What's In It For The Employer?

A cost-efficient method of providing plan members and their families with medical coverage and financial protection; a competitive edge in the job market - help attract and retain loyal employees, reduce turnover; a tax deduction; enhanced productivity, help reduce lost time with a healthy workforce; helps to build employee morale; a program that is easy to understand and administer; fast and fair claims services, and prompt and friendly customer service assistance.

What's In It For The Employee?

Sense of security, less worry about medical and financial matters; meaningful incentive to join and stay with a company; affordable coverage solution, and premiums paid are non-taxable.

Group Benefits

For most entrepreneurs, running their own business can be a personally satisfying experience, but not without its challenges. Small business owners, in particular, worry about attracting the talent they need to succeed, as experienced people are hard to find and entice away from bigger companies. Offering the same perks can be a stretch for many small business owners who grapple with tight budget constraints. For the employee, a salary increase is impacted up-front by a variety of payroll taxes and employee income taxes. However, with a group benefits plan, employees in all provinces except Quebec recieve health and dental benefits tax-free and employer contributions are deductible as a business expense.

A Painless Way To Cut Back On Expenses

With the current economic uncertainty, many people are looking for ways to reduce expenses. A relatively painless way to reduce your monthly expenses is to have a second look at the way you're managing your debt.

Over time, most of us take out a variety of loans for different purposes. These can include things like credit card debt, car loans, home renovation loans and, of course, the mortgage. And if you have more than one loan, you're most likely paying a different interest rate on each loan. One of the easiest ways to reduce your monthly interest costs is to consolidate your debt at the lowest rate. Typically, your lowest-rate debt will be a loan that is secured by an asset, such as your home.

If you have sufficent equity built up in your home, consider switching to a product that allows you to access your equity, such as home-equity-line-of-credit. Then, use this line of credit to repay your higher-interest loans. In this way, you'll be bringing all of your debts together into a single account, at a single rate. Some line of credit products even allow you to track debts seperately within the account so you can continue to keep track of interest costs and repayment seperately. Not only will debt-consolidation save you interest but it will make it easier for you to keep track of what you owe and how you're progressing in paying it down.

Reducing your monthly expenses is one way to deal with economic uncertainty - and it doesn't have to be paintful. By borrowing smarter you can reduce your interest costs and increase your cash flow each month.

If you'd like to learn how to reduce your monthly interest costs, we will refer you to our Banking Consultant from Manulife Bank.