If you carry some balances on your credit card that are eating into your pocket every month with interest charges, then you aren’t alone!

A recent study by Clever, a Real estate data firm, almost half -47 percent- of people who use credit card said they were carrying balances. An entire 56 percent of those cardholders have been in debt for a year while another ¾ (72 percent) of balance-carrying card users had accumulated $1,000 in pending credit card debt.

The research also revealed that a large number of these balance holders are not positive they’ll clear their debts soon. According to the figures, only 30% of US citizens with credit card debt are optimistic they’ll settle their debts this year.

In every 5 Americans, one feels it may take up to three years settle their card balances.  7 percent think it will take more than five years to pay off their balances. Meanwhile, another 8% say they have no idea when they’ll settle the debts, if at all they will.

What Carrying A Balance Means

To cardholders, carrying a balance can mean a lot of expenses. Credit card annual percentage rates (APR) stand at 17.7 percent, that’s a 0.5 percentage point uptick over the past six months. That is to say, people with bad credit are paying APRs over 25%.

Do the math right, and you find that accumulating a $1,000 balance per year at 17.7% APR will cost you $100 in total interest!

So, where are Americans missing the mark? A 2018 study by CreditCards.com found that 22% of cardholders think accumulating balances improve credit score. Regrettably, that is not true. You must not carry balances, more so, if the interest rate is high, in the name of establishing credit.

Your credit accounts must not be in use to keep up a desirable credit score. But you deny lenders a chance to asses your creditworthiness if you aren’t using your card at all. So, the smartest way to build a higher score is to pay off all your payments on time, per month, and in full.

Why Customers Carry Balances

Sometimes, circumstances push cardholders to accumulate debts. Other times, card users are spending more than they clear off per month. More than half of the subjects mentioned purchasing groceries as one of the reasons they carry credit card debt. Shopping online and in-store followed closely at 48% and 43% n that order. An entire 44 percent said eating out as part of their debt contributors.

Wrapping Up

Cardholders must now take care of their spending habits and stop assuming that carrying balances will build their scores. Also, they need to be proactive in ensuring timely payments and avoid things that could lead to accumulating balances.

Author Bio: Electronic payments expert Blair Thomas is the co-founder of high risk payment processing company eMerchantBroker. He’s just as passionate about getting a merchant account with bad credit as he is with traveling and spending time with his dog Cooper.

According to Andrew Binetter, food expert, these are foods you should avoid despite their ‘health’ label.

Fresh-Pressed Juices

Many people drink fresh juices constructed from fruits, vegetables or a mix of both to improve health or increase weight-loss.

While not every juice on the market is high in sugar and calories, a lot of fruit juices are.

Drinking fresh fruit juice on a regular basis can add to excess calorie usage, which may create you to put on weight.

Stick to juices that contain primarily non-starchy veggies like kale and also low-sugar fruits like lemon to manage your calorie intake.

‘Healthy’ Sugar

With many people reducing white sugar from their diet regimen, alternative sweeteners marketed as “healthy” have become progressively popular.

Agave, coconut sugar, as well as date sugar, are merely some of the many sweeteners available.

Although these products are usually considered healthy and balanced, overdoing with any sugar– also natural ones that aren’t as processed as white sugar– can add to weight gain.

Agave, as an example, is higher in calories than table sugar and also very high in fructose, a type of sugar that can contribute to insulin resistance and even fat accumulation (6 ).

Since any sugar can create weight gain, it’s important to limit your full usage of sugar– consisting of alternative sweeteners.

Low-Calorie Grain

When trying to drop weight, you might grab low-calorie cereals to start your day.

While these breakfast foods might be reduced in calories, they are frequently packed with sugar coated.

Plus, many low-calorie grains lack the protein and healthy fats that assist you in feeling delighted.

A study in 30 males demonstrated that a breakfast of eggs as well as salute offered better fullness as well as caused substantially fewer calories consumed throughout the day than did morning meal grain (7 ).

Dried Fruit

Dried out fruit is packed with fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

Nevertheless, since dried fruit is smaller sized and sweeter than fresh fruit, it can be quickly overeaten.

And also, a serving of dried fruit holds much more sugar and calories than an equal amount of fresh fruit.

Adhering to a 1/4-cup (50-gram) part when snacking on dried out fruit is an outstanding way to stay clear of consuming too much.

Although dried fruit is practical, fresh fruit is a much healthier alternative.

Packaged Foods

From diet regimen cookies to fat-free chips, supermarket racks are teeming with packaged diet regimen foods.

While these products may be tempting, most of them are unhealthy.

Many diet foods contain preservatives, unwanted fats as well as artificial sweeteners that might damage your body.

It’s best to replace these packaged, excessively refined foods with nutrient-dense, filling choices.

The following are some useful tips to use LinkedIn sales navigator for salespeople. It has quickly become one of the fundamental tools for achieving success in the world of digital marketing.

