No new car for me
There are times in everyone’s life that you have to make some tough decisions and inevitably make sacrifices. Giving up your last rolo to a loved one (though as I have just discovered on wikipedia there is an even number of rolos in a packet so this should not be a problem), or maybe something even worse than that!
Over the past few days I have been faced with a pretty tough choice: To go out and buy myself a a big, fast, sexy and really very silly car…. or not!
I have been doing some financial planning and sadly it looks like it might be in my interest to put this dream car on hold for a few more months.
This is not because the I’m struggling. I could easily keep overheads low and cream off a very healthy profit each month. But knowing the true potential of the business, and supposedly doing my best to build some kind of reputable long term company I know this approach isn’t sensible. The money that could be going on a supercar shall instead be put to better use in employing someone to help grow the company. Clearly a much wiser investment.
I am actually putting the company in a position where the balance sheet will show a loss over the next few months, normally a somewhat risky decision. As 100% shareholder I don’t have to justify this to anyone. Though if I did, it would still be easy.
The sites my company runs bring in a huge percentage of revenues from recurring and re-initiated payments every month. These are existing customers that we have already swallowed the acquisition costs on. These members are automatically paying a subscription every month, or re-subscribing. At any point I can massively reduce overheads, stop marketing, and still see the same income for a few months, before it slowly starts to tail off, and easily pay back any small losses. I have the added benefit that we do not have a long list of suppliers, and those that we do are not directly linked to our member acquisitions, so any future money we make from existing members need not leave the company.
My plan is naturally to grow revenues so future profits swallow these losses without the need for any cutbacks. My projections look good for this to happen, and I have quite a good track record when it comes to realistic projections!
That’s it. No car for me for a few more months then 
. The trade off is a bigger and more stable company. A sacrifice worth taking.
Maybe we’ll have an Indian summer and I can have my mid-life crisis a little later in the year.
http://www.oraclefinance.co.uk/ are your friends – no big cash investment, pay for the car as your earnings increase – small monthly payments and then a larger payment each year at dividend time….
I know exactly where you’re coming from – it’s always the way with recurring billing businesses where the more you reinvest at the beginning, the faster you’ll get to your revenue goal.
The challenge will be whether in 6 or 12 months you still want to go for the same car, or as your revenue increases you decide to go for a better model.
At this rate you’ll be driving a Veyron around in 2 years!!
Spoke to David at Oracle already
I’ll probably settle for a Vanquish by the end of the year and a TVR would be very nice while the weather is like this.
Best get my head down now so I can both business and car.
Having just taken a 2 hour lunch I really should stop procrastinating!
Vanquishes (what’s the plural? Vanqui?) seem to be holding their value fairly well, especially compared to the V8 Vantage, which seems to be depreciating horrendously – (so much so that I’ll be driving one at this rate!) so that could be a good shout. A boring but probably very sensible decision though…You only live once, Mr Rees. Contrary to what Ernst Stavro Blofeld believes!
Tough call – In my humble opinion the plural is clearly either “Vanquish” or “Vanquishes”…. on the basis that more than one “fish” are “fish”, and more than one “dish” are “dishes”.
Though I favour the former, if you want to hedge your bets go with “Vanquishes”, people do not normally complain too loudly when people say “fishes”.
Now you can have two or more and not worry about how to refer to them correctly. I hope this brings you some comfort.