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In the first debate clash of the 2024 campaign, the two candidates unleashed a flurry of false and misleading statements.
By Robert Farley , Eugene Kiely , D'Angelo Gore , Jessica McDonald , Lori Robertson , Catalina Jaramillo , Saranac Hale Spencer and Alan Jaffe
Posted on June 28, 2024
The much-anticipated first debate of 2024 between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump featured a relentless barrage of false and misleading statements from the two candidates on immigration, the economy, abortion, taxes and more.
The debate was hosted by CNN in Atlanta on June 27.
Biden claimed that Trump “wants to get rid” of Social Security, even though the former president has consistently said he will not cut the program and has advised Republicans against doing so.
Earlier this year, Biden and his campaign based the claim on Trump saying in a March 11 CNBC interview that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” As we’ve said , in context, instead of reducing benefits, Trump was talking about cutting waste and fraud in those programs — although there’s not enough of that to make the program solvent over the long term.
“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump later said in a March 13 Breitbart interview . “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
During the GOP presidential primary, Trump also criticized some of his Republican opponents for proposing to raise the retirement age for Social Security, which budget experts have said would reduce scheduled benefits for those affected.
Some critics of Trump have argued that he cannot be expected to keep his promise because of his past budget proposals. But, as we’ve written , Trump did not propose cuts to Social Security retirement benefits.
Meanwhile, Trump claimed during the debate that Biden “is going to single handedly destroy Social Security” because of illegal immigration. “These millions and millions of people coming in, they’re trying to put them on Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security,” Trump said of Biden.
As we and others have explained before, immigrants who are not authorized to be in the U.S. aren’t eligible for Social Security. In fact, because many such individuals pay into Social Security via payroll taxes but cannot receive benefits, illegal immigrants bolster rather than drain the finances of the program.
In referring to what seniors pay for insulin, Trump misleadingly claimed, “I heard him say before ‘insulin.’ I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.” Insulin costs went down for some beneficiaries under a limited project under Trump; Biden signed a more expansive law affecting all seniors with Medicare drug coverage.
Under Trump, out-of-pocket costs were lowered to $35 for some Medicare Part D beneficiaries under a two-year pilot project in which some insurers could voluntarily reduce the cost for some insulin products. KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization, explained earlier this month that under this model, in effect from 2021 to 2023, “participating Medicare Part D prescription drug plans covered at least one of each dosage form and type of insulin product at no more than $35 per month,” and “less than half of all Part D plans chose to participate in each year.”
But in 2022, Biden signed a law that required all Medicare prescription drug plans to cap all insulin products at $35. The law also capped the out-of-pocket price for insulin that’s covered under Medicare Part B, which covers drugs administered in a health care provider’s office. The caps went into effect last year.
STAT, a news site that covers health care issues, reported that the idea for a $35 cap for seniors initially came from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, which proposed it in 2019.
“He’s the only one I know he wants to raise your taxes by four times,” Trump said of Biden. “He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times. He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire. So everybody … [is] going to pay four to five times – nobody ever heard of this before.”
Trump regularly warns of massive tax hikes for “everybody,” should Biden be reelected. That doesn’t jibe with anything Biden has proposed.
In his more than three years as president, Biden’s major tax changes have included setting a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% and lowering taxes for some families by expanding the child tax credit and, for a time, making it fully refundable, meaning families could still receive a refund even if they no longer owe additional taxes.
As we wrote in 2020, when Trump made a similar claim, Biden proposed during that campaign to raise an additional $4 trillion in taxes over the next decade, although the increases would have fallen mainly on very high-income earners and corporations. The plan would not have doubled or tripled people’s taxes at any income level (on average), according to analyses of Biden’s plan by the Penn Wharton Budget Model , the Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation .
In March 2023, the TPC’s Howard Gleckman wrote that Biden proposed a 2024 budget that would, on average, increase after-tax incomes for low-income households and “leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households.” The Tax Policy Center noted, “The top 1 percent, with at least roughly $1 million in income, would pay an average of $300,000 more than under current law, dropping their after-tax incomes by 14 percent.”
This March, Biden released his fiscal year 2025 budget , which contains many of the same proposals and adds a few new wrinkles. But it still does not contain any “colossal tax hikes” on typical American families, as Trump has said.
Biden’s latest plan proposes — as he has in the past — to increase the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, and to restore the top individual tax rate of 39.6% from the current rate of 37%. It would also increase the corporate minimum tax rate from 15% to 21% for companies that report average profits in excess of $1 billion over a three-year period. And the plan would impose a 25% minimum tax on very wealthy individuals. The plan also proposes to extend the expanded child tax credit enacted in the American Rescue Plan through 2025, and to make the child tax credit fully refundable on a permanent basis.
Trump is also mostly wrong that Biden “wants the Trump tax cuts to expire.”
As he has said since the 2020 campaign, Biden’s FY 2025 budget vows not to increase taxes on people earning less than $400,000.