With a Sales Navigator account, you can open doors to so many business opportunities by exploring many avenues across the platform. It was a much-needed development of the Business social media channel which always felt like it could be offering so much more.

Nobody really knew how to approach using Linkedin in the early years. It was a bit of a slow burner. It started to become a hipster alternative to facebook and twitter, and many business professionals would set up their profiles and start connecting with their friends and colleagues, but what did it actually achieve? Certainly nothing tangible other than a bit of a vanity flex for people starting their new role, with a fancy title.

But then things began to develop with a clearer and better structure. It was segmented for industries and there was a relevance for recruitment as well as lead generation and prospecting.

However, there were still various limitations and even with a LinkedIn premium account, the benefits barely stretched beyond notification of who is visiting your profile.

But the Sales Navigator has changed the landscape of the tool and now there is so much more opportunity and there is still so much more to come.  Here are some tips for getting the best from your account and maximising the scope of its potential for developing business and sales.

1. Upgrade Your Profile

With the sales navigator or premium account, you have more chances to get the attention of the people as your profile will be shown in the search and top results. Moreover, the premium accounts have bigger photos and better images that make them catchy for any person. When someone will search for something and if you match their search, there are more chances you will appear in the results. Upgrading profile is an essential for more prospects.

2. Download the Mobile App

For many reps, it not possible to be active all the time and use their computer. That is why the android and iOS app has been introduced for LinkedIn sales navigator. The app will make your work and life pretty easy as it allows you to do a lot of work, track leads, manage profiles, respond to messages, check the news and other items on your newsfeed without waiting to use the computer. The app makes things simple and can be really helpful in emergency cases when you don’t have access to the computer.

3. Integrate Sales Navigator with your CRM

LinkedIn has collaborated with a number of companies for CRM and it include Microsoft, Zoho, HubSpot and others. With a CRM, you will have a better idea and understanding of your day to day activities. You will not need to open separate web links to track down the lead and your performance. The CRM will be integrated to your account and will show the daily leads and activities. This will make your work very easy.

4. Target High Value Accounts

LinkedIn now makes it really easy when it comes to marketing and campaigns on the platform. You can target more potential prospects and relevant people with the new features and integration of better options. This empowers the users on LinkedIn to reach the better people who can be of good to them. Moreover, tracking sales as well as performance is simple and you will have an eye over the sale all the time around.

5. Connect with Former Customers

The salespeople can most out of LinkedIn sales navigator because it has been designed and launched for the salespeople to connect with customers and improve their interactions. The filters allow you to do comprehensive research, target certain people, miss out the irrelevant ones and even reach to the past customers. With these filters, you can reach to the former or past employees and customers. Their experience and exposure will be really helpful for you as a salesperson.

6. Use Search Features for Your Advantage

The LinkedIn filters are designed in a way that they give the maximum support and help to the salespeople. When it comes to connecting with individuals that align with your ideal client profile, the LinkedIn feature is very effective in this regard. The users should just know how they can make a great of all such features for their benefit and get maximum out of it.

It may seem that a small business does not need to study the market, but it is not and usually leads to a loss of competitiveness. It is essential to know the environment in which we move before defining our offer. We are not alone in the market, so you have to know at all times what our competition is doing. It is not about copying what you do, but about analyzing it to detect changes in trends and anticipate opportunities.

Analyze our offer of products and services

In most cases, our offer of products and services is not based on market analysis, but on what we know how to do. Consumption habits change as society evolves. In recent years, this change in the way we consume certain basic products is very evident. Each time larger families are less common and a lot of packaged product is bought because we spaced out purchases due to our limited time availability.  However, the small business can adapt to this new needs with the advantage of closeness to the customer. For the right Business Management online options the greater details are there.

Improve promotion and dissemination

Small businesses barely make use of marketing tools, which are fundamental when it comes to publicizing the solutions we provide to the user. The lack of time, resources and training in many cases, leads us to miss our competitive advantages because we do not reach the potential client.

One of the main advantages of small businesses compared to large chains is the closeness to the customer. We can get to know them because we attend them personally and they tend to come frequently. It is an element that we must take advantage of to personalize our offer of services and products, avoiding the standardization of large stores. Flexibility is one of our best allies.

Take care of the details

The much-mentioned “User Experience” is not a fallacy, but one of the most powerful tools that we can exploit because of our closeness. The love we put into what we do and the amount of detail we can have with the user can be a differentiating key to the standard procedures of the chain stores. Asking clients for problems they have told us in previous visits, for their family or for their work, allows us to establish a closer relationship that translates into an improvement of that user experience.

Anticipate the demand

We can take advantage of the knowledge we have of our customers and our market to anticipate the demand. Using loyalty tools like email marketing, we can stay longer in the minds of customers, so that we are your first choice in every situation. In order to create an appropriate distribution list, we can carry out sweepstakes and promotions for customers to give us your email address.