With nearly 30 million small businesses in the United States, it can be tricky to find a business model to set you apart from competitors.

The co-founders and entrepreneurs behind Two Degrees Food, a company that produces nutritional bars and feeds children across the world, have used one of their best assets to maximize their reach: a 35-year age difference.

Lauren Walters, 60, and Will Hauser, 25, teamed up to found Two Degrees in 2010, a move that Walters said strengthens their ability to tackle everything from solving business problems to embracing social media.

“It’s interesting to think of it as a ‘model’; I think it’s just sort of evolved,” said Walters, a seasoned entrepreneur and chairman of The Concord Consortium, a nonprofit research and development organization based in Concord, Massachusetts. “I think as we’ve been building this business for the past year and a half, these complementary perspectives make us more effective in delivering on the promise of connecting a range of people.”

Their vegan, gluten-free nutritional bars are sold at Whole Foods chains across the U.S. as well as in coffee shops, gyms, museums, hospitals, a number of large corporations (including HP, Cisco, Microsoft, GE and AOL) and will be available at college Barnes & Noble stores in October. The company uses the “one-for-one” model – meaning for every bar purchased, a nutrition pack is sent to a needy child in a developing country.

Two Degrees has donated nearly 45,000 nutritional packs to its partners in Malawi, Kenya, Somalia and Haiti. The packs are sourced from local manufacturers in whichever countries they are to be distributed. (One of their purchasing partners is Valid Nutrition in Malawi, where peanut, sugar and oil is sourced from local farmers and factories.)

Hauser, a Harvard graduate and former Goldman Sachs analyst, said although the inter-generational model alone cannot explain the success of their business, “the range of customers and retailers that have gotten behind Two degrees is tremendous.”

Fred Amrein has three children in their early 20s: the youngest lives in college dorms, the middle lives at home and the oldest — soon to be married — recently moved out.

The “boomerang generation”– young adults who live at home with their parents — are increasingly turning to mom and dad for further financial support. But will caring for your adult children jeopardize your retirement security?

“We’ve managed by creating a timeline that says OK, we can postpone our retirement vision to make sure their lives start out on track,” Amrein says.

Although he feels the financial stresses many baby boomers face to support their children — from paying college fees to handling everyday expenses — Amrein is luckily able to balance financial obligation with fiscal prudence. He’s a financial adviser.

“I have a niche in college funding, so I do a lot of analysis work for parents that are going through this,” says Amrein, principal at Amrein Financial. “One of the things that I do is create a timeline to make sure that they understand when the last child will come out of school and how long they have to recover, so it’s their choice whether they want to lighten the burden on their children or (draft) their priorities from a financial goal standpoint.”

In a study released by TD Ameritrade, 41 percent of young adults admitted to relying on their parents for financial support after college, which could likely derail their parents’ retirement plans. Forty-two percent of baby boomers surveyed said taking their children back into the home had a negative impact on their finances.

“We’ve seen clients spending up to $20,000 a month on their children after they’ve finished college, and they come home and aren’t doing a whole lot,” says Alan Moore, financial planning analyst with Kahler Financial Group. ” It’s killing their parents financially, and we see this with clients more often than I’d like to admit.”

If you’re looking for another way to diversify your child’s 529 college savings plan, sprint to the finish; you have two weeks left to consider locking in prepaid tuition at 2011 rates.

There are currently more than 270 private colleges and universities across the nation that participate in the Tuition Plan Consortium, a network that allows you to pay for future tuition and fee costs in current dollars while retaining their value for 30 years.

While a regular 529 college tuition plan usually carries some exposure to volatile markets, the national Tuition Plan Consortium is simply a contractual obligation for any college or university participating in the network to honor your prepaid tuition plan. In other words, you can minimize your market risk.

“Especially for today’s savers, prepaying tuition is not an investment so you don’t have to worry about fluctuations in the market,” says Nancy Farmer, president of Tuition Plan Consortium, a not-for-profit organization that sponsors the Private College 529 Plan.

“When you open an account with us, you don’t have to worry about what’s happening with the market, you don’t have to worry about what’s happening with tuition inflation; our schools take the risk.”

This means if you open an account with $25,000, you own $25,000 worth of tuition at any of the participating schools and do not need to commit to any one school until admissions, effectively keeping your beneficiary’s options open.

If your beneficiary wishes to enroll at a school that does not participate in the prepaid tuition program, and it does not want to join the consortium, you can rename the beneficiary or roll your Private College 529 Plan into a regular 529 plan without risk of tax liability (though you might suffer an earnings/losses penalty of about plus/minus two percent).