In order to keep that pledge, Biden would have to extend most of the individual income tax provisions enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that are set to expire at the end of 2025. And that’s what Biden says he would do — but only for individual filers earning less than $400,000 and married couples making less than $450,000. (In order to pass the TCJA with a simple Senate majority, Republicans wrote the law to have most of the individual income tax changes expire after 2025 .)
The Biden budget plan “would raise marginal income tax rates faced by higher earners and corporations while expanding tax credits for lower-income households,” according to a Tax Foundation analysis of the tax provisions in Biden’s budget. “The budget would redistribute income from high earners to low earners. The bottom 60 percent of earners would see increases in after-tax income in 2025, while the top 40 percent of earners would see decreases.”
In arguing that wealthy households should pay a minimum tax, Biden repeated his misleading claim that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of 8%.
“We have a thousand … billionaires in America, and what’s happening?” Biden said . “They’re in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2% in taxes.”
That’s not the average rate in the current tax system; it’s a figure calculated by the White House and factors in earnings on unsold stock as income. When only considering income, the top-earning taxpayers, on average, pay higher tax rates than those in lower income groups, as we’ve written before.
The top 0.1% of earners pay an average rate of 25.1% in federal income and payroll taxes, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center in October 2022 for the 2023 tax year.
The point that Biden tried to make is that earnings on assets, such as stock, currently are not taxed until that asset is sold, which is when the earnings become subject to capital gains taxes. Until stocks and assets are sold, the earnings are referred to as “unrealized” gains. Unrealized gains, the White House has argued , could go untaxed forever if wealthy people hold on to them and transfer them on to heirs when they die.
As he has before , Trump wildly exaggerated the popularity of ending Roe v. Wade — even going so far as to claim that it was “something that everybody wanted.”
“51 years ago, you had Roe v. Wade and everybody wanted to get it back to the states,” he said , referring to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, which was overturned in 2022.
Trump: Everybody, without exception: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back — religious leaders. And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade, and moving it back to the states. This is something that everybody wanted. Now 10 years ago or so they started talking about how many weeks and how many this and getting into other things. But every legal scholar throughout the world — the most respected — wanted it brought back to the states. I did that.
In fact, a majority of Americans have disagreed with ending Roe v. Wade, including plenty of legal scholars, as we’ve explained before . While some scholars criticized aspects of the legal reasoning in Roe, it did not necessarily mean they wanted the ruling overturned. Legal experts told us that Trump’s claim was “utter nonsense” and “patently absurd.”
After Biden talked about job creation during his administration, Trump falsely claimed that “the only jobs [Biden] created are for illegal immigrants and bounced back jobs that bounced back from the COVID.”
In fact, as of May, total nonfarm employment in the U.S. had gone up about 6.2 million from the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase is about 15.6 million if you count from when Biden took office in January 2021 until now — but that would include some jobs that were temporarily lost during the pandemic and then came back during the economic recovery.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that only “illegal immigrants” have seen employment gains.
Since Biden became president in January 2021, employment of U.S.-born workers has increased more than employment of foreign-born workers, a category that includes anyone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen at birth, as we’ve written before . BLS says the foreign-born population includes “legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants.” There is no employment breakdown for just people in the U.S. illegally.
In looking at employment since the pre-pandemic peak, the employment level of foreign-born workers was up by about 3.2 million, from roughly 27.7 million in February 2020 to nearly 30.9 million in May. Employment for the U.S.-born population increased by about 125,000 — from nearly 130.3 million in February 2020 to 130.4 million, as of May.
Biden and Trump accused each other of presiding over the largest budget deficit in the U.S.
After talking about Trump’s plans for additional tax cuts, Biden said Trump already had the “largest deficit of any president in American history.” When he got a chance to respond, Trump said, “We now have the largest deficit in the history of our country under this guy,” referring to Biden.
Biden is correct: The largest budget deficit on record was about $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020 under Trump. However, that was primarily because of trillions of dollars in emergency funding that both congressional Republicans and Democrats approved to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the largest budget deficit under Trump was about $1 trillion in fiscal 2019.
Meanwhile, the most recent budget deficit under Biden was about $1.7 trillion in fiscal 2023. As of June, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit for fiscal 2024, which ends on Sept. 30, would be about $2 trillion.
Biden boasted that on his watch, “Black unemployment is the lowest level it has been in a long, long time.”
It’s true that the unemployment rate for Black or African American people reached a record low of 4.8% in April 2023, but it is currently 6.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has data going back to 1972.
Also, the unemployment rate was low under Trump, too, until the pandemic.
Under Trump, the unemployment rate for Black Americans went down to 5.3% in August 2019 – the lowest on record at that time. It shot up to 16.9% in April 2020, when the economic effects of the pandemic took hold. When Trump left office in January 2021, amid the pandemic, the rate was 9.3%.
The rate has been 6% or less in only 29 months since 1972, and it happened only under two presidents: 21 times under Biden and eight times under Trump.
