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Are you tired of waking up with a stiff neck and feeling groggy throughout the day? Say goodbye to restless nights and hello to better sleep with a contour pillow for your neck! This innovative pillow design has been specifically created to offer support and comfort, allowing you to wake up feeling refreshed and revitalized. In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of using a contour pillow for your neck, why it’s essential for your overall health, and how it can help you achieve a better quality of life. So grab yourself a cuppa, sit back, relax and let us take you on an informative journey towards getting that perfect night’s sleep!

Contour Pillow

Contour Pillow
A contour pillow is a great way to improve your sleep habits. Not only does it help you get a better night’s rest, but it can also reduce pain in your neck and shoulders.

Here are four reasons why you should consider adding a contour pillow to your bedtime routine:

1. It Can Help You Get A Better Night’s Rest
A contour pillow not only helps you get a more comfortable night’s sleep. But it can also reduce neck and shoulder pain. In fact, some people find that they wake up feeling more rested thanks to the improved alignment of their spine and the redistribution of pressure throughout their body.

2. It Reduces Stress And Anxiety
Many people find that using a contour pillow helps them relax and fall asleep faster. This is because the unique design of this type of pillow helps distribute pressure evenly across your head, neck and shoulders. In addition, studies have shown that sleeping on your side increases the amount of time you spend in REM sleep – one of the most restful stages of sleep – which can help relieve stress and anxiety.

3. It Improves Circulation And Clears Your Head Faster
Since a contour pillow adjusts its shape to fit your head, it helps circulate blood. And lymph better than other types of pillows. This promotes healthy blood flow throughout your body, which can keep you alert and clearheaded during the day. Additionally, since a contour pillow supports your head instead of pressing down on it. It can reduce headaches and other symptoms of sinus pressure.

4. It Can Help You Lose Weight And Tone Your Body
Since contour pillows redistribute pressure evenly across your body, they can help you lose weight and tone your body. In fact, some people find that they can even lose a few pounds without changing their diet or exercise habits at all! Additionally, a contour pillow can help improve blood circulation, which can help reduce cellulite and improve the appearance of your skin.

The Importance of a Good Night’s Sleep
If you’re anything like the majority of Americans, you don’t get enough sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, almost half of American adults report getting less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep each night! What’s more, insufficient sleep can have a major impact on your overall health.

Here are five reasons why you should give sleep a try:

1. Improved Memory and Cognition
Quantity over quality is definitely the key when it comes to sleep. As we age, our brains start to suffer from less-quality sleep, which can lead to problems with memory and cognition. In fact, one study found that people who get less than 6 hours of sleep every night are at an increased risk for developing dementia!

2. Reduced Risk for Depression and Anxiety Disorders
Sleep deprivation is also linked with an increased risk for developing depression and anxiety disorders. In fact, a study published in The Lancet found that people who slept fewer than 7 hours per night were twice as likely as those who got 8 or more hours of sleep to develop depression in the following year! And another study found that people who slept 4 or 5 hours per night were three times as likely as those who got 7 or more hours of sleep to develop anxiety disorders!

3. Reduced Risk for Heart Disease and Stroke
Poorly sleeping can also lead to heart disease and stroke. Studies have shown that people who get less than 6 hours of sleep each night are at an increased risk for developing cardiovascular diseases. And research has also shown that people who sleep 5 or fewer hours per night are 3 times as likely as those who get 7 or more hours of sleep to develop stroke!

4. Increased Risk for Diabetes and Obesity
People who don’t get enough sleep are also at an increased risk for developing diabetes and obesity. In fact, a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who slept 5 or fewer hours per night were almost twice as likely as those who got 6 or more hours of sleep to have a BMI over 30! And another study found that people who slept 4 or fewer hours per night were nearly three times as likely as those who got 7 or more hours of sleep to have a BMI over 25!

