It might seem like a strange idea to make investments when you run a business.
After all, isn’t your business supposed to be your financial future and even your retirement?
Why would you want to run the risk of making investments if you already have something in place?
The fact is that as a business owner, you always have to err on the side of caution, and it’s better to be safe rather than sorry – you don’t want to rely on your business for your future financial safety only to find that something goes wrong and it’s suddenly not there anymore.
By having a few different income avenues, including investments, you can enjoy a much more secure safety net.
Read on to find out more about why it’s a good idea to make investments when you run a business for both your personal and business finances.
Diversification
Diversification is a hugely important part of good financial planning, and when you run a business, it’s not something you can afford to ignore.
You might have lots of positive ideas and hope for the future, and you might even have a good business plan in place to help you make the right decisions and to get funding when you need it, but all kinds of things can go wrong, and there are issues that can arise when you least expect it.
If you have a variety of different income streams, you and your business will be much safer and be on more secure financial ground.
This is a great idea, especially if your own personal income and future wealth is linked directly to your business and having money for your own needs relates directly to your business’s success.
It’s a big risk, but investing with help from advisors such as bfinance, can really lower that risk and make things much less stressful and dangerous.
Ideally, you’ll not just want to diversify your income, but you’ll want to diversify your investment portfolio as well, as this lowers your risk even more.
That’s an easy thing to do because you can choose to invest in stocks and shares, properly, cryptocurrency, and more, ensuring that even if one path starts to get problematic, the others will still bring you money.
Retirement Planning
Unless you plan to work until the very end (which could be exactly what you’re planning, and if that’s what you want to do, that’s not a problem), you’re going to need to set some money aside for your retirement.
Retirement planning isn’t something people often like to think about because when they’re young it seems like such a long way off, and when they get older, it starts to get quite frightening because it’s looming, but in either case, retirement planning is essential.
Without it, you won’t be able to do the things you’re planning to do in retirement, whether that’s traveling, taking up new hobbies, spending time with friends and family, or just doing things you didn’t have time to do before when you were working. No matter what you do, you’re going to need money to make it happen.
If you run your own business, you might not have a retirement fund in place, unlike what would be the case if you worked for someone else.
However, investing while you’re running a business can make up for that lack of security, and it can give you a good retirement income to enjoy later on.
Of course, you can just take a portion of your business profits and put them into a savings fund for when you retire, and that can be a good option, but if you want to make the most of that money and give you more to enjoy, investment is something to consider.
It’s best to speak to experts and do a lot of research, and it’s also a good idea not to invest everything you have – leave yourself a cushion to be safe.
Once you have all the knowledge you need, you can start to grow your retirement fund so you can really enjoy your golden years to the fullest.
Remember that planning for your retirement isn’t just about having enough money – it’s about having peace of mind that you can relax and not be stressed about things, and that’s the most important element of all, so make sure you do whatever’s going to lead you to that point.
Business Growth
When you’re a business owner, you’ll do all you can to make sure your business is a success and makes a profit – that’s the whole point of starting a business after all.
Not many people would go through the difficult challenges startup entrepreneurs do if there wasn’t going to be a reward at the end of it all.
There are lots of routes to go down that will help you make your business more successful and contribute to its growth, including making sure your customers are well taken care of, ensuring you have a USP that you can stick to and people like, and only selling high quality products and services.
But something else that can help when it comes to business growth is investments.
In order to grow a business, you’ll need money. That’s just a fact that you can’t get away from, and no matter what sector you might be working in, you need to spend money to make money, as the old saying goes.
How much money will depend on what you do and what you need, but expenditure is part of business however you look at it.
You can ask to borrow money from investors and lenders, and that can be a good choice, but what if you’ve gone down that route already and can’t ask for any more?
Or what if you don’t want to put your business into debt until it’s absolutely necessary?
In that case, investing can help. If you were to invest some – not all – of your business profits into stocks, shares, property, and so on, you would have an additional income stream that you could then reinvest into your business to grow it.
This could pay for new equipment, for better marketing, for more stock, and so on.
You might even want to use it to fund a new venture like entering a new market overseas.
There are so many ways a business can grow, and when you have money behind you, you can take advantage of as many of them as you need to.
On top of this, another benefit to investing for your business is that potential lenders and those who might want to invest in your business will often see what you’re doing as a positive sign.
If they spot that you’re putting your own money (or your business’s money) back into the business to help it grow, they’ll understand that you’re serious about what you’re doing and that you know what it takes to make a business successful.
This means they’ll be more willing to fund you if you ask them to, giving you even more opportunities to grow your business and become as successful as possible.
Tax Benefits
Tax… it’s something everyone has to deal with, and when you’re a business owner, you’ll potentially have to deal with it twice (for your own self-employed tax status and for the business itself).
It’s not always an easy thing to work out, which is why it’s often best to speak to experts to do it for you.
Something you’ll definitely want to do is minimize the amount of tax you have to pay (in a legal way, of course!), and there are various ways you can do this, but one that you might not have thought about is using your investments.
It does depend on where your business is located and what the rules are in your area, but there are often ways to use what you’ve invested to off set against the tax you owe, reducing how much you have to pay.
You can use things like 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to help you pay less on your taxes and even get tax-free withdrawals when you retire, so it doesn’t just help in the present, but in the future too.
The best thing to do is to speak to your accountant and a tax advisor and they’ll be able to give you all the information you need to make some good choices and ideally save yourself some money while you’re actually making money – the best of both worlds!
Estate Planning
Everyone needs to have a will; it makes what happens after you pass away so much easier for those left behind.
If you run a business, there’s even more reason to write a will and do estate planning properly – you’ll need to make sure your business can continue without you (or put plans in place to sell it, for example).
Investments can play a big role in estate planning because you can choose to pass them on to various people, cash them out, or specifically talk about what you want to do with the income you receive.
Plus, as mentioned above, you can use your investments when it comes to off-setting tax, which can be useful for your heirs after you die and they have bills to pay.
By carefully investing and then ensuring you have specifically noted what should happen with those investments when you’re no longer around, you can help a lot of people.