Biden said Trump called U.S. veterans killed in World War I “suckers and losers,” which Trump called a “made up quote … that was in a third-rate magazine.”
It was first reported by a magazine — the Atlantic — but Trump’s former chief of staff, John F. Kelly , a retired four-star Marine general, later seemed to confirm it.
Biden was referring to a trip Trump made to France in November 2018, where he reportedly declined to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near the location of the Battle of Belleau Wood. “He was standing with his four-star general and he told him, ‘I don’t want to go in there because they’re a bunch of losers and suckers.’”
The Atlantic wrote about this alleged incident in 2020, citing unnamed sources. The magazine wrote that Trump made his remark about “losers” when he declined to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, and his remark about “suckers” during that same trip.
The Atlantic, Sept. 3, 2020: In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
In October 2023, Kelly – who was on that trip and visited the Aisne-Marne Cemetery — gave a statement to CNN that seemed to confirm those remarks. CNN published Kelly’s statement.
CNN, Oct. 3, 2023: “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
Trump said, “We had 19 people who said I didn’t say it.” One of those who said that he didn’t hear Trump make those remarks is John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who was also on the trip and said he was there when the decision was made not to visit the cemetery.
“I didn’t hear that,” Bolton told the New York Times in 2020 after the magazine story first appeared. “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time, but I was there for that discussion.”
Biden ignored the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic when he criticized Trump for employment going down over Trump’s time in office.
“He’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover that lost more jobs than he had when he began,” Biden said.
Job growth during Trump’s term was positive until the economy lost 20.5 million jobs in April 2020, as efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus led to business closures and layoffs. By the time Trump left office in January 2021, employment had partly rebounded, but was still 9.4 million jobs below the February 2020 peak, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics .
Trump repeatedly claimed that Biden “caused the inflation” and that “I gave him a country with no essentially no inflation. It was perfect. It was so good.”
It’s true that inflation was relatively modest when Trump was president. The Consumer Price Index rose 7.6% under Trump’s four years — continuing a long period of low inflation. And inflation has been high over the entirety of Biden’s time in office. The Consumer Price Index for all items rose 19.3% between January 2021 and May.
For a time, it was the worst inflation in decades. The 12 months ending in June 2022 saw a 9% increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.
Inflation has moderated more recently. The CPI rose 3.3% in the 12 months ending in May, the most recent figure available.
Although Trump claims that Biden is entirely responsible for massive inflation, economists we have spoken to say Biden’s policies are only partly to blame. The economists placed the lion’s share of the blame for inflation on disruptions to the economy caused by the pandemic, including supply shortages, labor issues and increased consumer spending on goods. Inflation was then worsened by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which drove up oil and gas prices, experts told us.
Indeed, inflation has been a worldwide problem post-pandemic.
However, many economists say Biden’s policies — particularly aggressive stimulus spending early in his presidency to offset some of the economic damage caused by the pandemic — played a modest role.
Jason Furman , a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama and now a Harvard University professor, told us in June 2022 that he estimated about 1 to 4 percentage points worth of the inflation was due to Biden’s stimulus spending in the American Rescue Plan — a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief measure that included $1,400 checks to most Americans; expanded unemployment benefits; and money for schools, small businesses and states. Mark Zandi , chief economist of Moody’s — whose work is often cited by the White House — said the impact of the stimulus measure now “has largely faded.”
Economists note that the American Rescue Plan came after two other pandemic stimulus laws enacted under Trump that were worth a total of $3.1 trillion. That spending, too, could have contributed to inflation.
Trump grossly inflated the number of immigrants who have entered the country during the Biden administration — putting the number at 18 million to 20 million. The number, by our calculation, is about a third of that. Trump also claimed, without evidence, that many of those immigrants are from prisons and mental institutions.
“It could be 18, it could be 19, and even 20 million people,” Trump said of the immigrants who have entered the U.S. during the Biden administration. Later in the debate, Trump asked Biden why there had been no accountability “for allowing 18 million people many from prisons, many from mental institutions” into the country.
That’s a greatly exaggerated number. We took a deep dive into the immigration numbers in February , and again in mid-June , and we came up with an estimate of at most a third of Trump’s number.
Here’s the breakdown:
Department of Homeland Security data show nearly 8 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border between February 2021, the month after Biden took office, and May, the last month of available statistics . That’s a figure that includes both the 6.9 million apprehensions of migrants caught between legal ports of entry – the number typically used for illegal immigration – and nearly 1.1 million encounters of migrants who arrived at ports of entry without authorization to enter the U.S.
DHS also has comprehensive data, through February, of the initial processing of these encounters. That information shows 2.9 million were removed by Customs and Border Protection and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole. (Encounters do not represent the total number of people, because some people attempt multiple crossings. For example, the recidivism rate was 27% in fiscal year 2021, according to the most recent figures from CBP.)
