useful links that feature some nice PF blogs and websites. Today, we’ll show a few tools that might come in handy.

Expensr.com offers a nice personal finance manager that let’s you track your expenses and a bunch more useful things.

Wesabe.com is more of an interactive site that lets you connect with other people with similar problems and interests. It’s a community site, but also a manager that lets you get control of your money and see where it’s going.

TheMint.com is another nice money management system, similar to the others but with slightly different feel. It also provides tools to track your expenses and your assets while examining the outcome and proposing some alternatives that good save you some cash or find a better rate, etc.

As we come across more tools we’ll be sure to post them on our site, and if you have any you think are useful, put them in your comments.

AIMpromote.com has just released an upgrade to their CRM software, and it’s certainly worth a look. This can be an especially useful offering if you’re in the market for a lead management system. With this CRM software you can track campaign performance, ROI, ROAS, profit, visitors, just to name a few of the impressive list of features available. All this at a very affordable price with simplified pricing. You can find more details at their website and in the press release below.

Traverse City, MI October 19th 2007 — AIMpromote, provider of lead management and customer relationship management software, has launched a significant upgrade to their CRM offering. The newly added white-label CRM software feature enhances the value that lead aggregators can offer to their lead purchasing customers. The enhanced reselling functionality provides an intuitive interface to completely manage the selling of a privately labeled CRM as their own.

Lead aggregators operate in the highly competitive B2B space, and need ways to add value to their offerings. Michael Myles, President and CEO of AIMpromote said “The significant added value provided by the AIMpromote white-label customer relationship software gives lead aggregators a way to differentiate themselves in what has become a highly commoditized market.” He went on to say that “this product also provides an easy way to leverage existing client bases to more rapidly increase sales.”

The close tie-in between the selling of leads and the powerful sales management functionality of the AIMpromote customer relationship software enables the end-users of the system to easily purchase leads that are then available to be worked directly in the system. There is no importing necessary. Billing is also consolidated, providing an easy way for the end-user to manage their funds and billing profile. The system has been designed from the ground-up to offer high levels of customizability and advanced functionality for everyone involved, while requiring little investment in time.

The CRM reselling and lead sales functions functionality includes the ability for lead aggregators and CRM software resellers to completely customize pricing, including setup fees, discounts, and free trials. This flexibility empowers the resellers of the system to enhance their profit margins as they see fit. The CRM reselling system allows lead aggregators and consultants the ability to brand their system with their own logo and contact information. Integrated Authorize.Net payment processing gives an interface to take credit cards automatically, and have the funds deposited directly into their bank accounts. The advanced accounting and reporting pages in the AIMpromote system give a top-down view of the business as a whole, as well as for each individual account.

The tiered approach that AIMpromote has taken to the reselling of their powerful customer relationship management software gives even the end-user clients the ability to also resell the system. The billing and accounting system automatically takes care of everything for them, even automatically setting up accounts. “The ease of use and flexibility of the AIMpromote CRM for those providing business-to-business consultation services and those selling leads has created an opportunity to significantly improve the bottom line, with very little time or expense,” said Matt Wolfe, Vice President of Operations for AIMpromote. Wolfe added, “The service and functionality of the system is unique in that customers are supported through an integrated support ticket system by their parent account. The end-users of the system will never know that the service they are using is being resold, or that the company from which they are licensing the software are not the actual manufacturers of the software. To them, it won’t be AIMpromote at all, it will be ‘ABC Software Company CRM’, or whatever name the company reselling the software chooses.”

About AIMpromote
AIMpromote leads the market in growth and technology for on-demand lead management and CRM reselling solutions. AIMpromotes enterprise lead management software empowers companies in any industry to more effectively generate, delegate, and report on leads and the teams that manage them. AIMpromote is the only solution that integrates detailed web analytics with sales and marketing analytics to provide a complete closed-loop view of the sales process. The AIMpromote lead management software offers a completely customized solution that can be tailored to fit any organization’s customer acquisition workflow. The unique combination of having the most functionality, and the lowest total cost of ownership, AIMpromote is the most cost effective solution for improving close rates and marketing efficiency.

Here’s something a bit different than the usual pf fodder you’ll find here: a nice article on slowing down and bit and finding time to learn and master the more important things in life. If anything, it presents an implicit challenge to the overconsumption that grips most Americans, thus a nice budgeting tip if anything else.

But, actually the article is a great reminder to us who are caught up in the frenetic, and oftentimes vacant, rush through life to slow down: “Ultimately, I believe that slowness is an act of resistance, not because slowness is a good in itself but because of all that it makes room for, the things that don’t get measured and can’t be bought.” That’s good stuff there.

Here’s a nice selection of some interesting posts out and about in PF Blog land:

The Digerati Life give us a run down on “Money Vs. Time Off: Why We Don’t Take Vacations” This is a nice, thoughtful post on American’s vacation and working habits including hours we work and why we simply don’t take enough vacations.

