Getting to Know Us
That is until one fateful morning when he and his growing family were in a fatal car accident. His wife and unborn daughter thankfully survived, but he didn’t.
We tried to make the store work without him, and it did for a while. My heart wasn’t in it anymore though, yet I made the mistake of opening a second store out of fear. Fear that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my new family due to potential loss of the day job.
The second store was in a better market, and we made it nice, too nice probably.
My job didn’t go away though, and while the rest of my department and most of the business took pay cuts, I received a slight raise. That left me and my wife trying to manage 2 stores an hour apart, and me working a regular job. Looking back, I should have put the store on the market the day after we got back from the hospital. The “Music Lessons” banner we’d had hung for years symbolically broke in a storm while we were in the city.
I learned a couple of lessons that year following his passing. No one cares about your business like you do. Good help is hard to find, and never make decisions while you are grieving.
The next year we welcomed our first child, but she was born in the job transition phase where the company didn’t have much better than supplemental insurance. Our girl was also premature.
The bills were stacking up as one might imagine. We had a new store with major expenses and a new baby with major expenses. We also added a new house.
We struggled with the second store to get it on its feet. Sales were okay, but the old store accounted for most of the business’ sales while the new one accounted for the majority of the expenses.
Health issues were next on the agenda...
I suffered a stroke at the ripe old age of 33 and my daughter and I got to learn to walk together. More bills, and we were being sued by the hospital for our daughter’s medical bills.
Finally the tax man got involved, and we made the decision to close the businesses. Making that decision was as if the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders, but naturally our troubles weren’t over. My day job had special requirements, like not having bad debt. I was at risk of losing the one source of income that was keeping our heads slightly above water.
We had to do something. We sat down and made a battle plan. When we were done, it looked a lot like a business plan. I presented the plan to the company investigator, and they liked our plan enough to give us a year to get to where the company was comfortable with my financial situation. I remember the call, the day before Thanksgiving, when my office phone rang and they let me know everything was good.
How did we celebrate? We went out and got a dog. I guess that just goes to show you that you can have a good idea of what needs to be done and still do something dumb. We love the old girl though, and I’m glad we did. Still she represented a series of new expenses we didn’t need.
It took most of the year my company gave me to get the bad debt squared away. Another year to get the rest of the consumer debt handled.
Since then, I’ve shared our battle plan with friends, family, and tenants that needed help getting their budget, debt, and credit back on track. It takes time, effort, and sometimes nerves of steel. Here is the thing though, you can do it too. The freedom that comes with being free of pointless debt is amazing! For us getting rid of credit card debt was nearly a 500 a month raise just from interest.
Today that 500 is part of a monthly investment into income producing assets, and my wonderful wife doesn’t have to work for money. Instead she makes an amazing investment into our child’s life homeschooling her. It’s an amazing life that we live, and we hope you can enjoy much of the same.
From my family, we present…
The Debt Busting Cowboy
A little over ten years ago, my wife and I found ourselves in dire financial straits. Things were so bad that the word bankruptcy was briefly tossed around. We were swimming in past due bills despite me having a great paying job.
We’d been through a lot in our short marriage, and I credit her with keeping a cool head about everything. She knew the situation in its entirety and yet she was as cool as a summer shower on a blistering Texas day.
Years prior my brother and I started a small retail musical instrument store in a small Oklahoma town. Everyone said it would fail, and it did, but not for the reasons you might think. My brother was the talent. He could make a guitar walk and talk. For that matter, put any stringed instrument in his hands and show him how to hold it, and he’d be playing it like it was an old friend the next day. He also had a knack for teaching students.
The store thrived, growing from a handful of instruments to over 120 without taking out loans. It seemed like everything we touched turned to gold, and the store became a nationally awarded business.
The store thrived, growing from a handful of instruments to over 120 without taking out loans. It seemed like everything we touched turned to gold, and the store became a nationally awarded business.