A Few Signs 2014 Will Be a Good Year for Business

More business owners are putting their money where their mouths are, using personal savings to fund their startups, according to a new Kauffman Foundation survey. That's a sign, the Foundation says, that the economic recovery is, finally, upon us.

For its second annual "Who Started Businesses in 2013" report, the Kauffman Foundation, in partnership with LegalZoom, surveyed 720 entrepreneurs who incorporated their businesses in 2013. Of that group, a whopping 86 percent said they invested their own savings into their businesses last year. That's a 20 point jump from 2012, and a strong sign of financial security for people like you.

"Few actions correlate more directly with economic confidence than personal investment," said John Suh, CEO of LegalZoom, in a statement. "Investing personal savings to start a business when credit is readily available signals high conviction in the future."

There are other reasons to be optimistic, albeit cautiously so. First, the fact that in 2013, just 36 percent of respondents said that unpredictability was a major hurdle to starting a business. That's a 19 percent decrease from 2012.

Meanwhile, though 28 percent of business owners reported having trouble accessing credit, that number, too, is a drastic decrease from the 45 percent of business owners who said they had trouble getting credit back in 2012.

That said, the survey revealed that business owners might have had a slightly tougher time getting started last year than in 2012. Though 37 percent of business owners reported no difficulties starting up, that's a 3 percent drop from the year before.

Still, the results -- which also showed an increased number of businesses making more than $100,000 in revenue, and a decreased number of businesses making less than $50,000 -- should give you, and indeed the rest of the country, ample reason for optimism in 2014.

"Entrepreneurs are on the economy's front lines daily," said Dane Stangler, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation, in a statement. "The fact that the survey shows small, positive growth among these companies suggests that economic recovery may be gaining vibrancy on a broader scale, as well."