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Working from home can be lonely, but it also can be hectic. It can be amazingly inspiring, and sometimes it can be frustrating. No matter what situation you face, there is always an answer out there. Here are some ways to deal with those situations from people who work at home themselves.

To make sure you aren’t paying more than necessary for your car insurance, be sure to ask about discounts. For example, some drivers might be eligible for reduced rates for passing a defensive driving test. Students can sometimes get discounts for good grades, and seniors who drive less can also get reduced premiums.

Figuring your tax deductions for your home-based business can be made infinitely easier if you designate a separate area or room of your home entirely to your business, and use it for that purpose only. It is much easier to compute, and you are much more likely to get, the largest write-offs possible if you have a set, defined space. Trying to add up bits of space here and there that may have only been used temporarily, are called combined-use areas or transitional spaces, and make computing allowable expenses next to impossible to calculate.

An important part of your home business will be your home office. The home office should have some physical boundaries from the rest of your home in order to separate your home life from your home work. Having a specific area designated for your home business will increase your productivity and help you maintain a high work ethic. When choosing where to set up your home office, you should also keep in mind that the area will need to be able to scale with the growth of your business.

Look to your own passions or needs to create a product or business. The best products solve a problem or fill a need. Look at problems that need solving in your own life, and think of products that might solve them. Chances are, if you experience a certain type of problem, many others do too.

Building mailing lists that you can use in your business is a good idea. Make sure to keep your communications below the spam level. Certain entities utilize mailing lists to advertize sales and new items. Others use mailing lists to inform customers, along with sending an ad. Add a place on your site where people are able to opt into your list.

Know what your competitor is charging for their products. Customers are not going to buy from you if they can get a similar product for a much lower price somewhere else. Make sure to highlight the ways that you are different and the unique things that you can offer to your customers.

Always remember that your home business is just s business, so you can’t take it personally. Breathe deeply and calm yourself in any situation that isn’t going your way. There are many resources out there that will help you, especially other entrepreneurs. So never fear. The answers are out there, including the ones above!

President Donald Trump signed a tax-overhaul bill, delivering a major tax cut to U.S. corporations along with a package of temporary cuts for other businesses and most individuals.

The bill slashes the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and cuts individual tax rates across the board. So if your corporation has net profit your tax percentage as a proportion to the net profit will be lower than years before. This Trump feels will make United States corporations more competitive in the global market. He has felt that because if the high percentage of taxes that the U.S. Corporations have to pay, reduces the competitive abilities of these U.S. Corporations. Trump said the bill will prompt abandoned factories to come back to life. He said Bob Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, called him to say he’s buying a new paper plant in North Carolina because of the tax law. Of course this is just one event. This will have to play out in the months to come to see if that is the case. President Reagan preached in the 80′s the “trickle down effect” lets see if this idea works in the real world.

In this case a 21% tax rate is significantly lower than the 35% tax rate. For high earning individuals with LLC’s that are disregarded entities a switch to establishing a C Corp may, if formed correctly, lower your taxes by thousands of dollars. Also if your health insurance costs are high this tax planning strategy can help you to expense your health insurance within the corporation structure.

Overall, the bill is projected to decrease federal revenue by almost $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Trump and GOP leaders have said they expect the business tax cuts to spur enough economic growth to make up for the revenue loss. In other words, the federal government is willing to have a temporary revenue decrease in order for the economy to spur economic growth which will over compensate for the loss in tax revenue. So this income tax overhaul bill is intended for business owners to save money on their income taxes so that they can spend the savings wisely and inject capital into the economy so to add more jobs and more business profit activity. At the end of the day the businesses that maximize the income tax incentives will be the ones who gain from this new 2017 income tax legislation,

A business directory thrives on web traffic. You understand that. You cannot expect people to come and enlist their businesses with you if they aren’t aware of who you are. You know that too. Quite sadly enough though – you’re just not able to able to derive the desired traffic to your directory. Maybe, it’s time to revise the best practices of Business Directory Development. Once you do that you will come to unearth a sling of mistakes that you have been unwittingly committing all these times.

Kindly ensure that you’re acquainting yourself with the mistakes associated with a business directory. Here is a look at some of these mistakes.

You Are Not Indexing Your Directory for The Search Engine

You are submitting your online directory only in the most prominent search engine like Google. What about the lesser known or less popular search engines like Yahoo and Bing? You should not really commit this mistake. Submitting your directory to all the search engines (irrespective of their scale) is imperative. Make sure you are submitting and you are doing that. Do not forget to get your business directory validated by these search engines as well.