As we’ve explained before , there are also estimates for “gotaways,” or migrants who crossed the border illegally and evaded the authorities. Based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78%, which DHS provided to us, that would mean there were an estimated 1.8 million gotaways from February 2021 to February 2024. The gotaways plus those released with court notices or other designations would total about 5 million.
There were also 407,500 transfers of unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services and 883,000 transfers to ICE. The ICE transfers include those who are then booked into ICE custody, enrolled in “ alternatives to detention ” (which include technological monitoring) or released by ICE. We don’t know how many of those were released into the country with a court notice. But even if we include those figures, it still doesn’t get us to anywhere near 18 to 20 million.
And we should note that these figures do not reflect whether a migrant may ultimately be allowed to stay or will be deported, particularly since there is a yearslong backlog of immigration court cases.
Also, as we have written repeatedly , Trump has provided no credible support for his incendiary claim that countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending those people to the U.S. Experts tell us they have seen no evidence to substantiate it.
Earlier this month, we looked into Trump’s claim as it relates to Venezuela, because Trump has repeatedly cited a drop in crime there to support his claim about countries emptying their prisons and sending inmates to the U.S. Reported crime is trending down in Venezuela, but crime experts in the country say there are numerous reasons for that — including an enormous out-migration of citizens and a consolidation of gang activity — and they have nothing to do with sending criminals to the U.S.
“We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country,” Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told us.
Trump claimed that “we had the safest border in history” in the “final months” of his presidency, according to Border Patrol. But according to data provided by Customs and Border Protection, apprehensions of those trying to cross illegally into the U.S. in the last three full months of Trump’s presidency were about 50% higher than in the three months before he took office.
In fact, as we wrote in our piece, “ Trump’s Final Numbers ,” illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the southwest border , were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.
But these statistics tell only part of the story. The number of apprehensions fluctuated wildly during Trump’s presidency, from a monthly low of 11,127 in April 2017 to a high of 132,856 in May 2019.
Back in April, we wrote about a misleading chart that Trump showed to the crowd during a speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “See the arrow on the bottom? That was my last week in office,” Trump said. “That was the lowest number in history.” But Trump was wrong on both points.
The arrow was pointing to apprehensions in April 2020, when apprehensions plummeted during the height of the pandemic.
“The pandemic was responsible for a near-complete halt to all forms of global mobility in 2020, due to a combination of border restrictions imposed by countries around the world,” Michelle Mittelstadt , director of communications for the Migration Policy Institute, told us.
After apprehensions reached a pandemic low in April 2020, they rose every month after that. In his last months in office, apprehensions had more than quadrupled from that pandemic low and were higher than the month he took office.
Trump falsely claimed that “some states” run by Democrats allow abortions “after birth.” As we have written , that’s simply false. If it happened, it would be homicide , and that’s illegal .
“No such procedure exists,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says on its website.
The former president has wrongly said that abortions after birth were permitted under Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion until it was reversed in 2022. It was not.
Under Roe, states could outlaw abortion after fetal viability, but with exceptions for risks to the life or health of the mother. Many Republicans have objected to the health stipulation, saying it would allow abortion for any reason. Democrats say exceptions are needed to protect the mother from medical risks. We should note, late-term abortions are rare . According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. in 2020 were performed after 21 weeks gestational time.
In June 2022, after Trump had appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, the court overturned Roe in a 5-4 ruling. Biden supports restoring Roe as “the law of the land,” as he said in his State of the Union address in March.
In his focus on the U.S. border with Mexico, Trump made the unsupported claim that it is “the most dangerous place in the world.”
It’s true that unauthorized border crossings can be dangerous — 895 people died while doing so in fiscal year 2022, which is the most recent year for which the Customs and Border Protection has data . Most of those deaths were heat related.
And the International Organization for Migration called calendar year 2022 “the deadliest year on record” for migration in the Americas, with a total of 1,457 fatalities throughout South America, Central America, North America and the Caribbean. The organization began tracking deaths and disappearances related to migration in 2014.
“Most of these fatalities are related to the lack of options for safe and regular mobility, which increases the likelihood that people see no other choice but to opt for irregular migration routes that put their lives at risk,” the organization said in its 2022 report .
Trump suggested that the border crossings imperil Americans when he went on to say, “these killers are coming into our country, and they are raping and killing women.”
But, as we’ve written before , FBI data show a downward trend in violent crime in the U.S., and there’s no evidence to support the claim that there’s been a crime wave driven by immigrants.
Crime analyst Jeff Asher, co-founder of the New Orleans firm AH Datalytics , told us in May that there’s no evidence in the data to indicate a migrant crime wave.
Similarly, Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the New York Times in February there was no evidence of a migrant crime wave in New York City after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing migrants there in April 2022.
“I would interpret a ‘wave’ to mean something significant, meaningful and a departure from the norm,” Butts said at the time. “So far, what we have are individual incidents of crime.”
