goodfountain

I suspect most of us have heard of Build-A-Bear. I suspect a gazillion of us have even succumbed to the allure and appeal that is to let your child stuff his or her Very Own Teddy Bear. The smiles and kisses and hugs that accompany the stuffing of one’s Very Own Teddy Bear are definite heart-string-tuggers. Whereas I can remember my treasured Holly Hobbie doll, the girls and boys of today will remember their Very Own Teddy Bear that they Stuffed Themselves.

Marketing Geniuses.

Yesterday my girls stuffed their Very Own Teddy Bear for the first time.

Wondering why this is blog-worthy? My husband and I own a little store, open weekends only, in a giant flea market. A Make Your Own Teddy Bear store.

Chee has been to this store many, many times over the last three plus years. I’ve written before about what a sensory-challenging place the flea market can be. Chee’s been handling it much better lately though. Yesterday was the icing on the cake. The whole experience was so utterly … typical.

Our employee was off so my husband and I split the day. He worked morning, I worked afternoon. He took the girls browsing around the flea market after I came in to relieve him. A bit later they all come back to our booth.

Brief history: Up until about 3 months ago Chee refused to even step foot in our booth, let alone come near the stuffing machine.

I asked her if she wanted to pick out a new outfit for her Teddy Bear as I steered her toward the outfits. (Dressing stuffed animals helps her build her fine motor skills, too.)

She said, No, I want to stuff a Teddy Bear for Daddy.

Okay, which one?

This one, she replied and immediately grabbed a bright lime green teddy bear off the shelf.

She followed all my directions to pick a Star and put it inside and pick a Guardian Angel Bear, too. She picked a bow for around its neck. And she put her foot on the pedal to blast the stuffing inside (not a quiet machine mind you). And then she hugged it and kissed it.

A modern day rite of passage. Extra special to me as over the years I’ve watched so many kids stuff their Very Own Teddy Bear and be excited and fully engaged in the experience, and wonder when, even IF, my own daughter would find it exciting too. Wonder whether she would engage in the experience.

Of course Ess stuffed her own bear too. A bright pink one. There was NO WAY she was going to miss out on the fun. She was afraid to push the pedal so Daddy did it, but she shrieked with laughter.

Yesterday was fun.

If I were to describe a normal day for our family, especially a normal weekend day, it would inevitably include a tale or two of frustration in regards to managing Chee. How we couldn’t do this or had to cut short that because she wasn’t handling whatever it was well.

Today was completely different. She handled everything we did … and handled it well. Not just today, but yesterday also.

Big, big things too. We all went out to the flea market to close up our booth. Normally she is terrified of even coming near our booth, but today she came inside, she straightened stuffed animals on the shelves, she interacted well with our employee, she pulled the curtains to help us close up.

We went out to eat afterwards and she was incredible. From ordering her own food, to quietly coloring pages while we waited, to telling the server, Byyyyyeee! she was the poster child for manners and (dare I say it) impulse control.

But the big news of the day, of the weekend, has to do with her hair. No, not the haircut we’ve been working on, but, and this is of equally great magnitude to me, Chee wore barrettes!

I’ll say it again. Barrettes!

She is a girl who has been firm in her dislike, hatred even, for barrettes. If I would manage to sneak one in when she wasn’t paying attention, she’d cry and wail and summon the demons to get it out of her hair. In Chee world, where specific, unusual fears are understood only by her, barrettes are evil.

Were evil.

She’s worn her barrettes for two consecutive days. I won’t declare victory just yet though. She needs to wear them to school tomorrow and leave them in all day. Then victory.

I can’t tell you how much it means to me that she wore these barrettes. Everything connected to grooming tends to be a battle with her lately. She has been resisting taking baths and brushing her teeth. My haircut social story has had zero effect. And her hair is just a mess.

But tonight we had fun with barrettes! Just before bath, I took out the package and we looked at all of the colors and designs on them. She loved them. She tried to put them in her own hair. She put them in my hair. It was a girly mother-daughter dream moment.

The barrettes were the icing on the cake of a perfectly delicious weekend. Her language, her behavior, her sensory processing. They were all on. She was on.

For being spring break, it’s been a lousy week. Lousy weather, lousy sicknesses going around. No matter how lousy, though, it has ended on high note. A super high note.

