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What are the advantages for a work at home mom? This is one of the many questions to be considered if you are a mother who is speculating about working from home. In answer to the inquiry, the advantages of such an occupation are surprisingly many.

A major benefit enjoyed by the mother working at home is the financial aspect. Now, it might be true (but certainly not always) that working at home yields a smaller salary when compared to a career in an alternative environment. But, working from home can dramatically cut down on costs associated with working outside the home.

A prime example of this is food; preparing and eating your own meals is much cheaper than routine visits to restaurants or fast-food joints when you’re on the job. Plus, home-cooked meals are often much healthier.

Another great monetary advantage is the fact that working from home does not require driving to work, an activity that can consume surprisingly large amounts of gasoline. And we all know that gas isn’t cheap. When you are a work at home mother, transportation costs directly connected to work are virtually non-existent.

Also, hose fancy but expensive business suits and other apparel do not have to take up exorbitant amounts of room in your budget.

The financial advantages that were just listed are certainly great reasons to become a work at home mother. But perhaps the greatest benefit available to a mother working at home with young children or infants is the fact that it’s family time all the time. A home-based job allows you to remain close to your loved ones, and, for many, this carried an even greater weight than the numerous financial benefits. It falls into that category of one of those things upon which you simply cannot put a price.

With a VoIP business phone system, long distance bills virtually go out the window.

So do your technological limitations. For an average of $30 a month, you get virtually unlimited calling anywhere in the United States, as well as complete control and possibility. You can reconfigure your system yourself on site, reroute lines to individual cell phones, home phones or extension offices, add lines and menu options as simple as checking your office email.

A VoIP business phone system will work off the Internet. If you are calling someone else with a VoIP system, it’s free, no matter where your calling from. If you are calling someone else when they are on a traditional phone system, it’s virtually free. Some of the better reputable companies will give you a fixed amount of free minutes and charge you merely 2 cents a minute after that. You’ll probably never burn through the free service, however, unless you are a calling company.

Plus you have complete control and endless technological possibility. Caller menus are easy to set up and install, as well as reconfigure and arrange to meet a particular day’s demands. On-hold music can be adapted to meet the market of the caller or the occasion of the day or just be freshly changed for variety. Day and night modes can be switched and adapted. Calls can be re-routed to cell phones, for example, if you have to be away from your desk all day.

In today’s world, there’s simply no reason to have separate Internet and phone lines. It will only cost you more. The technologies of the web put the world at our fingertips. There’s no reason why that technology shouldn’t apply to the phone as well. Leave long distance bills in the 20th century and welcome the new millennium. It’s the easiest way to cut your long distance costs while improving the professionalism of your phone tree.

Technology is making the world a smaller place to do business, especially for the small business. VoIP business phone systems simply make having a multiple tier phone system not only affordable, but essential to staying competitive in the today’s business. Minimize your long distance costs while discovering more technological capabilities than ever before. It just makes sense.

Many regulators have been clamoring recently about what they feel have been less than honest annuity marketing tactics employed by financial planners and insurance companies in order to get fearful investors to fork over their life savings in return for risky products that didn’t suit their objectives. Specifically, they are targeting sellers of so-called ‘variable annuities’ for misrepresenting the amount of exposure these products have to the financial markets overall and to the equity markets in particular.

The recent elimination of trillions of dollars in global net worth includes hundreds of billions dollars invested in index funds by insurance companies seeking moderate long-term returns on the principle they are given in return for a steady flow of annuity payments. As global equity markets have plummeted to their lowest point in over ten years, regulators fear that much of the principle that is supposed to repaid over the course of the annuity is lost, and that – as a result – insurers a) won’t be able to cover the payments and that b) in the case of variable payments, those depending on annuities as a primary source of income will not be able to make ends meet with payments that have in some cases fallen by as much as 50%.

Yet it is unclear just who is in the wrong here, if anyone, or if regulators are rattling their sabers in a concession to public pressure. Except in cases of outright fraud, investors are expected to have carefully read and understood all the prospectuses, all of which also include information necessary to make informed decisions about whether or not to purchase an annuity.  Yet since so many of the buyers of annuities are older and have difficulty understanding (let alone reading) much, they could be easily convinced by a salesperson saying something that totally contradicts the acknowledgement of risks found in the sales literature.

The case against variable annuity sales is compelling when we consider the demographic of the victims – mostly older people or either know nothing about personal finance or do not have the wherewithal to manage their own finances at all. Yet should we let a couple of bad apples ruin it all? Guidelines governing annuity marketing already dictate that a variety of investor-aimed disclosures must be made in order for a sale to proceed; in cases where that is not adhered to, the crime is fraud, and it should be pursued as such.

Savers and investors should always know exactly what they are getting into and should buy financial services from individuals they trust. They should verify all claims made by a salesman by referring to sales materials and should feel justified – compelled, even – to alert the authorities should they find that a salesperson is misrepresenting the risks that concur with variable annuities.