Also, it’s worth noting that the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index — which measures the safety of 163 countries based on 23 indicators, including violent crime, deaths from internal conflict and terrorism — said the “least peaceful country” is Afghanistan, followed by Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In discussing inflation, the former president embellished the degree to which food prices have increased.
“It’s killing people. They can’t buy groceries anymore,” Trump said. “You look at the cost of food, where it’s doubled, tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index for food has gone up 17.5% — not 100% to 300% — since January 2021. The Consumer Price Index specifically for groceries, or “food at home,” has risen 20.8% .
During a short exchange about climate change, Trump boasted that during his tenure “we had the best environmental numbers ever.” It is not clear what he was referring to exactly, but he said if elected president he wanted to have “absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air — and we had it.” He might have been referring to a talking point that Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, had recommended Trump mention during the debate: “CO2 emissions went down” during his administration, as the Hill reported .
Greenhouse gas emissions, which are responsible for global warming, did decline from 2019 to 2020. But that was “largely due to the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on travel and economic activity,” according to the EPA. Emissions increased by 5.7% from 2020 to 2022, once the economy started getting reactivated again, the agency said.
According to an analysis by the New York Times , Trump’s administration reversed nearly 100 environmental rules, including 28 regulations on air pollution and emissions, and eight rules that limited water pollution. Reportedly, Trump recently asked oil executives and lobbyists to donate to his campaign, promising he would roll back other environmental rules that hurt fossil fuel interests.
“He’s not done a damn thing for the environment,” Biden said in response, pointing out that Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement . “I immediately joined it because if we reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius … there’s no way back,” Biden said.
As we’ve reported , although reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming comes with a number of very serious impacts, it is not a point of no return. Scientists agree that every increment of global warming increases these negative impacts, but 1.5 degrees is not a magic number after which everything is doomed, they say.
During the debate, Trump mentioned twice that while immigrants crossing the border illegally were “living in luxury hotels,” in New York City and other cities “our veterans are living in the street.”
While it is true that New York City has provided hotel rooms to migrant families as a temporary shelter solution, there is no evidence that immigrants are being placed in “luxury” hotels.
In 2023, Mayor Eric Adams signed a $275 million contract with the Hotel Association of New York City to house 5,000 migrants. The deal was intended to help struggling hotels impacted by the pandemic and did not expect to include luxury hotels. “There are no gold-plated rooms that are being given away contrary to any reports that you may have seen,” the association president told NY1 at the time. In January, the city signed another $77 million contract to shelter migrant families in hotels.
In April, social media posts falsely claimed immigrants had stormed New York City Hall to demand luxury hotel accommodations. But as the Associated Press reported , the immigrants were there for a hearing about racial inequities in shelter and immigrant services.
In 2023, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness increased 7.4% from 2022, according to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But homelessness among veterans has been declining in recent years, with a 4% overall reduction within the last three years alone.
While talking about Iran and terrorism, Trump falsely claimed that “you had no terror, at all, during my administration.” As we’ve written , there were several acts of terrorism carried out by foreign-born individuals when Trump was in office.
For example, in October 2017, Sayfullo Saipov used a truck to run down people in New York City. He killed eight people, including Americans and tourists, in an attack carried out on behalf of the Islamic State.
Then in December 2017, Akayed Ullah detonated a homemade pipe bomb he was wearing inside a New York City subway station. Ullah told authorities he did it in response to U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and other places.
Then in December 2019 , Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force, shot 11 people at Florida’s Naval Air Station Pensacola, killing three U.S. sailors. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, called it an act of terrorism in January 2020. “The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology,” Barr said in a statement.
When discussing U.S. trade relations with China, Trump said “we have the largest deficit with China.” That’s false, as we’ve written .
In 2023, the U.S. had a trade deficit with China in goods and services of roughly $252 billion, according to revised figures the Bureau of Economic Analysis released in early June. The deficit in goods trading was about $279 billion which was partially offset by a roughly $27 billion surplus in the trading of services — which can include travel, transportation, finance and intellectual property.
The trade gap with China last year was the lowest it had been since 2009, when it was $220 billion.
In fact, according to BEA data going back to 1999, the highest total U.S.-China trade deficit in goods and services was about $378 billion in 2018 — when Trump was president. Under Biden, the highest trade deficit with China was $366 billion in 2022.
Trump falsely said that prior to the pandemic, the U.S. had “the greatest economy in the history of our country. … Everything was locked in good.”
Trump’s boast about creating the “greatest economy in history” is ubiquitous in his campaign speeches. And it’s not true, at least not by the objective measure typically used to gauge the health of the economy.