5. Reduced Risk for Cancer
Studies have shown that people who get enough sleep have a reduced risk for developing various types of cancer. In fact, a study published in Sleep found that people who slept 7 or more hours per night had a 50% reduction in the risk of developing breast cancer! And another study published in Cancer found that people who slept 6 or 7 hours per night had a 40% reduction in the risk of developing both breast and prostate cancer!

Sleeping Positions for the Neck
If you suffer from neck pain, you may want to consider using a contour pillow instead of your traditional flat pillow. A contour pillow is designed to conform to your natural shape and make it easier for your neck muscles to rest. There are a variety of sleeping positions that you can use with a contour pillow. And each one will suit your individual needs.

Neck pain can be caused by a variety of factors, including Structural abnormalities in the spine, Trauma or accidents, Osteoarthritis, Whiplash syndrome and Poor posture. If you’re suffering from neck pain and cannot find relief from standard therapies such as medication or physical therapy. Using a contour pillow may be the solution for you.

There are three main types of contour pillows: round, oval and oblong. The round type is the most common and is designed to fit around your head like a hat. The oval type is broader at the base and narrower towards the top, which makes it more comfortable to sleep on your side or stomach. The oblong type is similar to an oval but has a flatter surface that’s better suited for people who sleep on their back or stomach.

To find the right sleeping position for you with a contour pillow. Try out different positions until you find one that feels comfortable. You should also make sure that the pillow is level across all angles. So that it doesn’t cause any discomfort in any part of your neck. When you’re ready to sleep, place the pillow between your head and the rest of your pillowcase. And then gently prop your head up so that it’s in a comfortable position.

Some people prefer to use a contour pillow with a sleeping mask because the mask helps to keep their head cool and reduces the risk of snoring. If you’re using a contour pillow with a sleeping mask, make sure that the mask is properly fitted. So that it doesn’t move around during the night.

How Does A Contour Pillow Work?
A contour pillow is designed to provide the perfect shape and support for your neck. This type of pillow is making with a raised surface along one edge and a gradual decline towards the other edge, which creates a gentle curve that helps relieve tension in your neck and shoulders.

According to research, using a contour pillow for neck can significantly improve your sleep quality. Studies have found that people who use this type of pillow are less likely to experience Neck pain or headaches in the morning. Additionally, people who use contour pillows often report feeling more refreshed after sleep and more rested during the day.

If you’re looking for an extra layer of comfort and support when it comes to sleeping. Consider investing in a contour pillow. Not only will you get better sleep, but you’ll also feel better both physically and emotionally in the morning.

What Are The Benefits Of Using A Contour Pillow?
Do you find yourself tossing and turning in your sleep? Do you feel like your neck is always sore? If so, you may be experiencing the effects of a bad sleeping posture. A memory foam contour pillow can help improve your sleep by helping to correct your sleeping position.

A contour pillow is design to conform to the curves of your neck, which helps relieve tension in your neck and shoulders. By promoting good alignment and reducing pressure on your cervical spine. A contour pillow can help improve circulation and reduce inflammation.

If you’re looking for a way to improve your sleep habits, consider investing in a contour memory foam pillow. Not only will it make you more comfortable during nightfall. But it could also lead to less pain in the morning.

Why Should You Buy A Contour Pillow?
If you suffer from neck pain, a contour pillow is a must-have for a better night’s sleep.

Here are 5 reasons why you should buy one:

A contour pillow supports your head and neck.
It helps to correct alignment problems and alleviate tension and pain in the neck and shoulders.
It reduces wrinkles and eliminates bags under the eyes.
It firms up the skin around your neck, giving you a youthful appearance!
Most importantly, it gives you the deep, restful sleep that you need to feel refreshed the next day!
What Are The Best Types Of Contour Pillows?
There are a lot of contour pillows on the market. So it can be hard to decide which one is the right fit for you.

