Your Four Walls

#52EssaysNextWave 22/52 #52SlicesOfChingonaLife

Read this earlier: Prioritize protecting your four walls, i.e., food, utilities, housing, and transportation. Make sure these bare essentials are covered before you think of purchasing anything else.

When starting your own business, it’s amazing how much you think about money, or lack thereof, paying bills, keeping things above water. Everything feels like, “I’ll do this once these guys pay me”, “Why do I have to chase folks down to get paid OMG I’ve done the work”, “I hope that I have enough to pay this or that”.

I’ve had to learn, the hard way, that salary is no more, that certain things MUST be handled before I can SPEND on others. I’m that type of person who needs everything spelled out when it comes to finances. While, in the past, I skated along, now, it’s now on me whether I or my business make it through the year. I really like the concept of the ‘4 walls’. Having your 4 walls secured makes for a calmer life. I’ve made many stupid decisions under stress or in a desperate state. Lots of times I didn’t know exactly what was going out or coming in until things got messy. Every time, I’d tell myself, “never again”. Did I try to fix the situation? I’m embarrassed to say that I was inconsistent at best.

I remember at one of my stations, that I always had to reconcile the credit cards that my staff used to gas up the vehicles. A nightmare for me. I would have this mountain of receipts given to me by each member of the staff who gassed up the vehicles and it would take me hours to handle it. One of my managers would always laugh at me and tell me to let him do it, that he could handle it in 5 minutes. I should have let him LOL. I would sit there until I got the numbers right and, now I think, why couldn’t I ever do this for myself?

Now I’m training myself to check my bank balance daily and I know exactly what need to spend each week. These are small steps, baby steps to some of you. But it’s working for me. I can see which wall I’m spending the most on, which one needs help, and where I need to cut down on certain things, where I have space to breathe (rare). At this moment, I have no illusions of being a millionaire, I just want to be able to handle my money and learn how to make it work for me.

I want to keep the four walls up in my house. So I’m taking that small step toward financial freedom.