As we have written , economists generally measure a nation’s health by the growth of its inflation-adjusted gross domestic product . Under Trump, growth was modest. Real GDP in Trump’s four years grew annually by 2.5% in 2017, 3% in 2018 and 2.5% in 2019 — before the economy went into a tailspin during the pandemic in 2020, when real GDP declined by 2.2%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
So, in the best year under Trump, U.S. real GDP grew annually by 3%. By contrast, the nation’s economy grew at a faster annual rate 48 times and under every president before and after Trump dating to 1930, except Barack Obama and Herbert Hoover. The economy grew at more than 3% six of Ronald Reagan’s eight years, including 7.2% in 1984, and it grew 5% or more 10 times under Franklin D. Roosevelt, including 18.9% in 1942. Under Biden , the GDP grew by 5.8% in 2021 — a post COVID-19 bounce-back — by 1.9% in 2022 and 2.5% in 2023.
As he has many times before, Trump wrongly claimed, “I gave you the largest tax cut in history.” But saying this over and over, as Trump has for years, doesn’t make it any more true.
As we have been writing even before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted into law, while the law provided tax relief to nearly all Americans, it was not the largest tax cut in U.S. history either as a percentage of gross domestic product (the measure preferred by economists) or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
According to a Tax Policy Center analysis , the law reduced the individual income taxes owed by Americans by about $1,260 on average in 2018. It also reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% , beginning in January 2018.
The law signed by Trump was initially projected to cost $1.49 trillion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation . It could end up costing substantially more if individual tax provisions are extended past 2025. Over the first four years, the average annual cost was estimated to be $185 billion. That was about 0.9% of gross domestic product in 2018.
That’s nowhere close to President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, which was 2.89% of GDP over a four-year average. That’s according to a 2013 Treasury Department analysis on the revenue effects of major tax legislation. Five more tax measures since 1940 had an impact larger than 1% of GDP, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget includes a 1921 measure as also being larger than the 2017 plan. That’s eighth place for Trump’s “biggest tax cut in our history.”
In inflation-adjusted dollars, the Trump-era tax cut is also less than the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which comes in at No. 1 with a $320.6 billion cost over a four-year average. And it’s less than tax reductions in 2010 ($210 billion) and 1981 ($208 billion).
Trump boasted, as he often does , that “on Jan. 6 [2021], we were energy independent,” implying that’s no longer the case under Biden. But by Trump’s definition, the country remains energy independent.
To be clear, under Trump, the U.S. never stopped importing sources of energy, including crude oil , from other countries. What he likely means is that the country either produced more energy than it consumed, or exported more energy than it imported. During Trump’s presidency, after years trending in that direction, the U.S. did hit a tipping point where exports of primary energy exceeded energy imports from foreign sources in 2019 and 2020 — the first times that had happened since 1952, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But contrary to Trump’s suggestion, that has continued in the Biden presidency. The U.S., during Biden’s presidency, has exported more energy, including petroleum , than it imported, and it has produced more energy than it consumed. Also, the U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and natural gas under Biden.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page . If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
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Need help writing your business plan? Explore over 550 industry-specific business plan examples for inspiration.
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Before you start exploring our library of business plan examples, it's worth taking the time to understand the traditional business plan format . You'll find that the business plan samples in this library and most investor-approved business plans will include the following sections:
The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your business plan and is ideally only one to two pages. You should also plan to write this section last after you've written your full business plan.
Your executive summary should include a summary of the problem you are solving, a description of your product or service, an overview of your target market, a brief description of your team, a summary of your financials, and your funding requirements (if you are raising money).
The products & services chapter of your business plan is where the real meat of your plan lives. It includes information about the problem that you're solving, your solution, and any traction that proves that it truly meets the need you identified.
This is your chance to explain why you're in business and that people care about what you offer. It needs to go beyond a simple product or service description and get to the heart of why your business works and benefits your customers.
Conducting a market analysis ensures that you fully understand the market that you're entering and who you'll be selling to. This section is where you will showcase all of the information about your potential customers. You'll cover your target market as well as information about the growth of your market and your industry. Focus on outlining why the market you're entering is viable and creating a realistic persona for your ideal customer base.
Part of defining your opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage may be. To do this effectively you need to get to know your competitors just as well as your target customers. Every business will have competition, if you don't then you're either in a very young industry or there's a good reason no one is pursuing this specific venture.
To succeed, you want to be sure you know who your competitors are, how they operate, necessary financial benchmarks, and how your business will be positioned. Start by identifying who your competitors are or will be during your market research. Then leverage competitive analysis tools like the competitive matrix and positioning map to solidify where your business stands in relation to the competition.
The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments. You'll address how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.
The operations section in our business plan examples covers the day-to-day workflows for your business to deliver your product or service. What's included here fully depends on the type of business. Typically you can expect to add details on your business location, sourcing and fulfillment, use of technology, and any partnerships or agreements that are in place.
The milestones section is where you lay out strategic milestones to reach your business goals.
A good milestone clearly lays out the parameters of the task at hand and sets expectations for its execution. You'll want to include a description of the task, a proposed due date, who is responsible, and eventually a budget that's attached. You don't need extensive project planning in this section, just key milestones that you want to hit and when you plan to hit them.
You should also discuss key metrics, which are the numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common data points worth tracking include conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, profit, etc.