Here are four types of contour pillows that may be perfect for you:

Cervical Pillow: This type of pillow is design to support your neck. And help reduce pain in your neck and shoulders. It also helps to reduce snoring and improve sleep quality.
Side-Lying Pillow: This type of pillow is design to help you get a good night’s sleep by supporting your head, neck, and spine while you sleep. It also helps keep your head from staying “over-tilted” during sleep, which can cause problems such as headache or neck pain.
Back sleeper? This type of pillow is perfect for people who sleep on their back. It supports your upper body and spine while you sleep, which can help relieve pain in your neck and shoulders.
Contour Memory Foam Pillow: This type of pillow is making with memory foam, which will conform to your body as you fall asleep. So that it helps distribute pressure evenly across your entire neck and spine.
Conclusion
If you are like most people, you spend a third of your life sleeping. So it is no wonder that poor sleep habits can lead to all sorts of problems, from feeling tired. And unmotivated to developing chronic health conditions such as obesity and heart disease. To make sure you get the best night’s sleep possible, invest in a contour pillow that will support your neck and reduce any tension or pain in your head and neck area.

Investing Wisdom from Howard Marks of Oaktree CapitalMy regular listeners probably heard one of my earlier segments where I spoke about Howard Marks, the 67-year old billionaire who co-founded investment management firm Oaktree Capital which now manages about $84 billion in assets and is a publicly-traded company with ticker symbol OAK.Oaktree focuses its investments on high-yield bonds, distressed debt and private equity, and has delivered a whopping 23% average annual return over the past 25 years… so Marks has rightly earned his fame and fortune. To give you an idea of just how much a 23% rate of return is: If you invested $10,000 25 years ago, it would be worth $1,769,000 today.And, like Buffett, Marks too sends out folksy memos to Oaktree clients where he outlines his views on investing, the markets and the economy that are insightful, direct and sharply written. And today, I’m going to share a few insights from Marks’ latest memo – morphing his thoughts so they apply to individual financial planning. I’ve decided to break this up into a two-part series – with the first half of Marks’ memo today, and the rest to follow next week.Key Questions to Ask FirstSo in this latest memo, Marks first addresses philosophical questions on what to consider in setting up your investment portfolio. Once you have a clear idea on what your investment goals are, based on your retirement needs, Marks says you should discuss the following questions with your advisor:- Is it possible to build a retirement portfolio that can beat the market? If yes, then how, and to what extent can we beat the market?- What’s the best way to manage risk?- How do we define success, and what risks are we willing to take to achieve investment success?Then, as you build your portfolio, you’d want to balance it out between index investments (where you should not expect market-beating returns), individual stocks such as dividend payers, and perhaps some alternative investments to a smaller extent. If you’re closer to retirement, you might also want the safety of inflation-protected bonds. And for the safety of bonds, index investments and dividend stocks, you should be willing to accept “average” performance. But for the alternative investment portion of your portfolio, you should expect above-average or superior returns, as Marks calls it.Pick Funds that Dare to be DifferentFor your alternative investments where you’re seeking superior returns, look for funds that are backed by a strong track record, and where fund managers dare to be different. You see, if you pick a mutual fund that’s run by a manager who is essentially following or mimicking what others are doing, you’ll just end up paying high fees without getting any real bang for your buck.So for this alternative portion of your portfolio, look for managers that are courageous enough to be different and open to being wrong… managers who assemble a portfolio that is different from those held by most other funds. As Marks puts it, to be a top performer, the fund manager has to “escape the crowd” by being active in unusual market niches, buying things others haven’t found, don’t like or consider too risky to touch. A good alternative fund manager avoids what the market considers to be a darling, or all the rage, and engages in contrarian cycle timing, and concentrates heavily in a small number of things that he thinks will deliver exceptional performance… everything that personifies great investors such as Howard Marks and Warren Buffett.As Marks puts it “the cautious seldom err or write great poetry” in referring to fund managers that follow the herd.So look for fund managers who dare to be different, have a consistent history of market-beating performance and are transparent with their investors. That said, you also need to recalibrate your expectations with such alternative funds because their investments often could take longer to bear fruit… so only