Lessons still to learn.

Earlier, I talked about how a 10 or 15% drop in sales was fairly easy to accommodate. It really isn't how much I bring in that counts, but how much I spend. (Well, it's both, but one I have control over and one I don't...)

I left out the most important way of doing this; simply paying attention to the budget. As anyone who has done a personal budget knows, little things add up, both in expenses and in purchases.

Going into my fourth decade of doing this, (which sounds impossible), I still have lessons to learn. Well, maybe not learn, so much as actually pay heed to. I know, in the back of my mind, that these problems exist but can usually ignore them.

For instance, it isn't a secret that there is an extra week of shipments every three months or so.
But since I order on a monthly basis, I always tell myself that I should be able to average-out the weeks; take the monthly order and divide it by 5 instead of 4.

But experience has taught me that this isn't what happens. The average-out is over a much longer period of time, and late and lagging material seems to congregate on the fifth weeks, for some reason.

In other words, any month with a fifth week will take a bigger bite out of the budget.

Usually I can ignore this, or adapt, but this year the fifth weeks pretty much fell on the fifth week of July, and first week of August, so both months budgets were inflated. (I could have hurried one of the fifth weeks into the first quarter, or delayed a fifth week into the fourth quarter, but I've learned to dump all extra expenses into summer.)

I just didn't plan for this increase, and it made it much harder to turn the profit I'd hoped for. My bad. I suppose I ought to check the calendar on a regular basis, so I can plan better.



The second lesson I know but don't listen to, is that I tend not to earmark enough for small expenses and or purchases. But these little reorders, these unexpected overhead costs, can add up.

Someone comes in and wants a couple of 20.00 graphic novels, and my cost is roughly 20.00, and it seems petty to write it down. Or I run out of lightbulbs, and I grab a box on the way to work.

Sure I have a budget for unexpected expenses, but I need to probably have a budget for expected unexpected expenses and also a budget for unexpected unexpected expenses.

It's amazing how just holding off for a week changes the whole dynamic. Sometimes I find a substitute, or a deal, or find hidden resources or just flat out decide I don't need something after all.

When things are humming along, I tend to relax about the little stuff. This isn't wrong, I don't think. Life is too short to be caught up every instant in counting pennies. But when the sales tighten up, I snap to it again.

I've gotten better about maintaining my discipline over the years. I still brown bag my lunch, for instance, even when business is good. I still stay away from constant sodas and chips and beer and wine and candy and donuts, by not slipping that twenty dollar bill in my pocket on the way home. This has saved literally tens of thousands of dollars over the last 15 years.

Nevertheless, I need to start examining the small expenses again, because it really does add up.