Creative Financing

People who are out of work and looking for an instant money fix may be surprised to learn their home and/or auto insurance may provide thisextra money. I co-own an insurance agency with my son in Northern Nevada. We have helped hundreds of people save money on their home, auto, or both, insurance policies.

If I was in this situation, the first thingI’d do is find my policies and start calling insurance agencies. I’d start with the independent agencies.

We are an independent agencyand all thatmeans iswe aren’t captive to one particular company. This gives us the advantage of being able to shop your coverage among many companiesto get the best possible price.

One example to give you the power of insurance shopping. A particular client was paying $5,000.00 per year for both his home and autos before I contacted him. When I spoke with him he agreed to bring his policies into the agency for a review.

As we went through his coverage, we not onlyhelped himupdate his coverage to meet his current economic situation but saved him a good piece of change. The savings, and it was drastic,was$2,500.00. We had reduced his annualpremium by 50% making his new yearly premium only $2,500.00.

He enjoyed the exact same coverage but for less money. If my math is correct, a little over $200.00 a month stayed in his bank account.

I do not mean to imply this will happen to everyone because it won’t. Even if you only save $300.00 per year, for example,that is an extra$25.00 per month staying in your pocket.

Since this is a quick tip, I won’t talk about saving money on health and life insurance. I’ll leave that for another article.

Creative Financing18690Creative Financing Writing is my passion. After surviving a tumultuous marriage, I learned a few things in life. One thing I walked away thinking was no woman should ever have to endure what I endured in that marriage. I wanted to share my story with other women, not for sympathy, but to empower and inspire. I wrote a novel loosely based on the experience and I titled it Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.

After writing the book, I looked and looked for a publisher. Many of the big publishing houses responded. They saidI had a good story, but either they were swamped with manuscripts and didn’t know when they’d get to mine or my manuscript didn’t quite fit with the books that they represented.

This story had to be told, so I decided to publish it myself. I was not sitting on a gold mine or anything, but the burning desire to publish this book would not leave me and I knew that I had to do it. So, I invested in myself with my own money. Yet, I knew I couldn’t do it without help. I looked for grant money, but couldn’t find any.

Then I thought, Wouldn’t it be great to use Other People’s Money(OPM)to produce my book? The more I said OPM to myself the better it sounded. Loans? That dirty word ran across my mind. I didn’t want loans, but I wanted OPM.

I took a course on how to obtain sponsors with Fran Briggs and put what I learned into action. I used OPM to finance my book, Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. A few organizations that provided me with the finances to produce my book were Fifth Third Bank, Mike Anderson Chevrolet, Gowdy’s Fishery.

When I hosted a booksigning party, Quiznos provided the refreshments.

When Ihosted “Dinner With The Author, Jahzara”, I didn’t want to wear a dress from my closet. I could’ve, but I was the hostess and I wanted to feel extra special. Mocha Apparel wanted me to feel extra special too, and they provided me with a dress for the event and I didn’t even have to open my pocketbook.

Syreeta Rios owner of Big Gyrl Clothing always wants me to look good for my professional appearance and agreed to be the official clothing sponsor for the author, Jahzara.

Sponsorship is a great way to obtain funding for your business ventures. I enjoy making connections and networking with corporations.

Nicole Jahzara Bradley is an an author. Her publishing company is Tranquil Moments LLC. Feel free to visitNicole Bradleyat www.nicolebradley.com or contact her at tranquilmomentspublishing@yahoo.com .