Temptation proves too much.

In the last two days, I fell off the spending wagon bigtime. I woke up in the gutter with invoices plastered all over me. A hazy memory of hitting the keystrokes and hovering over the commit button. What harm ordering a few items?

Hi, My name is Duncan. And I'm a Spendaholic.

I've been invoice free for one day.....



I don't want to talk about it.


Moan. Sigh......



Thing is, I've been keeping you up to to date until now, so I'm going to keep on doing it.

First of all, it isn't a huge disaster, unless the economy tanks again. What I essentially did was spend my reserve. It takes the sales level I need to make to turn a good profit from the 'worst case' to 'middle case' scenario. The worst case is obviously easier to reach, but I generally do hit my middle case.

So I can still hit my goals.

But only if everything goes according to plan. I have to stick strictly (as of now, heh) to my original spending plans and not take advantage of any more opportunities for the next 10 weeks. And I just have to hope that I reach my sales goals.

Here's where I supply the rationalizations.

By buying such a huge amount of product as such huge savings, I've given myself more of a chance to reach those goals. By spending it now, I've given myself the entire 10 weeks of summer to try to sell.

I can make the case that this kind of behavior has kept my business going all these years: but also that it's kept me from making much of an extra profit.

Here's my reasoning as to why I just jumped all over the Summer Appreciation Sale from Diamond.

1). It keeps the inventory level high. I can sell fewer items to make back my money, or take longer to sell them.

2.) It takes me out of my ordering box. I know that 20% of my product will sell, but the other 80% is more of a gamble. Frankly, I can't tell much difference in that 80% of product between what I pay full price for and what I got a deal on.

The two examples that are most noticeable are posters and t-shirts. I'm offered dozens of each every month. I used to spend a lot of time trying to pick out the good ones, the ones that either I thought would sell or the ones that really appealed to me. Eventually, I realized I could do just about as well ordering by using a dart board.

Strangely, not everyone likes the same designs as I.

3.) It brings in a constant flow of new material. Just replacing the evergreens would keep the inventory static. At a very high level, to be sure. And most of it would be new to all the tourists.

Still, and I don't know how they do it, but customers seem to be able to pick up when you're active and when you're not. And they generally reward activity.

4.) It keeps me actively engaged in the store. This is no small thing. The more involved I am, the better the store does. Sitting back and letting sales fall where they may is almost like giving up to me.

I'm going to be challenged, over the next month, to find ways to sell the new material. To find display space. The unpack them, and sort them, and price them.

It could actually turn out to be a very good thing.

But it was a gamble I didn't need to make.