Use this section of your business plan to describe your current team and who you need to hire. If you intend to pursue funding, you'll need to highlight the relevant experience of your team members. Basically, this is where you prove that this is the right team to successfully start and grow the business. You will also need to provide a quick overview of your legal structure and history if you're already up and running.
Your financial plan should include a sales and revenue forecast, profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, and a balance sheet. You may not have established financials of any kind at this stage. Not to worry, rather than getting all of the details ironed out, focus on making projections and strategic forecasts for your business. You can always update your financial statements as you begin operations and start bringing in actual accounting data.
Now, if you intend to pitch to investors or submit a loan application, you'll also need a "use of funds" report in this business plan section. This outlines how you intend to leverage any funding for your business and how much you're looking to acquire. Like the rest of your financials, this can always be updated later on.
The appendix isn't a required element of your business plan. However, it is a useful place to add any charts, tables, definitions, legal notes, or other critical information that supports your business plan. These are often lengthier or out-of-place information that simply didn't work naturally into the structure of your plan. You'll notice that in these business plan examples, the appendix mainly includes extended financial statements.
While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. To get the most out of your business plan, it's best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.
The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you'll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or in any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual.
The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.
The structure ditches a linear format in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It's faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations.
The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan . This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business.
By starting with a one-page plan , you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You'll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan.
Growth planning is more than a specific type of business plan. It's a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, forecast, review, and refine based on your performance.
It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27 minutes . However, it's even easier to convert into a more detailed business plan thanks to how heavily it's tied to your financials. The overall goal of growth planning isn't to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the growth planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and remains stable through times of crisis.
It's faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your business plan is always up-to-date.
Ready to start writing your own business plan but aren't sure where to start? Download our free business plan template that's been updated for 2024.
This simple, modern, investor-approved business plan sample is designed to make planning easy. It's a proven format that has helped over 1 million businesses write business plans for bank loans, funding pitches, business expansion, and even business sales. It includes additional instructions for how to write each section and is formatted to be SBA-lender approved. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.
How do you know what elements need to be included in your business plan, especially if you've never written one before? Looking at business plan examples can help you visualize what a full, traditional plan looks like, so you know what you're aiming for before you get started. Here's how to get the most out of a business plan sample.
You don't need to find an example of a business plan that's an exact fit for your business. Your business location, target market, and even your particular product or service may not match up exactly with the business plans in our gallery. But, you don't need an exact match for it to be helpful. Instead, look for a business plan sample that's related to the type of business you're starting.
For example, if you want to start a vegetarian restaurant, a plan for a steakhouse can be a great match. While the specifics of your actual startup will differ, the elements you'd want to include in your restaurant's business plan are likely to be very similar.
Every startup and small business is unique, so you'll want to avoid copying an example of a business plan word for word. It just won't be as helpful, since each business is unique. You want your business plan to be a useful tool for starting a business —and getting funding if you need it.
One of the key benefits of writing a business plan is simply going through the process. When you sit down to write, you'll naturally think through important pieces, like your startup costs, your target market , and any market analysis or research you'll need to do to be successful.
You'll also look at where you stand among your competition (and everyone has competition), and lay out your goals and the milestones you'll need to meet. Looking at an example of a business plan's financials section can be helpful because you can see what should be included, but take them with a grain of salt. Don't assume that financial projections for a sample company will fit your own small business.
If you're looking for more resources to help you get started, our business planning guide is a good place to start. You can also download our free business plan template .
Think about business planning as something you do often , rather than a document you create once and never look at again. If you take the time to write a plan that really fits your own company, it will be a better, more useful tool to grow your business. It should also make it easier to share your vision and strategy so everyone on your team is on the same page.
Keep in mind that businesses that use their business plan as a management tool to help run their business grow 30 percent faster than those businesses that don't. For that to be true for your company, you'll think of a part of your business planning process as tracking your actual results against your financial forecast on a regular basis.
If things are going well, your business plan will help you think about how you can re-invest in your business. If you find that you're not meeting goals, you might need to adjust your budgets or your sales forecast. Either way, tracking your progress compared to your plan can help you adjust quickly when you identify challenges and opportunities—it's one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business.
If you're planning to pitch your business to investors or seek out any funding, you'll need a pitch deck to accompany your business plan. A pitch deck is designed to inform people about your business. You want your pitch deck to be short and easy to follow, so it's best to keep your presentation under 20 slides.
Your pitch deck and pitch presentation are likely some of the first things that an investor will see to learn more about your company. So, you need to be informative and pique their interest. Luckily we have a round-up of real-world pitch deck examples used by successful startups that you can review and reference as you build your pitch.
For more resources, check out our full Business Pitch Guide .
Now that you know how to use an example of a business plan to help you write a plan for your business, it's time to find the right one.
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Describe Your Services or Products. The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you're offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit ...
Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It's also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. After completing your plan, you can ...
