THE FUTURE OF INSURANCE, BANKING AND FINANCE

Like insurance keynote speakers and banking and futurists are aware, it’s not easy to handle risk management and know where to put your money in uncertain times. Thankfully, there’s always one place it pays to focus on allocating funds, no matter the larger economic or geopolitical climate: Investing in yourself and your personal growth. Following are a couple areas where insurance keynote speakers and futurists might advise putting your money to work if you want to create positive change in your career and life going forward.

Businesses – For under $100, you can now start a variety of business types using cost-affordable online tools, pay-as-you-go services, and online freelance marketplaces. Ownership of one not only conveys significant opportunities to benefit from small business tax deductions. It also instantly removes your salary cap, as you get to decide how much to pay yourself, charge for your work, and what to invoice for every additional task. In addition, you can also capitalize on tax-deferred retirement savings plans to grow your wealth, and sell shares or portions of ownership to investors for added income. The US Small Business Administration provides a step-by-step guide on how you can get started building a business today.

Startups – If you’d prefer to invest in other entrepreneurs’ efforts, you can provide seed capital or angel investment funds to help them get their own businesses up and running in exchange for a share of profits or equity instead. To do so, you can do deals directly with these companies’ founders, or turn to a range of online and crowdfunding investment sites (which group investments from multiple individuals) to find deal opportunities and participate in shared investments. Note that while returns can be big if you hit the jackpot and back the next Slack or Uber, risk associated with investing in startups is also significant, with most companies failing to ever return a profit. Like insurance keynote speakers and futurists remind, be sure to research deal terms and companies extensively before committing any capital and note that any funds committed to these types of deals likely won’t be accessible for months or years to come.