You Are Not Writing Articles Promoting the Business

Do write articles about your business and online business directories and submit them to article directories as well. Focus on online business marketing and do include the URL to your directory.

You Are Not Bookmarking Your Online Directory

You might as well think that all the aforementioned promotional efforts are unimaginably time-consuming. However, excluding any of these measures can actually impact the future of your online business directory adversely. You can enhance site traffic for your business directory by utilizing the social marking websites. You can add a small widget to your site so that your visitors are able to share your content with others. Your directory can be promoted on various social channels including, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and others.

You Are Not Interested Is Spreading the Word

There are not one but several ways with the help of which you can bolster the presence of your online business directory. Work on forging solid business relations with owners of other directories so that you can always exchange promotional ideas with each other. Exchange links with pertinent directories and posts comments on discussion boards and business blogs. Do not forget to use a forum signature which consists of your directory URL on blogs and forums where you participate with your comments. Once again, one of the biggest reasons why businesses do not engage in substantial networking is because of the fact that they are just not ready to shell out the kind of time required for these activities. You’re committing a huge mistake if you’re thinking on similar lines. In your effort to save time, you will find your competitor racing ahead in the curve because they chose to network (something which you didn’t do!

Have you been wondering how you can make money online fast and easy? Well, here you will get all you need to kick-start your journey to success online. There are so many opportunities for making money online that present themselves to you. However, be keen to go for legitimate ones that pay and not scams and fraudulent activities.

Write with passion for cash

Did you know that you can monetize your skills and expertise online? Writing is one of the ways that you can make money online. There are online platforms where writers are employed to write articles and informational contents such as blogs and even news articles. All you need here is to bring your skills in grammar and fast typing. Some of the recommended websites to look for writing gigs are Upwork, iWriter, and Listverse.

Get rid of the old and unwanted stuff online

Is your garage filled with old stuff that you’re not using anymore? Well, newsflash! This is your green card to making money online. Craigslist and eBay are the most popular online platforms where buyers and sellers converge. Here, you can post something that you no longer want and hopefully get an interested buyer and make some cash.

Get paid to conduct online surveys

If you like giving answers to questions and helping people out, then this is your chance to make money online. Sites such as MindFieldOnline.com InboxDollars.com pay people to conduct online surveys and fill out given questionnaires. The job may not pay much, but it’s worth your time since it’s easy to do. Here, you give opinions and your views on given topics or even products.

Work for outsourcing companies

This is perhaps the most flexible way to make money online from any location; it can be at the comfort of your house or in a public park. There are companies such as CrowdSource, Liveops, and SpeakWrite that outsource the jobs given to them by clients. Once you sign up with them, you will be required to create a schedule for working with them and get paid per hour’s jobs. Some of the jobs here include writing, transcription, and online support services.

Get paid to market products online

Are you good at convincing people to either use product or buy it? If yes than internet marketing is your next big thing to making money online. You will be required to purchase a product and do a review on it, possibly showing potential buyers how to use it and the benefits that come from it. You can choose from a variety of products that suit you, which of course, also depends on the company you are working for. Alternatively, you can market a product in your blog page, a YouTube channel or even a referral program and get some quick cash.

The economic collapse of 2008 showed how closely connected worldwide financial institutions have become. Affected entities included too big to fail financial houses, all the way down to your local bank.

The combination of the failure of the mortgage backed securities market coupled with a liquidity crisis, nearly brought the worldwide financial system to its knees. This failure cast light on the risk to the world of finance. Because of government sponsored bailouts, the solvency of large institutions came under scrutiny.

Banks are more responsible for ensuring they have enough capital on hand to absorb problems in the credit market. However, the Federal Reserve wants proof and they use stress testing to obtain it.

Stress testing is now mandated by law, and the operative legislation is the Dodd-Frank Act. Dodd-Frank mandates stress testing for all institutions with at least $10 billion in assets. As a practical matter this now applies to nineteen of the largest US financial houses, including Chase and Morgan Stanley.

A stress test is a balance sheet assessment that looks to an institution’s insolvency under hypothetical unfavorable economic conditions. One example supposed a 21% drop in housing prices, a 50% drop in equity prices, and an unemployment rate of 13%. These conditions are unlikely but may be possible, and are similar to what some would call an economic apocalypse.

