Free Money News October 2012

It’s Election Time and both parties will be ramping up attacks. It's important to ignore hype, look at facts and make decisions based not on promises but on actual track records.

In our October Free Money Highlights we share some small business perspectives on the vote as well as our own thoughts (and facts) about choosing our next president. October Free Money Highlights also include:

• Starting or running your own business? Lots of groups want to support you! See a review of our helpful resources and news below.
• Remember grants.gov is the go-to site for reliable grant information. Read on for tips to use this valuable resource.
• News About Scams: A new - tantalizing! - scam you need to be aware of and avoid…

We love to hear from people eager to start their own venture. We support their drive and determination by providing information and news updates about how get financing, often without having to deal with a traditional bank.

Both private organizations and government agencies are eager to support small business in the quest to create new jobs, so a lot is happening in this area. Learn more about the basics as well as updates on new programs in these articles:

• Grants for Business provides an overview of financial sources and offers direction for further information depending on where you are in your financing and your business expertise. Fund a Startup Business is most useful for those launching a brand new business
• There are more targeted resources available for specific situations. Discover more in our articles written just for these potentially profitable situations: Black Business Resources, Grants for Women-Owned Business, and Microfinancing in the United States and Microfinancing Opportunities for those without much business experience, traditional banking connections or credit history. Crowdunding News also offers new funding options for those who don’t wish to deal with banks.
• Small Business Financing Opportunities is a great overall resource for discovering new options regardless what stage your business—or your dream—is at. It includes programs sponsored by the government as well as by private companies (like Google and Intuit), entire industries (like Franchising) and opportunities and assistance for veterans.

This site is the government’s official source of current and regularly updated information about grants. You can learn more about the basics in our review of the grants.gov site. To make good use of your time, you can also sign up on grants.gov itself to get email notifications about specific types of grants. You can also sign up for RSS Feeds that will keep you on top of grant funding announcements as soon as they are issued.

Grants.gov also makes available some videos of informational presentations, and you can currently view one about Grant Fraud. It’s pertinent to note that in this video they talk not only about organizations that try to take advantage of government awards by misusing the funds or even embezzling, but also about other organizations and individuals who attempt to trick people into believing they have been deemed eligible for a sizable grant to use for personal purposes. Check out our next Highlight about scams to get more details!

We recently responded to an inquiry on our facebook page that sounded just like a scam discussed in the above noted video on grants.gov. Someone had received a call saying that they had qualified for a grant for $7000! All they had to do was to pay $700 for administrative or processing fees or some such nonsense, and the money would be theirs.

Fortunately, this individual was smart enough to ask us if this was a scam before they turned over any of their hard earned money. This is definitely a scam, and grants.gov will be the first to tell you that you should never have to pay for the award of a government grant — someone is just trying to cheat you out of your money, not give you money. We know it is tempting to believe someone is going to give you $7,000 for free to solve your problems, but it’s simply not true. Do not provide personal information or send any money, especially if they require that the money be sent by wire or bank draft rather than check or credit card! See our related article for more information on "free money" phone call scams.

Wanting to give real small businesses (including sole proprietors, consultants and freelancers) a voice, WAVE Accounting recently did a survey of 1300 customers to assess their views on which candidate would create a better environment for small business success. They were frustrated seeing survey results that only reflected the opinion of much bigger ventures, often those with hundreds of employees and millions in revenues which somehow were categorized as “small businesses.”

In fact, businesses with 9 employees or less account for 95% of all the businesses in the U.S.! In the WAVE survey, 37% of the respondents were 1-person businesses, 55% had 2-5 people, and just 8% had 6-9 people.

The results? 51% favored Romney (citing a desire for less government red tape) and 38% favored Obama (citing a desire for more healthcare options). Note that the 51% are not wealthy individuals or “fat cat” business people — they are struggling small businesspeople. Probably many had high hopes for Obama four years ago, as did lots of those who put him in office.

But it is increasingly difficult to ignore the promises Obama has broken with regard to job creation and the economy. The fact is there are 4.3 million fewer jobs in the private sector than there were in early 2008, and 3.6 million additional people have swelled the ranks of those receiving Social Security Disability (and who would otherwise also be counted as unemployed). Real median annual income has declined more than 5% since mid-2009 and the federal debt continues to grow at an unparalleled rate.

Obama has made it clear that he prefers the public sector and public sector jobs are funded by the government. Obama is likeable on a personal level but is it enough to raise our country to economic prosperity? Can we trust Romney to do better?

Our opinion? Both men have admirable qualities but only will be nominated to the job of President. Whatever your opinion, be sure to vote!