From House to Asset: How to Turn Your Home into an Investment

Your home is not only a sanctuary from the day-to-day commotion of life, but it's an investment in your future. 

Over time, your home may begin to show signs of the wear and tear, both inside and out. By taking some time to work on a couple different home improvement projects, you can increase your home's value and turn it into the investment you want it to be. 

As with all investments, be sure to budget wisely. Don’t take risks you cannot afford, and remember to look for sales when buying materials for your home.

Outside the Home

When you want to put your best foot forward, you dress for success. Your home is no different, and siding is one way to dress up your home. 

According to the experts at Lifetime Exteriors, high quality siding can make a big difference in protecting your home from the elements and can also add value and curb appeal to your home. 

Brand new siding, however, can be expensive. Buying surplus is a great way to save money on materials, but even then, a massive renovation isn’t always the best course.

Instead of replacing siding, cleaning the exterior of your home can make a major difference in its look, feel, and curb appeal. 

Many DIY stores offer low cost power washer rentals, and an annual cleaning comes with the added benefit of preserving what you already have. 

Regular maintenance not only keeps your home looking nice, it makes it last longer, and, in the long run, saves you money.

Inside the Home

One of the most popular ways to increase your home's value is to add additional living space inside the home. This space can come in the form of an addition or redoing existing space to make it live-in ready. 

In addition to living spaces, like bedrooms or living rooms, kitchens and baths add a lot of value to any home and are often the first rooms buyers look at when touring a house. The bathroom and the kitchen often showcase just how well remodeling funds are spent, so taking the time to do it right the first time can really add a lot of value.

But despite how often it happens on the most popular TV shows, adding a whole new room isn’t always a good financial decision. 

As with the exterior, maintenance is usually the best option. Focus instead on preserving the value already present in your home, and don’t worry about keeping up appearances with the neighbors. 

Think instead of creative ways to use the room that you already have. Redecorate, rearrange, and repurpose existing furniture and rooms to suit your needs. A spare bedroom could become a home office. 

Cut cable and rearrange the living room to get rid of the TV—you’ll save all the money you would have spent for cable service, and you’ll have more time to be more productive.

While there are many ways to make your home into an asset—either to sell or just to make it more valuable for your own needs—make sure that proper research and steps are taken before engaging in any DIY activities. 

Just like anything worth doing, it's worth taking the time to do right. If you decide a remodel is in your budget, contact local real estate agents to get some feedback on what sells best in your area. 

By finding the best areas to focus on around the home, you can get the best resale value for your money and your time.

5 Reasons Why You Should Implement Salesforce Knowledge for Your Organization

Implementing Salesforce knowledge gives your organization a knowledge framework on which you can create and manage information to be shared with external and internal users quickly and easily. 

Whether or not you have already decided to use Salesforce Knowledge (SK) within your organization, there are many important considerations to be made before you can move forward into implementation. 

The following list provides five of these considerations and how SK fits perfectly for every need:

1. What level of control needs be exercised over the article lifecycle?

Perhaps you want to give your teams the authority to write, review, edit and publish articles for purposes of solving customer problems, but you don’t want to allow excessive leeway on the publishing process. 

You can use SK’s flexible settings on management of articles within your organization. The suite allows you to appoint article managers as well as create a customized approval process for articles of various types to allow for managerial or legal review prior to publishing. 

2. Will articles to agents from your organization need to be present in different formats?

You have many different options in the market should you want to store articles related to organizational support, but none comes close to the quality, power and customization abilities offered by SK during the creation process. 

You can create your own article templates to allow information to be fed in and presented to users according to formats that are most useful for them. SK also allows creation of article types and type layouts with which you can organize support articles. 

3. Do you have specific target audiences for specific article types?

If your organizational knowledge base can be split into subsets intended to reach out to different audiences or groups, you can use the Data Categories settings in order to feed the right information to the right audience. 

Data categories in SK provide a list of hierarchical criteria that divides articles in relevant groups. On creation, articles are grouped according to the defined categories (e.g. by region or product). 

Once the data categories have been defined and assigned to corresponding articles, users can easily find the articles they need. 

4. Do you need detailed metrics and reports on support articles published in SK?

If your intention is to not only furnish customer support executives with in-depth and quality articles, but also to monitor and produce detailed reports on the utilization of support articles for purposes of maintenance and improvement of the organization’s knowledge base, you are definitely in the right hands using Salesforce GitHub and SK.

Salesforce knowledge provides advanced settings for generation of bespoke article reports. In addition, the Knowledge Base Dashboards and Reports application can be downloaded from the AppExchange and installed. 

Using these tools; view ratings, article usage, statistics and search metrics according to role or channel to enable proactive management of organizational content.

5. Do you use multiple organizational support channels?

If you’re looking to share your articles beyond your internal support network to different channels, SK is excellent since it allows you to add up to four different sharing channels. 

Your internal users can access the knowledge base through the Salesforce CRM directly, partners and customers can use the Partner and Customer Communities for access and the Public Knowledge Base can be used to allow the general public access. 

Add-ons are available from the AppExchange.

Author bio: The author has over ten years’ experience as a customer relationship management software expert, and has written articles shared on many platforms throughout the Internet. Visit http://www.flosum.com/salesforce-data-migrator/ to learn more about data migration using Salesforce, and other relevant information.

How to Know If You Need Private Portfolio Management

When it comes to your money, you want to be smart. You want to invest, save, and manage it properly. However, there are times when you just can’t do this yourself and you need a professional to step in. 

How do you know you need private portfolio management, though? And how do you know it is the right choice for you? It helps to learn more about the process.

What Are Portfolio Management Options?

