Sunday, October 12, 2008
Cash Flow Craziness
I had a really big summer. I took two long trips and sent Marz off to college. The little house by the shop got renovated and I did some major cleaning and reorganizing in the shop. None of those projects helped pay the rent and I put a major dent in my reserves. The invoice I sent out at the end of September was already allocated to pay my end of the month bills.
So you can imagine my surprise and horror when, eight days after mailing it out, I got the invoice back from the post office. Not the check I was waiting on but the invoice! The thing that the client had to see before any checks could be written. It took about a minute to fix the problem; I called the client and got the correct address and sent out the new invoice. This left me on the eighth of the month with neither of my two mortgages paid. (OMG why do I still have two freaking mortgages?) My resources at this point consist of two cans of beans, a jar of change and half a tank of gas. I am definitely not going to Memphis for Repair Days. Again. Damnit!
I used the change to buy a loaf of bread and a pb&j. I hunkered down to spend the weekend in the shop trying to dig myself out of this hole.
On Friday two little walk-up repair jobs earned 40 bucks and another twenty came in on Saturday. Saturday is also when the check came in the mail, Yay! On Sunday I knocked out a little job that had been floating around the shop. It's now Sunday night and I have over a hundred dollars in my wallet and a tidy stack of checks to deposit on Tuesday (Monday is Columbus Day. Sigh)
Someday my head will just explode.
So you can imagine my surprise and horror when, eight days after mailing it out, I got the invoice back from the post office. Not the check I was waiting on but the invoice! The thing that the client had to see before any checks could be written. It took about a minute to fix the problem; I called the client and got the correct address and sent out the new invoice. This left me on the eighth of the month with neither of my two mortgages paid. (OMG why do I still have two freaking mortgages?) My resources at this point consist of two cans of beans, a jar of change and half a tank of gas. I am definitely not going to Memphis for Repair Days. Again. Damnit!
I used the change to buy a loaf of bread and a pb&j. I hunkered down to spend the weekend in the shop trying to dig myself out of this hole.
On Friday two little walk-up repair jobs earned 40 bucks and another twenty came in on Saturday. Saturday is also when the check came in the mail, Yay! On Sunday I knocked out a little job that had been floating around the shop. It's now Sunday night and I have over a hundred dollars in my wallet and a tidy stack of checks to deposit on Tuesday (Monday is Columbus Day. Sigh)
Someday my head will just explode.