While many subject to the stress test passed, for others it was very close, or a small amount failed. Needless to say, confidence was shaken among those who choose to invest in the financial industry, despite the many bailouts and increased scrutiny.

What does this mean for your local bank? Community institutions are exempt from stress testing, but that does not mean they have no responsibility. The Comptroller of the Currency has issued guidelines for institutions with less than 10 billion in assets. Among the areas that are being looked at are commercial real estate borrowing and commercial transactions.

Because of the connection between domestic banks and European banks, stress tests are now mandated for overseas institutions. Stress tests are planned for 124 banks across 22 countries.

For your local bank, a regulator will be looking at toxic assets. These are assets that the regulator may believe to be illiquid and inflated in value. These will primarily deal with loans, and will look at the risk associated with those loans. Next, the regulator will look at uninsured mortgage backed securities. The regulator will discount the value of these assets.

These potential losses are totaled and factored into the adverse scenario, and they will be offset against the institution’s ability to earn its way back to health. If passed, business goes on as usual. If failed, the regulator may require additional capital to be raised. If the capital cannot be raised, closure will be the final step.

In order to get a sense of whether your local banking establishment is in trouble, look at the kinds of loans it makes. If it is in the habit of making a lot of unsecured loans, you might have reason to feel uncomfortable.

The concept of money laundering is very important to be understood for those working in the financial sector. It is a process by which dirty money is converted into clean money. The sources of the money in actual are criminal and the money is invested in a way that makes it look like clean money and hide the identity of the criminal part of the money earned.

While executing the financial transactions and establishing relationship with the new customers or maintaining existing customers the duty of adopting adequate measures lie on every one who is a part of the organization. The identification of such element in the beginning is easy to deal with instead realizing and encountering such situations later on in the transaction stage. The central bank in any country provides complete guides to AML and CFT to combat such activities. These polices when adopted and exercised by banks religiously provide enough security to the banks to deter such situations.

However if a bank encounters any such situation it encounters the following types of consequences:

Reputational risk

The major risk a bank faces when it finds itself caught in any sort of money laundering is reputational risk. The reputation of the bank goes negative and in turn it might face huge withdrawals. There might me loss of profitable business and many other liquidity issues. The quantum of this risk might cause a bank to confront various investigations costs and penalties. The biggest hurdle a bank has to undergo is the situation of mistrust by the customers which is devastating.

Operational risk

It is another one of the major consequences of money laundering which a financial institution faces. It is a kind of risk which lies in the internal procedures, people and system after they breakdown. It is a risk which is included in the operations of the business. Thus it creates disturbance in the smooth functioning of the organization.

Legal risk

Legal risks are also posed to the organizations due to the uncertainties in the legal actions which might come up for the organization to deal with them. These might include certain charges on the bank, the dealing between the money launderer and the bank etc.

Concentration Risk

This type of risks is majorly pertains to the banking industry and defines the probability to which any bank has lent money to a particular group. The increased lending without proper identification or the realization after encountering money laundering act may cause a bank to suffer loan losses which in turns deteriorate banks standing in the industry.

Opportunity Cost

One of the major consequences a bank faces is the increase in opportunity cost. It is increased in a way that the management finds itself spending its time in managing the damage control which the act of money laundering has caused instead of utilizing that time for other better perspective.

In Washington’s current hyper-partisan climate, a law with strong bipartisan support is worthy of notice. Yet one such law, which had the further distinction of creating a new financial planning option for individuals with disabilities and their families, may have flown under your radar as 2014 wound to a close.

Before Congress finished the year, it passed the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act, which President Obama promptly signed. Among other provisions, the act created the brand-new 529A account, sometimes also called a 529 ABLE plan or simply an ABLE account. Like the 529 college savings accounts with which many Americans are already familiar, 529A accounts will provide tax-advantaged benefits. Instead of helping families save for educational expenses, however, 529As will help families support loved ones who have special needs.

Since the law only passed in December, it is too early to say with precision how these accounts will look or how valuable they will be. To some extent, we will have to wait until the accounts are available to the public. Most likely, however, the new accounts will prove useful in at least some situations, even if they are not a perfect fit for everyone.

To qualify for a 529A account, a beneficiary must meet the Social Security definition of disability, which excludes short-term or partial disability. Further, a beneficiary must have developed or been diagnosed with the disability prior to age 26. In practice, the Internal Revenue Service will verify eligibility in one of two ways. First, an individual who qualifies for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) before the age threshold will automatically be eligible. If an individual does not receive SSI benefits, he or she may still qualify if a doctor submits a letter to the Treasury secretary certifying that the individual is blind or has a “physical or mental impairment which results in severe functional limitations.” The letter must also confirm that the condition has lasted, or is expected to last, at least 12 months continuously.

