October 21, 2003
Cash Flow Concerns
Follow up on ... Michael Simmons - Young Entrepreneur Journey: 900 and Counting
On September 9th, I made a posting about how we were waiting on $7,000 to come in. Well, this number has risen to $8,000. Everyay, Sheena and I go to the mailbox expecting a check, but instead get a bill or the most recent Land's End catalog. We've followed up with the organizations and it just takes a long time for their systems to process the checks.
Things have become more difficult in the past week as a result of making investments over the past month as if we we're going to receive the checks in the mail on the next day. Some lessons learned/thoughts are:
- Be prepared for the worst case and best case scenario. In our case, we weren't prepared for some large orders and then the checks to take so long to process.
- We're lucky we aren't at a cash intensive phase of our business where we have a large payroll to meet every other week.
- I feel stupid having things like a $300 air purifier that I bought over the summer, while I'm changing my eating habits to fit the cash crunch.
- I never want this to happen again!
Posted at October 21, 2003 12:19 PM
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Michael mentioned in his blog today how we were having cash flow difficulties. I would like to add a few things I've learned from this experience as well:
1) As things become more comfortable, it is easy to stop working hard. When you have no money, it?s easier to follow a budget because you have no choice. This experience reminds me of all the creative financing skills that I had when I was first becoming financially independent (which I will talk about in a later entry), that I?ve gradually let slip away.
2) You don?t need money to be happy. I?ll admit not having money brings a lot of stress, but I don?t think it has to. I?m learning right now that there are many things to make me happy other than my financial situation. To look at this from another perspective (as an adventure, a story to remember from my life) makes it actually rather interesting.
3) I?ve learned how to make really awesome vegan bread-cookies. They are my own concoction of various ingredients we've had lying around the house and are surprisingly delicious...perhaps I should become a chef!
