Lied to.......Advice please

[Inspired by Reggio]

bibi: I know exactly how you feel also re: being in a financial straight. your money may not work the same as other providers.... my point...money isn't always there, thats why we do what we do, when we lose a client unexpected, we could have just lost our car payment or gas bill. I feel you.

I agree to some extent ~ everyone has different household resources and budgets to work with and yes emergencies happen that are a drain your those resources ~ but the fact that we should have a PLAN in place regardless is still prudent advice in this field and well basically in any household ~ if loosing a client means you cannot make a BASIC BILL payment than IMO you need to reevaluate your BUDGET and see where you can cut back to create a buffer!

This it is part of the problem with our culture we live beyond our means and scrape by pay cheque to pay cheque and 95% of the population are drowning in debt so if something happens to our income we are stressed beyond belief ~ yet look at how many people have multiple cellphones in their homes with all that fancy 'packages' or people are lining up for miles for the newest 'electronic gadget' and Tim Hortons and the Movie business are THRIVING because everyone has money for eating out and going to a show and so forth?

Sadly this is not about poverty ~ this lack of planning happens in households with incomes of $25,000 and $250,000 because instead of living within THEIR income they are working with a budget a good $10,000 - $100,000 over their actual income and going more and more in debt and if they miss a payment or two their whole word comes crumbling down around them because creditors want their money!

I have a family member whose household income was over $500,000 for decades ... they should have been able to OWN a home and a bunch of other investments that would hold them over in tight times but instead they 'traveled' and had wardrobes out the wazoo and all the latest gadgets ~ they spent fortune on their 4 boys 'toys' with every kid having their own computer that they upgraded every year and so forth and so somehow despite earning more in a year than I earn in 25 ... they had managed to be in DEBT so bad that in a blink of an eye when the economy shifted they lost it ALL ... bank took what equity they had in their house back and foreclosed their mortgage, they lost their cars cause they never 'owned' them they leased them so they could have a 'new one' every year, they had to auction off all their 'fancy stuff' to pay creditors and are now living in the basement of his mothers house with basically nothing to show for all those years cause the business is bankrupt and he is now working for someone else and well sorry but it was hard to have too much 'empathy' for them because with an income like that they should not have HAD DEBT in the first place and definitely should have had SAVINGS to get them though tough times but they CHOSE to live beyond their means even earning $500,000 a year and now IMO cannot be angry blaming others because when times got tight and their business income dried up cause people stopped using their services ~ but he does he does not think any of this is 'his fault'?

My point is that regardless of your household income when you are NEW and deciding to enter into this field this is something that any business person should be considering and planning for how to deal with ~ the reality of being self employed specially in this business is that there are no guaranteed income and it constantly can fluctuate because clients get laid off, pregnant, move, family emergencies, illness and their needs just 'change' or the kids just outgrow our programs ... turnover is a REALITY and in order to be successful in this business one has to have an action plan to deal with this cause often home childcare is feast or famine ~ there are either lots of clients to choose from and you have no issue being full and you are turning them away or it is 'quiet' out there and no one is looking and you are down 1/5 or 2/5 your income ~ if you need that income for BASIC bills to be paid verses 'extras' like entertainment / clothes / gifts and so forth than you should likely reconsider if it would be best to be 'employed' where income is more consistent and stable!

Honestly I do not say this lightly ~ at the time I started contemplating doing this our household budget including paying child support for my stepson and step daughter that was more than the average mortgage payment right off the top of our budget because we had not control of that ~ they come from different mothers and the courts do not take into account you are paying child support to another person when setting it nor any of your other 'expenses' ~ they just look at your income and X is what you pay based on that .... so in order to make my business plan happen we downsized our mortgage by buying a house that was a 1/2 what the bank offered us but was in an area my business could thrive, we sold off some of our 'collections' stuff we had collected over the years but really did not 'need' and got help lower our consumer debt, we changed our meals and entertainment budget to only going out every 'season' and put what we had been spending into getting 'debt' free of all 'consumer' debt and than created a savings account for me so that I had a 'buffer' of thee months to get up to at least 3 clients in my daycare to meet my 'break even' threshold .... and even with all that planning and preparing my 2nd year of business my spouse got medically released from his job and was unemployed for 9 months ~ so yes stuff happens but thankfully if you hope for the best but PLAN for the worse you can make it through without loosing the roof over your head or your vehicle being repossessed!