While beneficiary eligibility will be confirmed at the federal level, 529A programs will be state-run. As such, the programs may not roll out rapidly everywhere. Some states, including Pennsylvania, Maryland and California, are already looking into setting up 529A programs; other states may take longer to get started. As with 529 college savings plans, states will be able to impose their own additional rules and conditions when they set up such programs. States may choose to provide tax benefits for contributions, such as tax deductions, but are not required to do so.

Assets in 529As will grow tax-free, and distributions will not be taxed as long as they are used to pay for qualifying expenses. The definition of qualifying expenses for a 529A account is broad. Not only will it cover health and wellness expenses, but also housing, transportation, education, employment training and legal fees. If withdrawals are made to pay for nonqualified expenses, however, they will be taxed at ordinary income rates, plus a 10 percent penalty. The beneficiary, or a person able to make legal and investment decisions on his or her behalf, will make investment choices within the plan’s options, and can alter these elections twice every year. (This is a change from the previous once-a-year limit on existing 529s, and it applies to both 529 college savings accounts and 529A accounts.)

Perhaps most important, assets held in a 529A plan do not disqualify the beneficiary from federal and state aid, such as SSI benefits or Medicaid, as long as the total account balance does not exceed $100,000. This is a significant change, since previously, individuals with more than $2,000 in available assets were disqualified from SSI. In addition, if the 529A account balance exceeds the $100,000 limit, SSI benefits are suspended, but not terminated; if the balance falls below the threshold, SSI benefits resume. Because of this limit, 529A balances will be effectively capped at $100,000 for many beneficiaries.

While a 529A is similar to a 529 college savings account in many ways, there are some important differences in addition to the implied $100,000 funding limit. The 529As will have a yearly contribution limit that matches the federal gift tax exclusion. For 2015, that limit is $14,000 – per beneficiary, not per donor. While friends or relatives can make one-time or recurring contributions to a 529A, the account holder must be the beneficiary, and each beneficiary may hold only one account.

Further, that account must be established with the program offered in the beneficiary’s state of residence. This is a major difference; a 529 college savings account holder often shops around for a plan that offers an appealing mix of tax benefits, investment options and cost-effective administration. A 529A beneficiary will be stuck with his or her state’s plan, even if it does not compare well with those offered in other states. For states that do not offer 529As, an eligible participant may be able to seek out another state’s plan, but only if both states have set up the arrangement in advance. If the beneficiary moves, he or she will need to roll over the account into the new state’s plan.

Importantly, because the account holder must be the beneficiary, family members such as parents or grandparents will lose the option of withdrawing contributions to meet personal needs. Gifts to a 529A will be irrevocable. The accounts will not be eligible for the five-year accelerated gifting provision that applies to 529 college savings accounts, either.

The requirement that the account holder be the beneficiary may prove a complicating factor, since many beneficiaries may be minors or adults with diminished capacity. In cases where the beneficiary is not well-equipped to direct his or her own investments, careful planning will be necessary to make sure that someone with custodianship or power of attorney is positioned to manage the account.

It is also worth noting that one of the appealing features of a 529 college savings account is the ability to change the beneficiary. With 529A accounts, changes in beneficiary to a sibling or step-sibling are permitted, but would presumably necessitate a change in the account’s ownership as well, making it more complicated. This scenario may require regulatory clarification.

The 529A accounts come with one major downside, which may be a dealbreaker in certain situations. Any beneficiaries who receive Medicaid will need to proceed with caution, because the accounts include a provision allowing states to make reimbursement claims on 529A assets that remain unspent at the beneficiary’s death. The beneficiary’s estate must repay any Medicaid benefits received after the account was created out of the remaining account balance. This provision could wipe out a 529A’s balance if a beneficiary dies unexpectedly or 529A assets are not spent down over time.

Before Congress created 529A accounts, the main financial vehicle families used to provide for those with disabilities was the special needs trust. While 529As will fulfill many of the same purposes – most notably preserving state and federal benefits while providing for an individual’s other financial needs – some families may find a trust is still the better option, or may wish to consider a combination.