As more American students turn to community colleges in order to avoid steep tuition costs, students are still facing a lack of funding through the federal loans program.

Still denied: How community colleges shortchange students by not offering federal loans, a study released last week by the Institute for College Access & Success, finds that more than one million students across 31 states do not have access to student loans from the federal government, a low-interest lender.

“Federal student loans should always be considered before relying on credit cards to get by or taking out a private student loan or resorting to payday lenders,” said Debbie Cochrane, program director at the Institute for College Access & Success, which is an independent, nonprofit group. Cochrane is primary author of the report.

The Institute found that about nine percent of students enrolled in community colleges don’t have access to federal student loans, and in some states, the majority of students enrolled in community college do not have access.

“Federal financial aid programs, both grants and loans, are there to make sure that students from all backgrounds can afford to cover college costs,” she continued. “When colleges opt out of the loan program and don’t make that option available to students, it undermines the goal of the program: making college affordable.”

As of July 2010, all federal student loans must be administered through the Federal Direct Loan Program. Although only 13 percent of community college students borrowed money under the federal student loans program through their college in 2007-08, the national default rate over three years is 25 percent or higher the national default rate is seven percent while schools that exceed 25 percent for three consecutive years can face harsher penalties — making some schools a little apprehensive to offer federal aid.

“Twenty-five percent is a very high default rate but because many of the community colleges serve low-income students, they are much more likely to have students who default on loans if they borrow,” said Mark Kantrowitz, financial expert and publisher of FinAid and Fastweb student scholarship sites. Kantrowitz suggests saving for college instead, “given that the community colleges are among the lowest-cost institutions.”

If you’re feeling discouraged about reaching your ambitious retirement goals, rest assured you are not alone.

According to the newly-released study called Shedding Light on Retirement, 55 percent of Americans don’t know how to achieve their retirement goals.

The ING-sponsored study, which polled 2,630 retirement investors, also revealed that while Americans want to be in control of their money, they’re also overwhelmed because of lack of guidance.

In an interview with Reuters, Lynne Ford, CEO of ING Individual Retirement, pointed out some of the major take-home points from the survey.

Looking at the big picture, what exactly does this survey tell us?

A: It tells us a couple of things. We’ve seen for many years now that Americans are getting the fact that they are responsible and accountable for providing for their retirement. The two new things that come out of this survey are, first, just the overwhelming sense of confusion and anxiety people have about getting it done. They say, ‘We don’t have a roadmap, we don’t have a recipe,’ and there are so many moving parts (to investing) because people are saving at the work site and then they’re saving away from the work site.

The second thing that’s interesting about the survey is that it really points to a paradox. The American participant has conflicting desires: they want to be in total control of their money and they want to be empowered to do it their way, but then they’re also saying ‘We don’t have a roadmap and we don’t have the guidance.’ So this paradox around wanting control but needing advice is where we’re finding people today. I think it’s good news because it means people are moving down this path of accountability.

Investors, be forewarned: tread lightly when it comes to currency trading.

Whereas professional investors have more resources at their disposal to hedge, the average investor could be left in the dust — especially during a time where political unrest and crises are cause for big market swings in futures and currencies.

Individual retail investors “are the minnow in the shark tank; they might get some crumbs, but they’re playing with some really big, really aggressive players,” says Rick Brooks, vice-president of investment management at Blankinship & Foster. Brooks notes that while retail investors may trade anywhere from a few thousand to maybe a million dollars, professional traders are trading hundreds of millions of dollars a day, if not a minute, and are therefore privy to critical information.

“The retail investor cannot stand up against that kind of trading volume,” he continued. “If they’re lucky, they’ll fly under the radar and they might make some profitable trades, but generally speaking these guys are moving very large amounts of money and the retail investor is just going to be along for the ride.”

For investors who travel often or who get paid for work in another currency, dual exposure could actually be a good hedging mechanism since it provides insulation from day-to-day currency fluctuations. Great ways to do this include foreign property investments and buying ETFs or mutual funds in that currency.

George Middleton, financial adviser for Limoges Investment Management, says it’s easier for larger firms to better hedge and make riskier bets based on economic conditions because of their stake in multiple currencies. He says trading currencies can be beneficial to a retail investor if you’re looking for a longer-term investment.

“I own multiple currencies, but I buy them with the intent of holding on to them and it’s because of my concern for the U.S. dollar,” Middleton says. “If I thought the dollar was going to go up, I wouldn’t be holding other currencies.”

The days of haggling over the phone with your broker or hunching over your online brokerage account may become a thing of the past with the advent of mobile trading.

Investors are increasingly turning to their mobile phones and tablets to trade on-the-go in a new trend that is shaping the 24-hour trading cycle.

