I should be posting more updates, but this is such a long term goal that short term updates are easy to forget about. In personal news, the mother sadly passed on in October and we fortunately got legal guardianship of our new daughter in early December. We are in the process to get an official adoption. Finances were pretty rough during that period for legal fees and feeding an extra mouth but I think we finally got things under control more or less.
My wife works as a studio photography manager and her studio closed. It was a corporate decision and a bad one because that place was making money hand over fist. She has a new job in the company going on locations to shoot photography but we have been doing the legwork to open our own studio here in town. We were hoping to be the only game in town and make money hand over fist but some random company has already seized the opportunity of renting the location she was in. We are not deterred, though. We are going to be in a MUCH more affordable location AND we are going to do a MUCH better job in terms of service and products. My wife has managed this job in this location with two different companies for around 10 years or so. Our hope is to drive them out of business and then take their location so we have two locations. But, one step at a time: tentatively on July 1st, my wife will be on her own for the first time. This is exciting and scary. Hopefully it pays off in the long run.
My Mint.Com screenshot:
We are approaching the 700k mark which is pretty good I think considering in just about 1 year and 3 months, we've improved it up near $100k. I make less than 6 figures and my wife makes about half of what I make. The power of not having a mortgage and having investments can REALLY allow your net worth to grow. Fortunately the investment market the past couple of years has been bullish. I'm challenging my wife to make more money than me with our company.
When my wife and I did our budget this month, I proposed for us us to strip our budget down to bear bones: no eating out, no allowance money for the two of us to spend on whatever we want, no fun money for our daughter. Instead, just pretend like she's completely out of work and doesn't have any clients or business. With all of our normal bills AND business bills, can we survive? So, this month, between that, a poker check that should clear for me, and a few other random income spots, we are supposed to have, on paper, a REALLY good month. Hopefully we do, because we still need to raise a bit more money for our business which is slated to open in a couple of months.
I'll hopefully have some update on the business one way or the other. I hope it ends up being good news.
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