Weather Forecast – Settled But Improving

Weather Forecast – Settled But Improving was Originally Posted on December 26, 2013 by

It has been a good year. I say that because things began to smooth out a bit.

I created a cashflow spreadsheet a few years back. It is not hard, you create rows for each month and columns for income and outgo. Mine had columns such as medical payments and pet costs. I also had puppy and coffee sales and finally I added a Social Security column.

Somewhere in the middle I created a column for cash on hand. That column took all the left-side incomes and added them, then took the right-side outgos and added them and displayed the total, adding it to the total from the month before. If you know spreadsheets at all, this is a 10 minute setup and you are in business.

My monthly utilities are fairly constant so I just took an average of a few months and bumped it up a bit, then copied that value down the column. Other costs I estimated, like gasoline costs. If I expected a puppy litter or sales of coffee, I estimated that and bumped down the expected income. When I was done, I had a reasonable estimate of where my money goes and how close to bankruptcy I would be :-)

With my spreadsheet it was close to accurate for the next month but could be off as I projected further and further into the future. However, as I went along, the changes in income seemed to offset the changes in costs and I didn’t have to do much tweaking as I went along.

What the spreadsheet showed me was that I had a turning point where my mortgage would be paid off a year after I started Social Security. During that year the SS payment about covered my mortgage. I could have taken money out of my savings to pay off the mortgage, but would incur a tax because it would be income and my mortgage was only a 10 year note at 5% interest. A years worth of interest was not worth paying off. I also had paid off my tractor and mower a year or so previous and that saved hundreds a month. I can tell you that the sheet showed a negative amount in the bank for a couple months but being able to see that in advance encouraged me to reduce expenses and increase income to avoid that. Avoid that I did.

So although I came close to having to take another chunk of money from my retirement account, I was able to slide on by. Now things are looking up. Coffee sales were great and I have coffee available for many months so I can look forward to coffee income at least the early part of the year. I skipped breeding O`Lena last year but she will be in season about April and I hope to have a litter of puppies to sell this year. Truth be told, her last litter was a nice income for me and she loved caring for 10 puppies. Koa, my male Lab was not as thrilled to be bothered by lots of pups wanting to play.

My friend, his wife and another guy are moving here beginning in January. This guys friend does construction and roofing and I will have him help me get a number of things done on the farm. I hope to have him do some of my pruning and house projects that I can’t do or have not had time to do. One item is the addition of an area so I can leave the dogs outside in an enclosed area. I have used fence panels, but they are not large enough to allow the dogs as much room as I’d like.

Another project is to finally get the kitchen and at least 1 bathroom remodeled. If I fix up the utility room and bathroom downstairs and add a shower, I can rent out the room down there or at least offer it in trade for farm work.

Another project is to rip down the old garage and build a simple drying deck with roof. That would allow me to not only process my own coffee as I do now, but to take on coffee from a couple neighbors who just sell their cherry to someone. I could then return their processed coffee to them, or buy it from them and add it as another product in my online store.

Unlike much of the country, I have grass to cut and outside work to get to.

I hope all is well with you.