invest a small portion of your funds that you’re not planning on touching till you reach retirement… because if you picked the right alternative investment fund, those superior returns could compound very nicely over time.Now I know that it’s near impossible for most individual investors to really evaluate alternative investment funds, so this is where a good, qualified advisor can offer advice and help kick some of your returns into high gear.And as I mentioned above, Marks’ company – Oaktree Capital – is publicly traded with ticker symbol OAK, so you can buy shares to participate in Oaktree’s success; When you invest shares in OAK, you are not buying into Marks’ portfolio, but rather participating the company’s profit from its portion of the investment it takes for itself and the fees that are generated from his clients. Oaktree shares also offer a pretty compelling 7.7% dividend yield at current levels… but this is not a recommendation so please do your own research should you consider buying Oaktree.Most great investments begin in discomfort.Most people feel good about making investments where the underlying premise is widely accepted, where recent performance has been positive and where the outlook is rosy – but such investments are high in demand and are unlikely to be available at bargain prices.Bargains are usually found among things that are controversial, that people are pessimistic about, and that have been performing badly of late – investments that generate discomfort for most people. And this is where good alternative funds excel. For example, Oaktree Capital focuses on distressed debt – bonds issued by companies that are on the ropes in some way or another, bonds that are priced at pennies-to-the-dollar… bonds that comfort-seeking investors would not even think about. This discomfort is what causes distressed debt to be priced cheaper than it is really worth, and it’s one sector that has helped fuel Oaktree’s outsize returns. This area of investing is practically impossible for the typical investor to get into and one has to have superior skills in order to avoid being burned badly if things don’t work out.Marks also says; Dare to Be WrongMarks also reminds us that with courageous, discomfort-generating investments, you must also be prepared for failure as an inescapable potential consequence of trying to do really well. In other words, be prepared to lose money on this alternative portion of your portfolio… it’s not something anyone wants, but get into alternative investments with the understanding that non-mainstream investments could be harder to liquidate and have greater risk, and while your fingers are crossed for the upside, be aware that you could also lose money. That said, a good alternative investment fund should protect you significantly on the downside too.So look for alternative funds that invest judiciously, have more successes than failures, and make more on their successes than lose on their failures.Alas… No Magic FormulaMarks also cautions us that there is no easy formula to produce superior risk-adjusted returns – because if there were, everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.Or, as good ol’ Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s Partner bluntly puts it, “Investing is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid” and does not understand investing’s complex and competitive nature. Hardly the words of someone who wants to be politically correct, but he makes a good point. Why should successful investing be so easy that the uneducated and lazy investor achieves superior rate of return? It just doesn’t happen that way.Superior investment results can only come from a better-than-average ability to figure out when risk-taking will lead to gain and when it will end in loss. And this is not easy task. So it’s good to look for fund managers that ideally have a strong background in economics, financial math, accounting and investment analysis.Okay, I’ll wrap up here for today, and continue with more on Howard Marks’ thoughts on investing next week.

There are several potential financing options available to cash-strapped businesses that need a healthy dose of working capital. A bank loan or line of credit is often the first option that owners think of – and for businesses that qualify, this may be the best option.

In today’s uncertain business, economic and regulatory environment, qualifying for a bank loan can be difficult – especially for start-up companies and those that have experienced any type of financial difficulty. Sometimes, owners of businesses that don’t qualify for a bank loan decide that seeking venture capital or bringing on equity investors are other viable options.

But are they really? While there are some potential benefits to bringing venture capital and so-called “angel” investors into your business, there are drawbacks as well. Unfortunately, owners sometimes don’t think about these drawbacks until the ink has dried on a contract with a venture capitalist or angel investor – and it’s too late to back out of the deal.

Different Types of Financing

One problem with bringing in equity investors to help provide a working capital boost is that working capital and equity are really two different types of financing.

