I just got my accounts from last year, and it turns out that for the first time ever, profits did not go up, but down. Way down.
I think my sales flattened due to new competition.
I made one bad investment. I knew the risk.
Then the dollar fell.
And I got offered much more material for sale than earlier, and I was slow in learning to say "no", so I bought much more than I needed to.
Altogether my loss of profit was bigger than my entire income was ten years ago!
And yet I am perfectly happy. Why? Because I'm living way below my means, and can easily absorb this loss. No kidding. Not even close to being a problem, I'm still saving up every month.
If I'd done what some would do, and taken a mortgage to the biggest house I could possibly afford, and gotten three cars and a summer home, then this would have been devastating. But as it is, I did not even notice until I got the numbers from my accountant, half a year after the fact.
21 comments:
Aaaand you're running a high quality site; not only most images, but the whole concept of including a newsletter section and also attaching this blog is sort of genius.
Remember profit and business, like the share market, isn't a one-way-road, as a guru once said.
The newsletter is essential, but this blog is unrelated. I only link to it because I can, and want the traffic here.
Statistics don't lie: living below your means avoids extreme spending.
Have you ever noticed how people for whom the end justifies the means will go to any extreme?
"Sounds illogical, Captain."
What??
That's just the professor, acting the goat - again.
Didn't you also lower the membership fees, or something? (I think it was discussed here on this blog.)
Not that lowering the unit price automatically means smaller revenues -- it could just as well result in an increase in revenues, but it behooves to recount all the variables when analysing the situation.
What I've done with the prices has a complex history. But it seems generally I'm operating in the hump of the bell curve, so these changes have not made huge changes in profits by themselves.
I think I will call the Pope and ask him to fasttrack your application for sainthood.
Some quick comments. First, congratulations on being sane rather than monetarily conformist. I think you know what I mean by those terms ...
Second, aren't those extra unnecessary purchases actually just money sitting in the bank? You've made a few extra buys of pictures, which means that for a while you can cut back on buying but still have inventory with which you can continue to sell, right? So, you can rightly view that period of time when you hadn't yet learned to say "no," as simple infrastructure development. :)
Further: if this were the situation but also you were a typical North American business which was publicly traded, then your stock would go so far down that you'd have to fire your chief executive, start spending out the wazoo (get that big house and extra car!), and then madly freak out at your failure to keep revenue in line with your breakneck spending. So you'd have to spin off six sub-organizations, work twelve to fourteen hour days, hire eleven assistants (and increase revenue to be able to pay their wages and benefits), and generally run yourself into the ground BECAUSE YOU CAN rather than because it made any sense.
In a more individual manner, this type of thing happened after Hurricane Katrina. Here in New Orleans, the extreme lower class and the extreme upper class were able to return readily. The poorest of the poor had to leave, then had to return, and then had to rebuild, and if they could afford what little it took to slap together a ramshackle sub-standard housing unit plus get all their kitchen implements replaced with a check from the emergency department of the government, then they were back in their "homes" readily.
The middle class, however, had to leave and set up shop elsewhere right away. That's because they didn't just lose things, they lost INCOME FLOW. They had PAYMENTS. Monthly payments on the extra car, the extra diamond ring, the kids' extra expensive (but not very educationally sound) private school, the credit card balance. They needed a new job and a new home IMMEDIATELY. So, they didn't even have a chance to think about whether or not they wanted to return to New Orleans, they just got started as quick as they could in whatever city they landed in.
This is a detriment and a benefit to our city. We lost the debt-financed spendthrifts. This means we lost people who would support boutique-type stores, people who have middle-level skills but are not entrepreneurial, people who likely would not raise fatherless children or commit violent crimes. They have the advantage of being "solid, stable" citizens; the disadvantage of being unable to INVEST long-term in a given setting. We did NOT lose the crack dealers, cocaine addicts, rap-music-booming zippy-car-obsessed unfathered young male ghetto criminals. They had little to lose, and little to return to, and little to carry around, and so it was easy for them to start back up at that little tiny base level all over again.
Interesting social phenomenon. Coupled with the fact that many are still (by slipping through the cracks of the system) voting as though New Orleans were their home, we have a weird arrangement. Politicians who represent the best interests of Atlanta and Houston are our mayor and city council, sometimes.
Still talking out of your ass, Final? It was funny when Jim Carrey did it. I'm going to start calling you Cletus.
There you go being extremist again, mister Anonymus.
If Mr Stobblehouse is operating in the hump of the bell curve, ergo he's around the mean, not near the extremes. Didn't anybody pay attention in Statistics class?
And Captain Haddock claims *I* act the goat... M.E.H.! Mildly Entertaining Humour. :-P
Have you seen the atomic moon rocket I designed and built? Not bad in average, for a hard-of-hearing goat, eh?
I just want to be loved ... :(
If you want to be loved, stop acting like some hillbilly carny yokel.
Why "Cletus"? Forgive my asking, but I have a different cultural background.
I know of one hillbilly called Cletus, featured in the videogame Thrill Kill". But outside the bootleg beta-versions in Lebanon, it was never officially released. Probably because it made the likes of GTA, Mortal Kombat and Manhunt look like the Care Bears on Prozac.
That Cletus from the game is one bad mutha: he rips a limb off from his opponents, then clubs them with it. And that's not even his finishing move!!! Too cool.
Come to think of it, Anon, it may not be very cautious of you to repeatedly insult a Cletus...
I'm going to take a stab at this one. Considering the "hillbilly" and "yokel" tags I'm going to say that the Cletus reference is to "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" character from the Simpsons.
He's not quite as bad-assed as your Cletus, Pascal, but he does know his way around a shotgun.
he rips a limb off from his opponents, then clubs them with it.
I think the real Gunnery Sgt. Hartman threatened to do that to somebody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcAj2-j2VkQ&feature=related
No offence to our own Gunny.
That's nowhere near his best line, though.
If I could figure out exactly WHERE I DID act like a hillbilly carny yokel, I'd change it. But since there's no IDENTIFYING the problem in the first place ...
Never having met any carnies, hillbillies or yokels, I don't really know what to look for, either, so I can't help you there, Final. Just keep on truckin'.
Joe Dick admitted:
"He's not quite as bad-assed as your Cletus, Pascal, but he does know his way around a shotgun."
LOL, you don't say! Cletus is quite assorted with his opponents.
"No offence to our own Gunny."
Who is pretty decently hardcore himself! :-)
"But since there's no IDENTIFYING the problem in the first place ..."
Or in the last place, either.
You could say the problem here has no final identity...
P.S.: "Location: Timbuktu, Mali"?
You wouldn't happen to have met Donald Duck during one of his frequent travels there, perchance?
Hey, you weren't kidding about being a Struldbrug! But of course you NEVER kid. :-D
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