Portfolio management is about how your money is managed. It involves making investments, setting up asset allocation, and maximizing your returns. Portfolio management is usually either done by an investment company or is self-managed, and both options have pros and cons. 

If you choose to self-manage, you have complete control of your investments, but the time and resource commitment to the process is substantial and can be overwhelming. The other option is to use a professional portfolio management company. 

Although you have less direct control, professional investment firms relieve the day-to-day portfolio management responsibilities and can constantly research the latest developments in the financial world.

Do You Need Professional Portfolio Management?

Professional portfolio management isn’t for everyone, but there are some people who will greatly benefit from it. In general, if you have considerable assets and wealth, you are a great candidate for portfolio management. 

It can be very difficult for a person who is not educated in finance and investing to understand the detailed ins and outs in this field. When you are dealing with large amounts of money, there really is no room for a mistake. 

The combination of a large amount of money and a lack of knowledge is a problem and is where the investment manager can really be helpful. This is especially true if you experience a sudden windfall and end up with more money than you have ever had before. 

This is a scary situation because you certainly don’t want to lose the money on bad investments, so portfolio management allows you to be sure that your money is being handled correctly and lowers the risk of losing it all. 

There are different types of investment companies, and you should research how each company manages their client’s portfolios, the fees they charge and the level of service provided. There are many resources on the internet to help you decide what type of company works for you. 

For example, if customer service is very important to you, there is a video from Damian Ornani at Fisher Investments explaining how the role of the Investment Counselor is key to their firm’s commitment to high customer service. Or if fees are a deciding factor, research how different company’s fees are calculated so there are no surprises. 

Another situation where professional management can come in handy is if you have complicated estate needs. You can’t manage your money after your death, so you need someone who can. 

By having a professionally managed portfolio, your investment counselor can set up your estate and assist with ensuring things are transferred and managed smoothly after you are no longer here to do so yourself.

What To Expect From the Process

Once you decide that you do need private portfolio management, you will need to contact the company you’re interested in and schedule an appointment to discuss your investment needs. You may have to meet a few times or you may meet just once initially. 

When you meet with the company’s representative, you will go over all your financial information and develop guidelines for your working relationship. You will also have a chance to ask questions. 

Usually, you will discuss your goals and establish a timeline for reaching them. Your goals are very important for the counselor to understand in order to be able to do his or her job. Knowing how to invest and what strategies to take are really going to be dependent on your goals. You’ll also go over cash flow and what is required for investments. 

You will go over your assets, and may discuss even those assets you aren’t having managed by the company. This is also the time you will talk about your preferences and things you don’t want to see happen with your money. 

If you want, retirement and estate planning may also be gone over. Finally, you will cover taxes, fees and communications. You’ll likely set up communication parameters, like how often you want to meet and be informed about what is going on with your portfolio.

Private portfolio management is a good idea if you are dealing with a large number of assets. It is a smart move to involve a professional who is skilled and knowledgeable in investments. 

Not only will this allow you to make the most out of your investments but it offers a layer of stability to your activities because you aren’t just working in the dark and trying to make investments that you know little or nothing about.

Modern Conveniences: 4 Ways to Save Money around the Home

Economic pressures challenge households in good times and bad, so you’re not alone if you want to find ways to save money. 

When you get the most for your money, you can improve your lifestyle and put money in the bank for emergencies, vacations, education, and retirement. 

The following four ways to save money around the home will help you spend less and save more, so your household can have a bright and sustainable future.

Control Your Utilities

Modern conveniences often run on electricity, so make sure you control your power bill by turning off unused lights, appliances, game consoles, televisions, and other power wasters. 

Even with the new generation of energy-efficient devices, you can still save a bundle by controlling anything that adds to your electric bill. 

Be sure to install a programmable thermostat so you can reduce the load on your heating and air conditioning units during times when no one occupies your home. 

Use Online Coupons

There are many ways to shop and save money. You might be able to find a good deal on a particular item you have been wanting or needing. 

However, the best way to probably save money shopping for groceries or other items is probably through couponing. Although you might check your Sunday newspaper for coupons, you also need to get coupons online. 

Web sites such as have vast collections of coupon codes for online shopping. You can save on almost everything you order online and also save on shipping costs.

Save Fuel

Find ways to cut down the fuel consumption of household vehicles. Do this by combining trips or carpooling with coworkers to work. 

Plan your shopping outings and errands, so you can get the most done as possible with the lease amount of gas. Saving money by combining trips can instantly pay off by freeing your time. It also pays to have a vehicle with a good fuel economy. 

If you have a vehicle that tends to waste fuel you can either not drive it as much or consider selling it. You can also trade it in for a more fuel efficient vehicle. It is better than letting it sit in your garage or driveway not using it and letting it eat you up in insurance and fuel costs.

Eliminate Waste

Waste can come in all different kinds of forms. It can be from wasting food to wasting electricity, water, paper, and many other things. 

Your entire family can participate in the process of saving money. Look for ways to reduce the amount of paper goods used in your home, save leftovers, and reduce impulse buying. If necessary, keep a list of all the money you spend and what you spend it on. 

You might surprise yourself when you find out how much you spend on things you don’t need. 

Create a Budget

Budgeting is one of the most important things you can do in your household. It should be done often to optimize your income and your spending. 

When you accurately assess household expenses, you can create even more savings my crafting a budget. When you plan your expenses, you can include savings as an expense to make sure you save at least a little bit every month. 

With the passage of time, your household becomes more efficient, so you will see a natural growth in the money available for saving.

The amount of money you can save without giving up modern conveniences might surprise you. When you adapt your lifestyle to pay attention to the way you and your family live, play, and shop, you will likely find even more ways to save money towards your future goals.