It was really fun too. Fun watching all the pieces of the puzzle come together for her. In her. Delightful.

I’m tossing the social story aside for now. I can live with the shaggy long bangs as long as we can work with barrettes. I’m definitely ready to be done with the pony tails. A mom can only deal with the same ponytail for so long.

Maybe by the time I’ve had my fill of barrettes and am ready for a change, she will be too. Headbands, anyone?

I have mentioned several times that we own a small business. It’s a side business, really, as my husband has a full-time “career” job that pays the bills and is funding our retirement. The side business we use to build up College Savings Accounts for Chee and Ess. And so far it has paid for a couple of vacations and other miscellaneous things here and there. We’re small and profitable, but we’re not going to get rich off the business at its current size. We have aspirations though…

First some background on how we acquired the business and then I’ll share how we make it work for us.

After Chee was born and I was staying home full-time, we started brainstorming ways to supplement our income. Near where we live is a pretty good-sized, pretty popular flea market. Anyone can rent a booth and sell (almost) whatever they have to sell. There are many long-term businesses there and more than a few one-two weekend pops. It’s only open Saturdays and Sundays.

My husband drove out there one weekend to peruse the place and find out what’s involved in renting space. What he found was a business for sale. The owner was moving out of state and didn’t want to take it with him. After a few lengthy conversations, and a great deal of soul-searching, we ended up buying it and paid cash. We effectively drained our savings to start our own business - leaving only $200 in reserve. Just a wee bit worrisome when pondering all the “what-ifs” that could go wrong.

We are coming up on the 3rd anniversary of owning our little shop and so far it has been highly successful (by our own standards). Here are a few ways we have managed to make a side business work for us.

We know our limitations. When we first bought it, we worked our booth ourselves every weekend. Every. Single. Weekend. We usually split the days. As I was a breastfeeding mom, I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) leave Chee for a full 8 hours, so Hubby would take the morning shift, I’d bring Chee out in the afternoon and we’d swap.

After about 3 months of Zero time together as a whole family, we knew it was time to find some help. We simply could not keep up the pace of him working a full-time job Monday thru Friday and then us splitting a full-time gig on the weekend. We hired our first employee. That leads me to ….

We’re not afraid to ask for advice. When it was time to hire someone, our biggest worry was finding someone who was reliable and trustworthy. Inotherwords, someone who would show up every weekend and who wouldn’t steal from us. We had begun to form relationships with some of the vendors near us, so I asked one of them if she had any suggestions for how to find a good employee. Working with her that day was her niece who raised her hand and said, “I’m looking for a job.” Turns out she had worked the booth before under the previous owner so she knew what to do (great!) and her Aunt gave her a high recommendation (great!) and promised to keep her in line (fabulous!). That simple step of asking a fellow vendor for advice led us to a long-term relationship with an excellent employee.

We take small risks. For a few months, our customers would frequently ask if we carry a particular very popular item. An item that we weren’t even sure what it was. Through the magic of eBay, we started offering them in our booth. However, we started out with a very small assortment. We weren’t sure if they would sell and we didn’t want to sink a lot of money into finding out (more on the hard way we learned that lesson another day). So we started out with a small inventory - they flew off the shelves - proving to us that our location could support it -and we invested big. Sales have been fabulous.

Finally, we keep our priorities straight. Right now, job Number One in our world is raising our two girls. We spend many an hour brainstorming new business ideas. My husband looks for businesses for sale on a regular basis. And often something will look very enticing and equally promising. Nothing comes without cost, though, and often the high price is time. Time is something of which we just don’t have extra. They already are growing up so fast - we blink and we miss it. So even though our passion is to own another business (a bigger one) we have chosen to back burner that until we are at a place where we can devote the right amount of time to it … but not at the expense of our children.

These are just a few of the ways we make having a side business work for us. In a future post, I’ll share how we are using this very small business as a training ground for a future, larger business.

Remember that game you used to play when you were a kid, or perhaps you play it with your own kids now, where at first glance five or so things seem like they are all the same, but one of them is actually different and … not like the others?

At my Husband’s work Holiday Party last night, he and I felt like not the One that didn’t belong, but the Two. Sure we had an enjoyable time making idle chit chat with other similarly-aged and -occupied persons. It was nice for me to wear “pretty” clothes instead of my usual Mommy wardrobe of comfy jeans and a sweater.

