Money Management

The days of remote work may be coming to an end. Read on to see how to make that easier on your employees. 

Many small businesses allowed employees to work remotely during the height of COVID-19. Back in 2020, that seemed like the only safe option.

But now that we’re nearing the end of 2023, a lot of companies are changing their tune. In fact, 90% of companies expect a return to the office by the end of 2024, according to a recent survey by Resume Builder.

As a small business owner, you may be eager to bring your staff back to the office. While not having to pay for office space can be a source of savings for businesses, the reality is that there can be challenges with remote work.

It can be harder to communicate effectively with employees when you’re not there in the room with them. And let’s face it — collaborative work is probably done better in person than over Zoom or other video conferencing software.

As such, you may be gearing up to call your staff back into the office. But do recognize that that’s apt to be a hard thing for a lot of people. And so here are a few ways you can help with that transition.

1. Ease back in with a hybrid schedule initially

If your employees have maintained a remote work schedule for the past three and a half years, then chances are, a little extra remote work won’t be so detrimental to your business. This doesn’t mean you should delay your return to the office. Rather, it means you should help employees adjust to office life with a hybrid schedule initially.

Say you’re targeting mid-October as your office return date. You may want to ask employees to come in two or three days a week through mid-November, four days a week through late December, and then five days a week come January. This is a reasonable approach, because it gives workers time to settle into a new routine and address different challenges their office return brings about.

2. Be flexible with hours

Having to work from an office could negatively impact a lot of people’s schedules. Parents might have to scramble to find child care. Pet owners might have to line up care for their animals if they’ll be gone for 10-hour stretches at a time.

It pays to be flexible with your employees’ hours, at least initially. That could mean letting workers come in very early and then leave mid-afternoon to grab their kids from school. Or, it could mean letting employees do the bulk of their work from the office, but finish up their last hour or two at home so they can get back in time to walk their dogs before there’s an accident.

3. Offer a pay bump to cover commuting costs if you can afford to

Before the pandemic, commuting costs were a known expense employees had to absorb. So you may be of the mindset that over the past three and a half years, your staff got a break from those expenses, and that was a lucky break.

The reality, though, is that if it’s been a long time since your workers have commuted, they may not have immediate room in their finances to spend extra on things like parking and gas. So while you’re certainly not obligated to offer a pay raise to compensate for commuting costs, if you can swing it, it’s definitely a nice thing to do.

It’s understandable that you may be ready to abandon remote work and embrace in-person work once again. But do try to be as kind as possible as you implement that change. For many workers, it will constitute a world of upheaval. And you don’t want to lose those workers to another job that’s remote. So it pays to employ these tips to make that transition one that doesn’t cause your employees to jump ship.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Maurie Backman has positions in Target. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Target. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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You usually cannot pay for a car entirely with a credit card, but you may be able to charge part of your car. Find out why that’s worth considering. 

Buying a car is a major financial undertaking, with the average cost of a new car coming in at around $50,000.

In an ideal world, you’d pay for a vehicle purchase entirely out of a savings account because then you’d avoid paying interest on it. But that’s very rarely how people purchase cars, since most people don’t just have $50,000 sitting around.

When you’re buying a car, you may wonder if it’s possible to put it on a credit card. The answer to this question can be a little more complicated than you might think.

Do dealers allow you to charge a car?

In most cases, you are not going to be allowed to charge the cost of an entire car on a credit card. Dealers don’t want you to do this because they have to pay credit card processing fees, which can be around 3% of the amount charged. If you’re buying a $50,000 car or even a $20,000 car, 3% of that amount is a lot.

What you usually can do, though, is put a portion of the car on your card. In my experience, I’ve been able to charge up to $5,000 on my card for a car, and that’s around what most dealers allow.

Sometimes, dealers will charge you the credit card processing fees when you do this. That’s never happened to me, but it is a possibility even if you’re charging only a portion of the purchase price so you will need to find out up front if you’d incur added costs.

Should you put part (or all) of your car on a credit card?

If a dealer allows you to charge part or all of your car’s cost on a credit card, you’ll need to decide whether this is even a good idea. And, whether it is smart or not depends on your motivations.

Are you trying to earn rewards?

You may decide that you want to charge part of a car to get credit card rewards. If that’s the case and you can afford to pay the card off in full before you’d get stuck paying interest, then you absolutely should charge as much as the dealer will let you (as long as it won’t pass processing fees onto you). If you can charge $5,000 in a card offering 2.00% back, you’d be able to earn $100 just for using your credit card. Why pass that money up?

Are you charging a down payment because you can’t afford it?

If you’re considering putting part of the car on a credit card for other reasons, though, it may not be such a good idea. For example, if you want to charge the down payment because you couldn’t afford to buy the car otherwise, you could be making a huge mistake.

That’s because you’d have both your credit card and car loan payments to deal with. And without any actual money of your own going toward a down payment, you would be underwater, which is when you owe more than the car is worth. That could be a big problem if you needed to sell it.

Are you just looking for the best financing option?

Credit cards also tend to have higher interest rates than car loans do. The average credit card interest rate as of May 2023 is 20.68%, while the average interest rate on a new vehicle loan was 6.5% as of the last quarter of 2022. The auto loan is a way more affordable way to borrow.

Ultimately, if you cannot afford to make a down payment on a vehicle without using your credit card, you should wait to buy the car until you’re in a better financial position. And if you’re hoping to finance a car, a car loan is usually a better bet than a credit card.

But if your goal is to get some free credit card rewards and your dealer will let you, there’s no harm in charging what you can and then just paying it back right away. Those sweet rewards from this approach may just help you cover the cost of that first tank of gas.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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