Reverse mortgages worth a thought

FOR many baby boomers, retirement will be a financial juggling act. Without the backing of compulsory superannuation contributions throughout their working life, many may consider a reverse mortgage as a source of additional retirement income. a reverse mortgage provides an opportunity to access home equity, with the loan secured by your home. there are no repayments necessary until you 1) sell up, or 2)die – in which case the loan is repaid out of your estate.

You can choose to receive the cash from a reverse mortgage as a regular series of payments, a lump sum or a combination of both.

a lump sum payment may be counted in the Centrelink assets test, so it could reduce your age pension entitlements.

to be eligible for a reverse mortgage you generally need to be aged 60-plus, and it’s essential to own your home. You can usually borrow between 15% and 40% of the value of your home depending on your age.

I have a small but active business selling virtual goods online. I am having a hard time finding a good CRM program for Mac. I'm using google spreadsheet right now, but it's not really designed to also manage a customer database, and I would like to be doing that. Something like Salesforce is WAY too much for me, as I don't have leads to follow or vendors to track. Basically, I need to manage three sets of data in tandem: Customers, Sales, and Inventory Files. I need them all to be customizable because the data I collect is not really traditional. (For instance, I never get customer home addresses, because I do not need them.) Is there some kind of simple program for Mac that does this? Just a tiny step above Googledocs? I don't want to spend $300 or whatever it is for filemaker or bento and then find out that they're overkill for my needs. For what it's worth, I also tried zoho.com and while it's something closer to what I want, I find their site a bit confusing.
by Clark L @ April 19, 2008 2:07 am
to find the best CRM especially for a small business such as yours, you should go shopping for it. you might think that it's tiring but it's the only way that you'll find the best program that would fit your needs. you might also want to check this site out for small business CRM solutions: http://www.crm-software-guide.com/small-business-crm-solutions.htm
My company currently only has a very basic online retail website, and we would like to redevelop this to boost our online sales. We are a small-mid sized re-distributor for various manufacturers, and currently handle the vast majority of our orders via phone/fax. We need a customizable Ecommerce platform that will allow us to create a very functional website with a lot of personalization for the users . We are in a unique niche, and our users require some non-standard features & ordering processes that we would need built into the site. I am looking into various solutions. Ideally, we would like a system that offers CRM, accounting, inventory, POS integration, and other enterprise management tools. I'ved looked into Oracle, but frankly, it all confuses the hell out of me. They offer so many products/solutions, i'm not sure if this is even what we need. As a redistributor we only currently carry a small inventory of product. Generally we receive orders, put in an order to the manufacturer, receive the product, and then ship it almost immediately. However, as our online business grows, eventually we'll expand our inventory to hold products we find are most desired through sales analysis/metrics. I came across a program called Magento that seems interesting...its an open source ecommerce platform. Have you used Magento? Does it sound like something that could be useful for my needs? How easy is it to add customized features/functionality? Is it worth the price?
by M J @ September 16, 2010 6:18 pm
Am doing an evaluation this very moment with Magento for a basic e-commerce website. I will copypaste the section on Magento that might help you.: Main Highlights • Multi Currency and Multi Language Support • Unlimited categories and sub • Digital Download Product Support • Discount Voucher Support • Add-On support for extra features • Better templating system than OsCommerce • Support for the following payment gateways: o Authorize.net (AIM and SIM) o PayPal Website Payments Standard (IPN) o PayPal Express Checkout o PayPal Website Payments Pro o LinkPoint o YourPay Pros: Much more advanced than other systems. Free to install and use anywhere. source system . Cons: less features than Jshop, due to its offering could be difficult to use and its loading time has been reported to be slow in comparison to other eCommerce systems http://www.magentocommerce.com/
My company currently only has a very basic online retail website, and we would like to redevelop this to boost our online sales. We are a small-mid sized re-distributor for various manufacturers, and currently handle the vast majority of our orders via phone/fax. We need a customizable Ecommerce platform that will allow us to create a very functional website with a lot of personalization for the users . We are in a unique niche, and our users require some non-standard features & ordering processes that we would need built into the site. I am looking into various solutions. Ideally, we would like a system that offers CRM, accounting, inventory, POS integration, and other enterprise management tools. I'ved looked into Oracle, but frankly, it all confuses the hell out of me. They offer so many products/solutions, i'm not sure if this is even what we need. Do they offer an ecommerce platform, or how would it be integrated into a website? As a redistributor we only currently carry a small inventory of product. Generally we receive orders, put in an order to the manufacturer, receive the product, and then ship it almost immediately. However, as our online business grows, eventually we'll expand our inventory to hold products we find are most desired through sales analysis/metrics. Do you have any suggestions on good enterprise software for us? Have you had any bad experience? Is Oracle the way to go? Where can I find a good developer/IT guy that would aid in the implementation of this?
by deonejuan @ September 16, 2010 4:40 pm
Oracle, like IBM, sells service contracts. For xxx dollars they promise to bring whatever it takes to answer your questions. So be very aware you are not buying, just 'renting'. I do like Oracle however. I like their PeopleSoft -- it combines task management with customer service -- think receptionist handling incoming calls. Very nice. But to customize any of that... xxx dollars they promise to bring even more of whatever it takes to answer your questions. It's a money pit. I watched IBM attempt an online music store charging $50k / month plus temp labor for data entry. Three server crashes, redo the data entry. Bigger service contract sold. In the end the online music store never happened. Whatever solution is installed, it will be database-driven. If it were me, the custom solution points to PHP / mySQL / Linux / Apache. You could be modular with both the hardware and the software. You need a web server IT guy. From there, you can say "We have db-based POS , what can we tie into for P/L statements? Our accountant wants ledgers, will XX package accept data from our X db?" Visualize an input form that fits into a computer window. Draw a representation of that form and draw arrows on a wall diagram. That's how the IT guy understands you exactly.

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