The Sharing Economy: Renting Luxury

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By Jurissa Ayala

Many women would die to reach into their closets and pull out a new designer garment for every day of the week. But considering today’s unstable economy and the exorbitant prices demanded by high-end brands, this is unrealistic. Luckily, businesses are capitalizing on the public’s desire for luxury apparel. America’s new approach to a sharing economy is via rental.

Eager fashionistas now flock to various websites to borrow high-priced handbags, jewelry, and gowns for a fraction of the retail cost. Each lender comes with its own unique system and policy, but all in all, fashion-hungry women are making out like bandits as they sell, borrow, and buy some of the most coveted pre-used luxury pieces on the market.

Here’s a spotlight on some of the most Continue reading →

The Ins and Outs of Outsourcing

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By MJ Plaster

Before you leap into outsourcing, consider how it could affect established relationships with current employees and customers? It’s one thing to save money, but you don’t want to lose key employees or have customers run for the exit.

What Is Outsourcing?

The term “outsource” has two meanings:

  • To contract with a person or business to provide talent that doesn’t reside within your workforce. The talent you hire is “work for hire” or sometimes hired on retainer and must fall within IRS guidelines for contractors.
  • To offshore work to a country with cheaper labor.

Both forms of outsourcing provide a service that’s cheaper than hiring an employee when you consider employee overhead.

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AMS: The Magic of a Winning Corporate Culture

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By MJ Plaster

When you click “Buy Now” on the Internet, you trust the retailer to deliver your package on time and in perfect condition—and that usually happens. But did you know that a third-party fulfillment company is often the invisible partner that handles all the pesky details to make it happen?

AMS Fulfillment (AMS), a privately owned business based in Valencia, California, provides a seamless end-to-end delivery system to retail partners who choose not to run their own warehouses. The company accepts delivery from the manufacturer, unpacks and inspects the merchandise to ensure quality control, repackages it for the end consumer, ships and tracks the delivery, allowing clients to share the HR resources at AMS.

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Is Facebook Making you more Vulnerable to a Grandparent Scam?

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The grandparent scam has been around a few years, according to the FBI, but numbers have increased dramatically as seniors become more active online and with social media. A typical grandparent scheme involves a phone or email; someone identifying themselves as one of your grandkids will claim to be in trouble and need immediate financial help. Continue reading →

How You’re Shooting Yourself In The Foot Financially

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PHOTO: SeniorLiving.Org

Making consecutively poor spending decisions can leave you drowning in a sea of debt. The following article explains the most common ways you could end up shooting yourself in the foot financially.

Making Too Many Small Purchases and ATM Foreign Withdrawals

You may be good at keeping up with big expenditures but not so good at monitoring your spending habits when making small purchases. Small purchases can quickly add up, especially when they’re made on impulse or done by habit. Continue reading →

Designer Duplicates: 5 Tips for Avoiding a Counterfeit Bag

women handbags hanging on wall in store

For as long as high-end designers have produced exclusive handbags, buyers have had to avoid near identical fakes. Thrifty fashionistas enjoy a convincing knockoff, but the majority of people want the real thing. So, how can you tell that the item you’re buying is authentic?

The reality is, people are duped by designer knockoffs every day, and the counterfeit bag market remains a billion dollar industry. Scam artists no longer prowl the streets of major cities looking for their next shopping victims. Instead, they target online buyers by providing false descriptions, pictures, and the promise of an unbelievable deal for their inferior products. So-called “purse parties” also remain popular, where hosts bring in vendors to supply designer or imitation bags at down-to-earth prices. Continue reading →

Five Tips For Resisting The Urge To Spend Frivolously

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In this day and age, spending money like water often seems like part of the American way. Unfortunately, it’s this kind of frivolous spending that gets so many people deep in debt and cripples their ability to save money for their future security.

In order to combat the problem, it’s necessary to rethink the way you spend money. Here are some tips that can help you achieve this. Continue reading →

How Much Does The Internet Know About You?

Suspicious businesswoman siting on the desk with laptop computer

Our society relies heavily on the Internet for information, commerce, communication and entertainment. Increasingly, though, logging on comes with a distinct Big Brother-style unease. Many people are worried how much the Internet knows about them and would like to limit this information, but can’t find the right answers. Well, here they are. Below we’ve outlined some of the most salient questions Internet users have, as well as the best ways to protect yourself. Continue reading →