MORE ON COFFEE

Have I mentioned that I haven't had a cup of coffee since March?

I'm sitting with my friend's laptop, in the cafe she's just purchased (seems to be a trend within our circle right now) and before me are pages and pages of business plan guides, references, profit and loss statements and payroll information.

I just spoke with the current owner, who has been awesomely patient while I get all my ducks in a row, and told her that yes, for sure, I'm buying her stuff. I thought I had made that clear the other day but she said she had to get in touch with the owner of the building who wanted to put the shop in the paper to look for a new owner. So we clarified. I'm taking it on. We get together tomorrow so that I can continue to bombard her with more questions..... licensing, zoning, purveyors, insurance, utilities..... and to let her know my offer on her price.

I have a bad habit of stumbling over my tongue when I talk about money with someone. I have a hard time entering into a conversation about money with confidence and clarity. Maybe it's because I've had such a strange relationship with the stuff. When I turned eighteen, my great aunt decided that she wanted to share her wealth with her family before she was too senile or long gone to experience the satisfaction of seeing us all enjoy it. She married a wealthy man who taught her how to invest her money well. She was widowed at fifty, after which she married her sister's husband's brother (got that?) and the two of them enjoyed a sweet and comfortable life together.

So, at age eighteen I was handed a check for five thousand dollars. My parents, who were in many ways fairly controlling, chose this one time to not impose rules and regs and unsolicited advice. I have no idea why and now, in hindsight, I wish they had. I didn't even know how to balance a checkbook. I withdrew the money in large quantities from the ATM and it was spent on booze and weed and music and pretty little hippie dresses for all my girlfriends. It was gone by the end of the year.... and then, lo and behold, came another installment. Just go ahead and carbon copy that first year. More weed, more booze, more Grateful Dead shows and pretty little dresses. By the third year I "invested" the money in a 1972 VW van and paid my dad's quack mechanic to restore it so that I could get the hell out of dodge and find my place in the world. The fourth installment went toward massage school, fifth installment went toward a deposit on a sweet little cedar rental home shortly after Ella was born and the last installment paid for part of the deposit on our 32 acres of mountain paradise.

I didn't grow up with money. We weren't a wealthy family. I think I've mentioned in prior posts that my folks woke up and banged on the heaters to get em going and to scare the mice away. So being handed such large sums at such a young age with such little guidance really left me with no skills on how to budget. I'm still learning.

The years following such abundance have been sparse. We're a young family, getting going in a place where economic prosperity isn't a norm, and we're part-time farmers to boot. We're still banging on our own metaphorical heaters, I guess you could say.

It's only been in the past two years, maybe three or four, that I've gotten comfortable balancing a checkbook, checking my account online and keeping a general kind of budget when it comes to groceries, insurance, gas, etc.

So, I've gone over the first half of the business plan and now have to type it into some master copy. Next comes the financial peice that Bill helps me with. Bill, who has been on his own, for the most part, and self sufficient since he was fifteen. When we met, 12 years ago, he had an immaculate apartment in Lancaster, Pa, a good paying job and a very organized budget. He is the left side of my brain.