The Sun’s Financial Diary wonders whether or not you are a rate chaser. We’ve focused a lot on the best online savings accounts and the lowest interest credit cards here, so this is an interesting question.

If you’ve ever wanted to justify your beer drinking habit, here’s a good idea: save money by making your own beer.  Sure, why not?

If you have an online business or have been thinking about putting one together, you might be absolutely stumped on how to move it to the next level. It’s true that just about anyone can quickly throw together a cheap website and put it up on the internet, but that’s really not enough if you’re serious about your business. If you want an eCommerce-enabled website that is both easy to use, yet robust enough to handle serious volume and elegant enough to represent your brand, then www.BuyStoresOnlinePro.com might be just the solution you’re looking for.

With the StoresOnline Pro website builder, you’ll be able build a versatile eCommerce site that is very professional looking and extremely secure. It’s chock full of features and can be built using easy-to-follow, step-by-step tutorials. If you’re ready to take control of your internet business and put together a professional website take a look at what www.BuyStoresOnlinePro.com has to offer.

MarketWatch brings us some news we’ve come to be used to these last few months, the massive slowdown…freefall…that the housing market is now in. As they put it, “The housing market isn’t just bad, it’s ugly.” Well, this comes on the same day that housing starts in the U.S. for September reached their lowest levels in 14 years. Yikes! They fell 10.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.19 million, the lowest level since 1.32 million in March 1993,according to the Commerce Department today.

On another note, oil prices were once again at record levels today, just topping the $89 a barrel level before falling down to a more “moderate” $87 or so. The stock market, on the other hand, continues to slide for yet another day on worries that the housing market is going to continue to worsen and oil prices keep climbing.

So, if you’re wondering where all this leaves you, well it’s hard to say. We talked yesterday about pulling some risk out of market when things get a bit shaky and putting some investments in cash. You might also consider letting someone else worry about the hassle and stick your money into a mutual fund. There’s an interesting article in Forbes about no-load mutual funds that might be of interest.

If you choose to take your money to a financial advisor, there’s a good three part article on avoiding potential advisor or investment counselor frauds and scams.

And, here’s a quick article on spotting counterfeit money. I suppose it’s always a good idea to make sure your money is real, right?

If you’re in a business that really needs to acquire customers you probably need to think about a well directed and targeted marketing campaign. A very effective way to begin such a campaign is with consumer mailing lists. You need to remember, however, that your marketing efforts will only be effective if you have a quality mailing list. If you cannot target a potential customer properly, then you are wasting your time and your money. Fortunately, the folks at Wholesale Lists can help provide some of the finest consumer and residential mailing lists available. Their lists are extremely up-to-date and accurate. This is absolutely important because otherwise your efforts will be wasted on consumers that have no interest in your product or service.

What Wholesale Lists can do is provide a custom mailing list tailored to your specific needs and targeted to the particular niche your looking to focus on. They have a massive mailing list database that has over 250 million consumers from over 150 million households. From these databases, they can help you focus on criteria such as gender, age, geography, income and much more. Furthermore, you can specify a group such as homeowners, pet owners, investors or other general group of individuals.

If your focus is more interested in businesses, Wholesalelists.net can help with that as well. They have over 15 million businesses in their files and can identify the type of business, number of employees, sales volume, years in business and so forth. This kind of information can afford you with a great targeted mailing list to get you started on a very focused and ultimately effective marketing campaign.

If you’re concerned that such information will be cost prohibitive, you needn’t worry. Wholesale Lists can provide their direct marketing lists at very reasonable prices, and they’ll guarantee their data in writing so you can feel confident that you’re spending your money wisely. If you need help getting started with your direct marketing campaign, they have a very helpful staff that understands what is needed to begin an effective direct marketing campaign that will provide you some impressive results.

We’ve been warned now for many years that when the Baby Boomers begin to retire the Social Security system would soon begin to bend and sway under the avalanche of new retirees. Well, that day has just arrived. The very first official baby boomer as just applied for Social Security and the press is all over it. A women in New Jersey who was born on January 1, 1946 has just applied this past week, making her the first of her generation, those born from 1946-1964, to apply.

What does this mean for you? Well, probably not much really, but it makes for a quick story since we’ve been hearing about the dire warnings for years now. The Social Security Commissioner, Michael Astrue, has called this the beginning of the “silver tsunami.” This great wave of retirees may include up to 80 million individuals who make up the generation. By current measures, experts feel that by 2017 Social Security will pay out more than it takes in, and that if important steps are not taken soon, the fund will run out of money in 2041. It should be an interesting couple of decades. I would recommend that if you are planning on retiring anytime after about 2030 that you seriously consider getting your retirement plan into action immediately.

