The Next Order Of Businesss

Once I was sure we would have enough food to survive the winter, I had to deal with the next order of business...finances.  Although Leonard and I discuss the business regularly, we rarely talk about specifics.  Jill, our secretary, and I handle the business finances, and I handle the personal finances.  Leonard hates to talk about money.  He is purely emotional regarding money, and his decisions are rarely based on mathematics.  This was going to be a challenge.



I tip-toed around the subject for as long as I could.  But then, I had to make Leonard talk about money.  First, we had to deal with the business expenses.  We cut hours to the minimum, Leonard worked on the job whenever he could, we got rid of unnecessary overhead.  We still owed money on Leonard's truck.  Once we slimmed down the business we started on the personal finances.  After making a list of monthly expenses we decided what we could live without.  Our money situation was still comfortable, but we had to prepare for the future.  We had  no idea what the future would hold.  Soon we were going to have three sons in college and maybe no way to pay for it.  Being self employed puts us in a different category than the general public.  We have no pension funds, unemployment insurance, or disability insurance.  Once our money is gone, it is gone and we are out on the street.  We discussed the option of selling the house, renting the house out, renting out the apartments.  We discussed selling the trailer, but Leonard was worried we might have to live in it some day.  He wasn't willing to commit to any changes unless he absolutely had to.  It took a long time for Leonard to come around and accept the reality of the economy.  For the first year, my goal was to convince Leonard to stop being wasteful with his expenses.  It took at least a year.  Our savings dwindled down.  Changing our lifestyle was difficult.  My Uncle Ray said, "Christy, it's like trying to jump off a speeding train".  At first, the only thing we cut out of our monthly bills was the LA Times delivery.  But, by the winter of 2009 we realized things were not going to get better.  It took us until this month in 2010 for us to get rid of bottled water delivery, slim down our vehicle insurances, remove excess phone lines and convert the rest to digital, shut off the power to our property in Oklahoma (no one had been there in years), unplug all unnecessary electrical appliances, minimize our air conditioning use, and make a commitment to cutting down credit card use (we have always paid off at the end of the month).  Like so many families, we stopped eating out and going to the movies, we plan our out of town trips so we don't spend too much on food and entertainment.  We stopped buying magazines.  We make our own coffee and iced tea.

Coffee has become an issue.  We have gone through several brands of coffee and coffee makers.  Currently, Lenny and I like making coffee on the stove and filtering it straight into the cup.  Choosing a brand is difficult, because it differs with the water and method.  Leonard and Lenny currently prefer espresso, Cafe Bustelo.  No longer having bottled water poses a problem.  The main line for our water is galvanized and has a terrible taste.  We can't afford to put in a new line, so we decided to buy filtered water at the hardware store.  They have a big reverse osmosis machine and sell it at $1.25/5 gallon.  It is a lot cheaper than Arrowhead Water, but not as good.