While a trust lacks some of the benefits of a 529A, it also comes without many of the restrictions. Allowable trust contributions are unlimited, and if structured properly, trust assets will never affect the beneficiary’s eligibility for government benefits. In addition, a 529A can only receive cash contributions, while contributions to a trust may take other forms, including securities, life insurance or tangible property. Trusts also carry the advantage of avoiding the Medicaid payback requirement to which 529A accounts are subject (as long as the trust was not funded with the beneficiary’s own savings). Families who think there may be money left over beyond a beneficiary’s lifetime, or who wish to provide for expenses that would not be considered qualified for 529A spending, may prefer a trust that grants additional security and flexibility.

On the other hand, the tax-exempt growth that 529A accounts offer will be attractive to anyone planning for someone with special needs. In addition, a 529A will almost certainly be simpler and cheaper to set up and administer than a trust, no matter what particulars a state’s plan eventually involves. A properly created special needs trust involves legal fees at the outset, along with ongoing administration expenses. This puts such a solution out of reach for many.

Over the past few years, SEO has evolved faster than the previous decade. And this has made it harder for users to keep up with most recent updates. The launch of Penguin and Panda changed the way things worked in the past. In short, the way Google used to rank website has changed a lot. But if you want to reach your objectives, make sure you avoid some common SEO mistakes.

1. Avoiding RELEVANT CONTENT

In the start, Google said that it would rank websites that have the most relevant content on its first page. This statement is still valid. What has happened is that the search engine has become a lot better at achieving the objectives. In other words, now, Google is in better position to know what is relevant and what is not.

So, what you need to do is offer content that is relevant and avoid content is not relevant to your niche. Of course, the content should be informative and unique.

2. Following Tricks

People have been using many illegal ways of cheating the search engine algorithms for traffic, exposure and backlinks. Some of these tactics can still give you a temporary edge, but they are bad for your blog or website for the long-term.

So, you should avoid using low-quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, questionable redirects or cloaking for traffic. It may be tempting to go for these short-cuts, but they will just hurt your ranking, and may even get you banned for good.

3. Overloading your site

It has been a common perception that photos, videos and other graphics make a website more appealing for the viewers. To some extent, this perception is true; however, there should not be too much of it or your website will take ages to load. Your viewers don’t have all day to wait for your site to load. If your blog takes longer to load than other websites, the viewers will just click away. You will not only lose viewers, you will also lose ranking against other websites.

4. Making navigation difficult

Navigation is one of the most important factors for any website. It’s important for both viewers and search engines. Ideally, your viewers should be able to get the desired information from your website in one or two clicks. This may not be an easy task for you. So, what you can do is put important content on the main page of your site. This the users will be able to get what they want more easily.

5. Misunderstanding THE BACKLINK PROCESS

You may not want to be obsessed with obtaining a lot of backlinks. Although you don’t have to have backlinks from authority websites to establish your credibility, it helps a lot. However, what you need to do is try to get backclinks in a nature fashion. But it’s not a good idea to buy backlinks. This is one of the worst mistakes that you can make.

Quality content is the key to SEO success. Content doesn’t just mean your text contents. Images must be an integral part of your content strategy. At times, single images can be far more effective than your 1000 word blog post. It also helps you improve blog post quality and performance.

Images, Infographics, Videos and all other multimedia contents on your web page will help you in increasing the user engagement on your site and makes the visitors stay on your site for longer duration which helps in reducing the bounce rate.

Not just adding images to your contents, you should also optimize those images for better SEO performance. Optimization of images must be the one important aspect of your on-page SEO process.

If you are using images in your content, there are many aspects to be considered related to SEO.

Relevancy

Using images doesn’t mean that you should fill up your content with loads of pictures. You should use it only when it is required and also you should use images that are more relevant to your content.

Placement of your images is an another important aspect. It should be placed at a relevant location in your content according to your text content.

Use original images

Originality always helps in improving your user experience and your authority. Usage of original images will be helpful in improving your SEO performance. You can create original images with a graphic designer or you can take your own photographs with a quality camera. It is the reason top White hat SEO companies employ talented graphic designers for creating quality images.

If you are not able to employ an in-house graphic designer or if you are running out of time, you can always use high quality images from the web. But the important factor to be considered is it should be copyright free.

There are many tools available for getting copyright free images without any cost. The most popular ones are Unsplash, Flicker, Freeimages.

Image Size

Images are the main source for damping your site’s speed. And site speed is a crucial factor in your SEO performance. So, you should be extra cautious in using images without compromising your page speed.

It should not also affect your image quality, you should have a correct balance between. You can achieve this by reducing the file size by compression. You can use tools like Photoshop for compression.