Working capital – or the money that is used to pay business expenses incurred during the time lag until cash from sales (or accounts receivable) is collected – is short-term in nature, so it should be financed via a short-term financing tool. Equity, however, should generally be used to finance rapid growth, business expansion, acquisitions or the purchase of long-term assets, which are defined as assets that are repaid over more than one 12-month business cycle.

But the biggest drawback to bringing equity investors into your business is a potential loss of control. When you sell equity (or shares) in your business to venture capitalists or angels, you are giving up a percentage of ownership in your business, and you may be doing so at an inopportune time. With this dilution of ownership most often comes a loss of control over some or all of the most important business decisions that must be made.

Sometimes, owners are enticed to sell equity by the fact that there is little (if any) out-of-pocket expense. Unlike debt financing, you don’t usually pay interest with equity financing. The equity investor gains its return via the ownership stake gained in your business. But the long-term “cost” of selling equity is always much higher than the short-term cost of debt, in terms of both actual cash cost as well as soft costs like the loss of control and stewardship of your company and the potential future value of the ownership shares that are sold.

Alternative Financing Solutions

But what if your business needs working capital and you don’t qualify for a bank loan or line of credit? Alternative financing solutions are often appropriate for injecting working capital into businesses in this situation. Three of the most common types of alternative financing used by such businesses are:

1. Full-Service Factoring – Businesses sell outstanding accounts receivable on an ongoing basis to a commercial finance (or factoring) company at a discount. The factoring company then manages the receivable until it is paid. Factoring is a well-established and accepted method of temporary alternative finance that is especially well-suited for rapidly growing companies and those with customer concentrations.

2. Accounts Receivable (A/R) Financing – A/R financing is an ideal solution for companies that are not yet bankable but have a stable financial condition and a more diverse customer base. Here, the business provides details on all accounts receivable and pledges those assets as collateral. The proceeds of those receivables are sent to a lockbox while the finance company calculates a borrowing base to determine the amount the company can borrow. When the borrower needs money, it makes an advance request and the finance company advances money using a percentage of the accounts receivable.

3. Asset-Based Lending (ABL) – This is a credit facility secured by all of a company’s assets, which may include A/R, equipment and inventory. Unlike with factoring, the business continues to manage and collect its own receivables and submits collateral reports on an ongoing basis to the finance company, which will review and periodically audit the reports.

In addition to providing working capital and enabling owners to maintain business control, alternative financing may provide other benefits as well:

It’s easy to determine the exact cost of financing and obtain an increase.
Professional collateral management can be included depending on the facility type and the lender.
Real-time, online interactive reporting is often available.
It may provide the business with access to more capital.
It’s flexible – financing ebbs and flows with the business’ needs.
It’s important to note that there are some circumstances in which equity is a viable and attractive financing solution. This is especially true in cases of business expansion and acquisition and new product launches – these are capital needs that are not generally well suited to debt financing. However, equity is not usually the appropriate financing solution to solve a working capital problem or help plug a cash-flow gap.

A Precious Commodity

Remember that business equity is a precious commodity that should only be considered under the right circumstances and at the right time. When equity financing is sought, ideally this should be done at a time when the company has good growth prospects and a significant cash need for this growth. Ideally, majority ownership (and thus, absolute control) should remain with the company founder(s).

Alternative financing solutions like factoring, A/R financing and ABL can provide the working capital boost many cash-strapped businesses that don’t qualify for bank financing need – without diluting ownership and possibly giving up business control at an inopportune time for the owner. If and when these companies become bankable later, it’s often an easy transition to a traditional bank line of credit. Your banker may be able to refer you to a commercial finance company that can offer the right type of alternative financing solution for your particular situation.

Taking the time to understand all the different financing options available to your business, and the pros and cons of each, is the best way to make sure you choose the best option for your business. The use of alternative financing can help your company grow without diluting your ownership. After all, it’s your business – shouldn’t you keep as much of it as possible?