However, once all the kid-bragging and what-part-of-town-do-you-live-in conversations were maxed out, we started to stumble. Ever since writing about my 2008 Financial Goals, I have been thinking / planning / strategizing ways to achieve them. Thus, they are on my mind. A lot.

Standing in a lovely near-million-dollar home, I listened to a Dad talk about his first-grader playing competitive basketball. Then there was a Mom who complained about her preschooler’s too-busy ballet schedule. Another Mom bent my ear about her daily trips to Target and how she can’t get out of there for less than $50. I heard tales of daily take-out for dinner, swim club memberships, classes at Gymboree, dollars thrown here, dollars thrown there. My head was spinning.

I was at a loss on how to participate. While I’m proud of my financial goals and excited by the challenge of spending less money shopping, bringing that up would have been the proverbial lead balloon.

In a social setting like that, standing amongst the corporate cookie cutouts, with their designer handbags and their iPhones, it’s easy to look at all the toys and lose sight of the Bigger Picture.

Driving home, though, we talked it through and reminded ourselves that while They may have more *things* to show for their money, it’s not what makes us happy. I couldn’t care less about This New Gadget or That Excellent Thing.

No, rather, we love the thrill of watching our investments grow, and the buzz from saving money on an exceptionally good bargain. We are proud of our small business and how it’s grown because of our own ideas and decisions.

It was a timely reminder, spending an evening with people with whom I couldn’t have a meaningful conversation, that not everyone shares our Vision of Financial Freedom and Passion for Entrepreneurship.

And I was happy to hop online again and browse the Blogs of the many I’ve discovered who do share our Vision and Passion. This is substantially more rewarding (in more ways than one) than any single item that money can buy. And I no longer feel like the one who is …not like the others.

A veritable avalanche of credit card offers has been descending into my home! Today in the mail came not one, not two, not three … but FIVE credit card offers. Today. I’ve received offers every day this week. And nearly every day last week. How I wish I would have had the forethought to save them all. I’d like to know just how many corporations are banking (snigger, snigger) on me being unprepared for the Holiday Season and therefore needing to transfer a balance to a zero interest card to Pay Off Christmas.

No, thanks. Don’t need a new credit card. I am very happy with the credit card I’m using. First, the balance is paid in full every month. I use Microsoft Money to track my purchases, and each month I balance the credit card just like a checking account.

The credit card pays us rewards that can be used in several different ways. We can redeem “Dollars” toward our insurance premiums. We can deposit them in checking, savings or money market accounts (with that bank). They can be invested in mutual funds.

From reading this blog you know that I own a small retail store. Not only do I use my credit card for all my household purchases, I use it for all of my wholesale product purchases as well. Inotherwords, I earn a fair amount of Reward Dollars.

For the past few years, I have redeemed them to pay my auto insurance premiums. I can’t say exactly what the savings have been, but I think the Reward Dollars pay for the full amount of insurance on at least one of our vehicles. Perhaps a little more. Unfortunately, I haven’t kept accurate records of this.

Lately I’ve been contemplating a change. Paying our auto insurance premiums is not a hardship. With proper budgeting, I could have the money set aside every six months and easily write out a check to pay it

The change I’m considering is to open a Money Market Savings account and periodically deposit my Reward Dollars into that account. We are not actively putting money into Savings right now (per our Debt Reduction Plan). We already have an adequate Emergency Savings Fund. Unfortunately, we cannot apply the Reward Dollars directly to debt as we don’t hold any debt with that bank.

Until now I’ve looked at the Rewards as simply a type of windfall that shows up when we have an Insurance Premium due. If I redeem, for example, 300 Reward Dollars, I don’t then take the $300 I just “saved” and snowflake it to debt. I just consider myself lucky. When I don’t have enough to pay the full premium, I take the remainder that’s needed out of our “slush” fund. However, I set a goal to get rid of the slush fund in 2008 and will begin to assign every dollar to a category.

I’d like to be smarter with my Reward Dollars, but I’m not sure what’s the best approach to take. I see 3 options.