File name

Search engine crawlers are visually impaired, it can even interrupt a 5000 word text content, but it cannot interrupt a single image and what the image is about. It is the reason using a keyword rich file names for your images is an important aspect in image optimization.

Google bots and other search engine crawlers can read your image’s file name and if it is named with your target keyword, it gives a signal to search engines about the image topic and thus helps your SEO performance.

For example, if your image is related to selling sports shoes, rather than using the file name as “IMG_89868″ you can use it as “Black_Tennis_Shoes”.

Alt text

Similar to the file name, search engines can read Alt text of the images. Alt text is known as “Aleternative Text”, is an HTML attribute used to describe the content of images.

You should use Alt text which is relevant to your images and it should be clear and descriptive. You can use your target keywords in the Alt text but be cautious about Keyword stuffing.

If you are not focusing on Image optimization, you are missing a huge opportunity in improving your SEO performance. You can use above mentioned best practices in your on-page optimization process.

American youth currently face challenging realities along their way to adulthood. With parents working longer hours and the absence of grandparents and other community adults who used to make up support systems, the intergenerational fabric of community has been frayed. Youth development strategies aim to reweave community fabric in a new way – one that takes the supports and opportunities young people should have, and re-institutes them in the context of young people’s realities today. While many of these realities are harsh ones, we know that young people themselves want to be involved in their communities. The importance of building positive youth/adult partnerships in this process cannot be stressed enough.

The mobilization effort is based on influencing three critical elements: information, attitudes, involvement. The transformation of each of these areas, both in the public and private domains, is a necessary condition for change. For example, in the area of information, the country is currently focused on collecting primarily negative youth information, e.g., teenage births, dropouts, and juvenile arrest rate. Inspiring a 180 degree shift, we need to collect information such as: average number of hours youth participate in after-school activities, computer to youth ratio in non-school hours, and the percentage of youth who hold part-time jobs. The three elements are intertwined, for how information is gathered and communicated impacts attitudes as well as how and if people choose to become involved.

Only through broad community commitment, strong public will, and diverse partnerships can youth development take root, go to scale, and be sustained over time. Ultimately, the mobilization must be supported by partnerships among all of the systems in a community that affect young people (i.e., education, corporations, health care, juvenile justice, religious groups, and recreation). To build these relationships and establish youth development infrastructures to improve developmental paths of adolescents will take at least 10 years.

Localities currently spending their resources on efforts to “fix youth” will need to pool, redirect, and increase their financial commitment to youth development. These additional dollars will ensure all youth equal access to supports and opportunities, especially youth living in economically distressed areas.

Our information on the services young people need, and use, is still hit or miss. Communities do not know what they have or what they need. They usually have no way to tell how well services are being used and what services need to be improved.

Good information is important for youth services for exactly the same reasons it is important for everything else. Accurate, accessible standardized information lets people find the services they need and use them effectively. It lets communities manage, evaluate and improve their services and determine the need for changing them, eliminating them, or developing new ones.

Many national efforts to measure outcomes presently use deficit-driven indicators to assess young people’s condition in society, such as teen pregnancy rates, juvenile crime numbers, and percentages of high school dropouts. Although these measures are important, they do not tell the whole story about young people’s experiences. Measures that reflect positive conditions and experiences of young people are also important.

The accelerated trend of the past decade toward empowering our nation’s young people to succeed has fostered a new awareness and commitment to this most valuable resource. Some basic questions are:

- How much do we currently spend?

- How much should we spend?

Some progress has been made through new initiatives in education finance reform and services integration, providing more effective delivery of social, health and educational services for children and youth from the classroom up to the government. This document establishes an initial framework and formula for assessing the financial resources and mechanisms necessary to move American society closer to this ideal. The following were found to be potential root causes of these trends in spending:

- Devaluation of adolescents.

- Lack of consensus on youth development.

- Lack of adequate and protected funding. Funds are not protected and dedicated in the manner necessary to sustain the long-term, comprehensive process that is youth development.

We can support the move toward the ideal by:

- Seeking new types of information.

- Building on the after-school momentum.

- Making a sustainable public investment.

Youth development is an investment that must be made by each sector of the wider community – public and private. Examination of the federal-state matching, local dedicated taxes an incentives for business and philanthropy could lead to models for providing adequate and sustainable funding for youth development. National intermediaries must work to cultivate this leadership at all levels of government, and at the grassroots, by creating constituencies.