Traditional business plans use some combination of these nine sections. Executive summary. Briefly tell your reader what your company is and why it will be successful. Include your mission statement, your product or service, and basic information about your company's leadership team, employees, and location.
Step 2: Do your market research homework. The next step in writing a business plan is to conduct market research. This involves gathering information about your target market (or customer persona), your competition, and the industry as a whole. You can use a variety of research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and online research to ...
Although a typical business plan falls between 15 to 30 pages, some companies opt for the much shorter One-Page Business Plan. A one-page business plan is a simplified version of the larger business plan, and it focuses on the problem your product or service is solving, the solution (your product), and your business model (how you'll make money).
7 business plan examples: section by section. The business plan examples in this article follow this template: Executive summary. An introductory overview of your business. Company description. A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists. Market analysis.
Here are the top 5 business plan software options available to help you craft a great business plan. 1. LivePlan. LivePlan is a popular choice for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features. It offers over 500 sample plans, financial forecasting tools, and the ability to track your progress against key performance indicators. With ...
Traditional business plan. The traditional (or standard) business plan is an in-depth document covering every aspect of your business. It's the most common plan type you'll come across. A traditional business plan is broken up into 10 sections: Executive summary; Description of products and services; Market analysis; Competitive analysis
1. Create Your Executive Summary. The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans. Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.
Business Plan: A business plan is a written document that describes in detail how a business, usually a new one, is going to achieve its goals. A business plan lays out a written plan from a ...
The Bplans Weekly. Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business. A business plan is the backbone of a successful business. Learn to write, use, and improve your business plan with exclusive guides, templates, and examples.
Learn about the best business plan software. 1. Write an executive summary. This is your elevator pitch. It should include a mission statement, a brief description of the products or services your ...
You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals. 4. Strategic Initiatives. A strategic business plan is another business plan that's often shared internally.
1. Executive summary. This short section introduces the business plan as a whole to the people who will be reading it, including investors, lenders, or other members of your team. Start with a sentence or two about your business, development goals, and why it will succeed. If you are seeking funding, summarise the basics of the financial plan. 2.
1. Executive Summary. While your executive summary is the first page of your business plan, it's the section you'll write last. That's because it summarizes your entire business plan into a succinct one-pager. Begin with an executive summary that introduces the reader to your business and gives them an overview of what's inside the ...
The Best Business Plan Software of 2024. Wrike: Best overall. Smartsheet: Best for goal management. LivePlan: Best for financial forecasting. Aha!: Best for roadmapping. Bizplan: Best for ...
Here are the key ways you can use your business plan for effective business management and growth. 10. Establish a strategy and the tactics needed to execute it. Use your business plan to clarify your strategy, determine the tactics necessary to support it, and track your execution.
1. Investors Are Short On Time. If your chief goal is using your business plan to secure funding, then it means you intend on getting it in front of an investor. And if there's one thing investors are, it's busy. So keep this in mind throughout writing a business plan.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 1. Create a Cover Page. The first thing investors will see is the cover page for your business plan. Make sure it looks professional. A great cover page shows that you think about first impressions. A good business plan should have the following elements on a cover page:
Marketing plan: A strategic outline of how you plan to market and promote your business before, during, and after your company launches into the market. Logistics and operations plan: An explanation of the systems, processes, and tools that are needed to run your business in the background. Financial plan: A map of your short-term (and even ...
Clarify the purpose of your business, your goals and how your startup is uniquely positioned to achieve them. Essential Information to Include. Include details such as your company's legal structure, location and a brief history of any founders or key personnel. Showcase Your Company's Unique Features.
Here is a basic template that any business can use when developing its business plan: Section 1: Executive Summary. Present the company's mission. Describe the company's product and/or service offerings. Give a summary of the target market and its demographics.
Mini plan: The reader may request a mini plan, or a condensed version of your business plan (1-10 pages), which includes most of the same components as in a longer traditional plan -- minus the ...
5. Break Down Your Vision Into Actionable Goals. It's important to have a vision for your business—the long-term plan, the peak where you want your business to reach. But it's equally important ...
The most common use of a business plan is persuading investors, lenders, or both, to provide financing. These two groups look for different things. Investors are particularly interested in the quality of your business concept and the ability of management to make your venture successful. Bankers and other lenders are primarily concerned with ...
NBCUniversal's Olympics Promo Plan: Enlist Stars and Influencers to Get Word Out. The Comcast division sees the Paris Summer Games as part of a larger effort to bring in younger audiences who ...
Small businesses account for 99.9% of U.S. firms. There may be no guarantees, but here are five with a better-than-average chance of success.
Biden's latest plan proposes — as he has in the past — to increase the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, and to restore the top individual tax rate of 39.6% from the current rate of ...
Obama is the most popular former first lady in America, dating back to Lady Bird Johnson, according to a late-2023 YouGov poll. She has also consistently been liked by a clear majority of ...
The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea. The structure ditches a linear format in favor of a cell-based template.