“Futures and forex trade around the clock, so you’re not always at a computer or you’re not always at your desk,” says Nicole Sherrod, director of trading at TD Ameritrade. “Our clients in the evening can trade futures and forex and monitor their positions through their phone apps.”

In a year-long study on trading trends, the investment firm found its technology rollouts have helped to increase mobile trading by 125 percent.

Whereas larger firms like E*Trade and Charles Schwab offer retail investors the ability to trade stocks, only TD Ameritrade currently gives clients the mobile platform to trade currencies. E*Trade offers futures trading, but not currencies; Schwab offers options trading, but not currencies or futures; and Fidelity Investments offers similar services as TD Ameritrade, but they do not offer futures trading. Schwab says it is investigating currency trading. Fidelity, although it is “sensitive to (its) customer base,” has no specific plans to offer futures trading anytime soon, according to a spokesperson.

Being close to the markets at all times provides investors with quicker access to make gains and limit losses. “You’re seeing all of the news today: it’s all about oil, it’s all about commodities and currency fluctuations based on what’s going on in the Middle East,” Sherrod says, noting that complex options, futures and forex trading features have been “gaining a lot of traction” with retail investors. “We feel that this type of technology helps them gain more visibility about the market and, as such, they’re trading smarter; they’re making better trading decisions,” she continued.

But beware of making a snap trade based on emotion or a change of environment while on the road, warns Peter Misek, managing director at Jefferies & Co., an investment firm.

So much for early retirement. Cash-strapped Americans aged 55 and older are staying in the workforce longer and even returning to work because of inadequate Social Security benefits and lagging retirement plans, a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute finds.

The trend could lead to a dramatically different workplace dynamic — a shift that brings both pros and cons, researchers say.

“This is going to mean a growing acceptance of older people in the workforce and the expectation of older people in the workforce, making it easier for those who want to stay in it,” said Craig Copeland, EBRI senior research associate and author of the report.

Women between the age of 55 and 64 are increasingly entering the workforce while the number of men  in that age group has remained steady, the study shows.  Beyond the age of 65, workforce participation was equal between women and men.

Since Social Security eligibility has shifted under current law, more people are putting off retirement in favor of working to pay the bills.

Going back to work has provided would-be retirees a chance to make up for years of poor savings when they were younger, Copeland says.

“If they hadn’t been able to prepare for retirement, now they may be able to work for two, three, or five more years to be able to make that last step in preparation for retirement,” he says.

The days of scratching your head as you try to decipher an insurance policy riddled with complex legalese may soon be over.

Sun Life Financial has launched a company-wide campaign to effectively translate technical jargon into “plain language.”

Seventy-five percent of investors say lack of understanding played a significant role in the financial crisis while two-thirds of consumers believe financial documents are intentionally complex to hide information, according to a  Siegel & Gale study.

“It seems we’re guilty in the [insurance] industry of providing technical jargon,” said Michael Murphy, assistant vice president of life product marketing at Sun Life. “We’re trying to establish with people in plain language that even if you’re not wealthy, you really should put together a series of documents. It’s really not just about taxes; it’s about making sure there’s a seamless distribution of your assets that goes to the next generation.”

Estate-planning isn’t reserved for the “super-affluent” but rather for anybody with assets – which is why it’s important to understand what you’re signing.

The following are a few key insurance and estate-planning guidelines that are important to comprehend:

Call it a bad omen that the Social Security doom-and-gloom was largely left untouched in President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget. The pension program not only took a hit during the economic downturn, but there are plenty red flags about its long-term viability.

Stuart Rubinstein, managing director of client engagement for TD Ameritrade, says you should consider Social Security as what it was designed to be: not a guaranteed income, but rather, an income supplement. Thus, the right time to get on track for your retirement goals is today.

Q: What exactly can we expect from the Social Security program?

It’s been widely reported that Social Security is probably insolvent. I think that the American public is going to continue to look at this and Congress will need to act [since] the landscape has really changed over the years. A number of things have changed: one, we’ve moved from a defined benefit structure to a defined contribution structure; and two, life expectancy has changed dramatically since Social Security was enacted. People have to prepare for a much longer life expectancy than they did way back when it was first enacted.

Q: How do we prepare for the worst-case scenario?

People have to take control of what they can control. And what can they control? Well, two big things: one is how much they spend and one is how much they save. Saving and investing is critical for people in older generations to ensure they’re able to retire [or] they’re able to work if they want to, and for how long they want to. Starting earlier is better than later, but the time to start if someone hasn’t is today.

Q: Is there a particular demographic that should be more concerned?