1. Continue as I’ve been doing and pay my Auto Insurance Premium with the Reward Dollars.
2. Open a Savings Account and deposit my Reward Dollars and accrue extra savings which could then be periodically snowflaked to debt. At least in a savings account they could be earning Interest.
3. Set a monthly budget amount to cover the Insurance Premiums, however Redeem the Reward Dollars, and snowflake the budgeted amount to Debt.

Whatever is decided, it has to be simple for me to implement. Anything that is either complicated or time-consuming will not work.

Advice and opinions welcome!

Patrick at Cash Money Life is hosting a new carnival starting this week on Financial Goals. His first one encourages us to share our 2008 Financial Resolution. I appreciate him starting this and inspiring me (and a swarm of other I bet) to start thinking about our Financial Goals for next year.

We have debt in addition our mortgage, but it is not realistic to set a goal to pay it off in one year. Therefore, I’m going to leave debt reduction out of my Financial Goals for now. I have a game plan for paying off our debt that is currently working. While the overall goal of debt reduction drives most of my financial decisions, I don’t want to put hard numbers to that right now. Instead, my goals focus on what I can do to reduce our monthly outflow and increase our income, with all dollars saved and earned snowflaked to debt.

Without further ado - My 2008 Financial Goals!

1. Reduce monthly expenditures at my Holy Trinity of Consumerism - Target, Costco and Kroger. I just did a quick analysis of my spending in the Household Goods category of my budget and it came to just under $1000 (most of which goes to the aforementioned Holy Trinity). My goal is trim that by 20%. This will involve better weekly meal planning, clipping coupons, studying the weekly ads looking for deals, stocking up when it’s a good deal, and trying more private label brands. Household budget categories include Food (i.e. grocery), Toiletries, Baby Care, Miscellaneous (paper, cleaning products, light bulbs, etc…) and Wine.

A 20% reduction should free up nearly $200 per month, or $2400 for the year.

2. Cut back on the amount of money we spend eating out. I’m embarrassed to admit that we average over $300 a month eating out. Really, I’m embarrassed. Some months it’s more, some it’s less, but averaged out over the last 11 months it’s ~$340. Ways we can reduce this include (but are not limited to) my husband packing his lunch 4 out of 5 days per week (instead of eating out every day - to his credit he started this already a month ago), better meal planning at home, only eating at restaurants for which we have a coupon, and ordering take-out instead of dining inside.

We can afford to eat out occasionally, and it’s something we enjoy, so I’m going to reduce our Eating Out budget to $150, which will free up nearly $200 per month ($2400 per year).

3. Redo my budget to assign every dollar to a category. I don’t currently budget for things like clothes, family activities (e.g. trip to the zoo), or gifts. Instead I leave a “slush fund” which is supposed to cover those items but I usually overspend it. Starting in January I’m going to assign every dollar to a specific category. This will ensure that I don’t over spend and it will help me stay on track in my debt reduction plan.

4. Generate an additional source of income for our family. This can be accomplished either within our existing business or via expansion. In time for the 2008 Holiday Shopping season, I would like to find another new item to add to our product line (that would be within our existing business) or we could start another business (selling our current lineup) at a similar location (e.g., another flea market).

5. Find a new accountant to help us with our business. Currently we use an accountant who happens to be a distant relative, however he gives us the “family treatment.” Other than actually doing our taxes, we never hear him from him. And when I do call, I am not satisfied with the responses I’m getting. By February 1, I will find a new accountant with whom we can establish a partner-like relationship and who we feel confident will give us appropriate and timely tax advice.

6. Learn how to use Quickbooks to manage our small business finances. We have the software, but it is, and this is putting it mildly, Over. My. Head. There’s a reason I have a degree in journalism and not accounting. However, I believe that using the right kind of tool to help me manage the business’ finances will save me both time and money. Quickbooks classes are taught to small business owners at the local vocational high school. I will look into taking the first one available in 2008.

7. Lastly we need to meet with a financial planner to review our retirement funds and make adjustments as recommended. We have someone who comes highly recommended, so, simply put, we need to meet with that person and transfer our various accounts to their “care.” It’s a bit scary to start to put our trust in someone else, however we simply do not have the time to study the stock market the way we used to (pre-kids) and make informed buy and sell decisions.