According to a recent study, global brands are increasingly utilizing mobile marketing to target mobile phone users with SMS marketing strategies. Approximately 28% of global brands have already launched a mobile media campaign, up from 14% just one year ago. Additionally, the survey notes that as brands learn more about mobile marketing, they better understand that SMS is a both a reliable and measurable medium. Because of this fact, brands can be expected to spend an increasingly larger part of their overall marketing budget on mobile campaigns. The study notes that over 70% of surveyed brands will spend nearly 10% of their budget on mobile marketing within two years. If you have been thinking of launching your own campaign utilizing mobile marketing, now would be a great time to get with the program.

GoLiveMobile.com, the leader in premium SMS and mobile marketing solutions, features an amazing variety of tools to help you implement your own mobile marketing campaign. They have programs to help you implement wap site hosting and mobile website design. These features implement state of the art mobile marketing software that allows the user to easily use a single interface to launch a variety of interactive text and multimedia mobile messaging campaigns. It’s pretty clear that the barrier to entry is being dropped in this exciting field and GoLiveMobile.com is leading the way.

This post really goes in conjunction with yesterday’s Blog Action post regarding the environment since it shows you yet another decision you can make to save both money and energy. One of the small, little things you can do (that all add up to make a cumulative difference) is changing out those old, inefficient incandescent holiday lights on your Christmas tree and replace them with some energy efficient LED Christmas lights. These LED mini lights are actually 80-99% more efficient than the normal incandescent lights and they also last a lot longer–up to 50,000 hours. Additionally, they run very cool, only 1 degree above the ambient temperature so you won’t run the risk of burning your Christmas tree down.

HolidayLEDs.com has a handy calculator to help show you how much you can save each year and how much you’ll be helping the environment. Simply add some LED holiday lights to the shopping cart (no need to login or make a purchase) and you’ll see your energy savings and the amount of Co2 you’ll be reducing. It’s nice to see how your choices will directly help the environment. In addition, HolidayLEDs.com will donate 5% of their October sales to BreastCancer.org in order of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM).

Changing out your old lights with some LED holiday lights is just the sort of thing that you can do to save some energy and, in the end, save a little money on electricity. Besides, the lights are pretty cool to look at as well.

Considering that today is Blog Action Day, I thought it would be a good time to revisit some of the posts I’ve made regarding the environment here on PFJournal.  For those unaware, Blog Action Day is where “bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic.”

It’s really no surprise that personal finance and the environment are related, and I’ve made that point on a few prior occasions and I’m sure I will do so in the future as well. Of course, sometimes doing your part for the environment involves spending a little extra here and there, but oftentimes it will save you money. These cases present a win-win situation for everyone.

Consider my ideas on saving money on gas or stop buying gas altogether. It may not be feasible for everyone to own a car that runs on used veggie oil like I do, but by cutting down on unnecessary trips, biking or walking and keeping your car in good shape, you can really help your pocketbook and the environment.

I also addressed some ways to save money and energy before with regards to your hot water heater. There’s a lot of little things just like this that really add up when you put them all together.  Take some time and visit some of the other blogs listed on the Blog Action Day website and see if you can get some good ideas yourself.

Surety bonds are typically not something most people choose to think about, but there are certain industries where they, or even a performance bond, are absolutely necessary. In fact certain industries are required by various government agencies to procure a surety bond in order to do business. For instance, in some states a surety bond is required to work as an auto dealer, a contractor, or a pay day lender. These bonds are not insurance, they are simply a guarantee that the bonded entity will fulfill their obligation or service for a third party who they work for or with.

Take for instance a mortgage broker. Most states require a broker to obtain a mortgage broker bond in order to do business in the state. This surety bond guarantees that the mortgage broker will follow the rules and laws set down by the state in the legal code. Most states have a specific statute regulating the mortgage broker, so the surety bond in this case will be specific to not only the industry but also to the particular state. Generally speaking though, a mortgage broker bond will make sure that a borrower or customer is able to recover losses if the broker does not meet their obligation and it will also make sure that any expenses or fines that are issued by the state are able to be met in the event of non-compliance.

It’s pretty clear that a surety bond is an important aspect of running quite a few different types of business. It’s probably easy to overlook from an uninformed perspective, but it is clearly a necessary aspect of business since it allows a company to fulfill their obligations in the event they are unable or unwilling to meet them otherwise.

I spend a lot of time looking around at different personal finance and investing blogs, especially ones that offer some real insight into the markets and trading. You never quite know what you’re going to find or what you might learn. Oftentimes, the information is kind of stale or merely regurgitated markets news. Other times you’ll really find a useful and original perspective that you can’t find elsewhere.

I’ve found the information over at Investingblog.org to be really helpful when it comes to stocks, bonds, mutual funds and investing in general. In addition to nice market overviews from time to time, this investment blog gives some specific information that would be helpful to an investor or someone looking to get into the market.

If you’re interested in learning about some of the less talked about markets such as Forex, futures or commodities Investingblog.org has some nice coverage of these areas as well. However, the really informative posts focus on the stock market and with a nice eye on market forecasts and expectations. They even occasionally cover individual stocks or featured companies. I recommend subscribing to their RSS feed or adding them to your bookmarks in order to stay up on the latest trends and information in the investing world.