The last few days have been productive ones, but today the tide has seemed to somehow turn and I'm now feeling the pinch of money. Budget. As in, I'd feel a lot better about it if there were more of it.
Good news is that I bought a car and got rid of the truck. The truck drop-off netted me $800 I'd forgotten about, which was serving as the security deposit for the guy's truck that I was renting. It's good to be driving the new car rather than the big beast, which was really hard to maneuver in the tight parking lot out back.
You'll notice, if you scrutinize the picture above, that the car's got nearly 100k miles on it. I spent $5k and got a car that I figured would have a great chance of running reliably for three years or so. Last night while I was driving home, the 'check engine' light went on. Great. The Friday of labor day weekend. Fingers crossed for a bit.
One of the main reasons I'm feeling the money pinch is that the bank here in Evanston decided to bounce the cashier's check that I got from the other bank, down in Lincoln Square, when I closed that account. And then, for some reason, decided to debit my account twice for the amount of that check. Once just wasn't enough, apparently.
Days later, after continuing to look at a balance that's much lower than I know it should be, but still not being able to avoid being nervous about it, as if the balance it's telling me really is the real balance, plus, worrying that the whole screw-up would cause the check I wrote to pay for the car to bounce, I finally got word that there was a problem with the endorsement.
I signed it and gave it to the teller, but she didn't stamp it, apparently, to verify that I was endorsing it on behalf of the company. The conversation with the bank guy was not amusing.
Bank guy: "Oh, did you want us to stamp it?"
Me: "I don't know, I don't even know what 'stamp it' means. I wanted you to do whatever needed to be done to make the money go into my account."
BG: "OK, so in this situation, in the future, do you want us to stamp your checks?"
Gaaah! Of course! Jeez, what are you, an idiot? When someone walks up to the window and hands you a big check to deposit into their account, they want you to do ALL THE VARIOUS BOOKKEEPING ACTIONS NECESSARY TO MAKE THE MONEY GO INTO THE ACCOUNT.
Do I have to spell out every step for you people? You're bankers. Bank!
Anyway, I believe the situation will be remedied early next week, but I can't help but worry about money because of it.
Then, besides the car being a potential money sink, I walk in this morning and there's a big puddle of water by the back door, right under where the A/C unit is in the ceiling and I think the worst. I'm immediately moving ladders around, taking ceiling tiles off, and flashlighting around up there, trying to see if there's any kind of leak.
After playing with it for a while, I think it came from the drip pan of one of the countertop beverage coolers we moved back there yesterday, and so is a minor problem, but, again, it's giving me a scare.
Oh, and I opened the electric bill for September and it's over $500. And that's with having all the coolers (including the walk-ins) turned off the entire month!
I've also been spending tons of money. A few $200 orders to restaurant supply stores for smallwares, a meat grinder purchase, a few hundred for hood cleaning/servicing, a few for getting the hot equipment configured and up, a few more for the fire suppression service to recharge the Ansul system, and, on top of all that, a car. All that adds up to an expensive week.
All these little things are making realize how tight my budget is. I'm planning for everything to go smoothly and income to start flowing in my direction in late September. If some of literally dozens of things--most notably, my inspections with the city-- don't happen the way they're supposed to along the way, I'm worried about running out of money.
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Ouch! As if starting a new business weren't stressful enough. Hope everything goes well for your opening.