These goals are ambitious for me and what I would call very active goals. It will take a fair amount of work on my part to achieve them. However, I am particularly excited by the weekly challenge of spending less money on household goods.

I will share my progress as the year progresses.

As promised I spent today thinking about how I was going to decide what my priority should be. I am torn between building a website for our small business and working on a picture slide show of my daughter’s first year of life (she turns one on Thursday!!).

I don’t want to work on the website, but I feel very guilty about that. I imagine the guilt comes from feeling like it’s my responsibility since my husband works a full-time job and therefore the vast majority of work related to the business should be my responsibility. I don’t do every thing, though. He sets up on Saturday mornings and I close up on Sunday nights. He counts the money and makes the bank deposit each week. I track our expenses and sales info and, most importantly, pay the state their due each month. I process payroll every other week and place the weekly orders from our suppliers.

I decided to come clean with the guy and tell him how I feel. That I have no interest in building the website. His response surprised me. “Great! I want to do it anyway.” Well now that was easy enough. Why didn’t I think of that sooner - just tell him the truth. Funny how that works. Here I was feeling obligated to do it, and he is over there wanting to learn how. (Mind you, I don’t know how either. My plan was just to fumble my way through it.)

Guilt-free now I can sort through pictures and create a video for my baby. My baby who started walking this week no less.

For me this was an important lesson. I tend to feel like everything is my responsibility. Even though I don’t necessarily DO everything, I think I should. I’m the Mommy. My husband loves to say to me, in jest of course, when asking me a question to which I might respond, “I don’t know / don’t care.” He’ll say, “But you’re the Mommy.”

About a year or so ago I remember feeling very frustrated because it seemed he asked me questions non stop. I started feeling overwhelmed with pressure to be the decider on all things great and small. He would ask me whether our daughter needed to wear a jacket outside. Should she have this for lunch or that? What shoes should she wear? Should he pack a sippy cup? I would get really short with him and snap that I don’t know whether she needs a coat and I don’t care what shoes she wears. Eventually the snapping and eye rolling was too much and we finally had a conversation about it. Come to find out that he was only asking me to see if I already had an idea or preconceived notion of what she should or shouldn’t eat or wear. If I don’t, all I have to say is, “I don’t know. You can decide.” What a huge difference that made! A noticeable drop in the tension and frustration levels.

I could see those levels starting to build regarding the website. He’d ask if I had made any progress and I, feeling guilty and somewhat failure-ish, would slump in my seat and hang my head while muttering that I’d get to it as soon as I [fill in the blank]. Always something else I needed (or wanted) to do first.

Ah, but now we are back on same page. Communication is a good thing.

And tomorrow I get to start on my fun project. I’m looking forward to that!

I accomplished ONE of my goals today. However, I accomplished a few things today that weren’t on my list. That makes up for for not doing the other two. And I don’t even consider the day to be a failure.

What I DID accomplish was updating my budget with the expenses from the last week. I also reviewed my Christmas budget and made some tweaks. I did not get to download the software I need on my laptop and I did not spend even a single minute working on my business website.

Speaking of the business, we had a phenomenal weekend. Normally we are lucky if we crack $1000 in sales over the course of the weekend (we are only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 9-5). For the last few weeks we have been hitting the $1000 mark and that has felt so good. Mucho needed as in general we are tracking down vs last year. We have the good fortune to be open on Black Friday every year which, in years past, hasn’t been a big day for us. For the last two months, though, we have added a new item in our little retail store and it is paying off. For this 3-day weekend we did over $2200 in sales! That is our best weekend ever. I don’t know if that (or the last few weeks better sales) makes up for the deficit versus year ago, but we are certainly back to trending in the right direction.

I have been thinking about the *not accomplishing* of those two measly tasks which leads me to think about redefining my expectations. As we know, my time is pretty limited during the day. Realistically I have about 2 hours a night to myself (and sometimes that it interrupted by a kid who needs me). And I have to share myself, usually, with my spouse. It’s likely not feasible for me to do every single thing that I want to do.

How do I choose between the things I want to do (make a video scrapbook of my daughter’s first year of life) and things I should do (build my business website)? Truth be told - I would much rather be fooling around with pictures and making videos of my girls. But what is the point of owning a small business if you’re not going to work at it?

I need to sleep on these questions. Perhaps tomorrow will provide some answers.