You understand, if your not the owner of a business you might not realize the amout of money that it takes to say in business
I understand exactly what you are saying. Expenses keep going and no money coming in can take your stockpile of emergency cash real quick. Not to mention that your own expenses at home continue too.
When the Twin Towers in NY were bombed and came down, our business flatlined. We were in an area of retirees and they were very sensitive to fluctuations in the stock market. It scared them and they stopped buying. We went 3 weeks with NO ONE even coming in. We still had ALL of our expenses, rent, payroll, insurance, delivery truck payments, etc.... After 3 weeks, people slowly dribbled in, 1 or 2 an day, but sales still didn't equal expenses. A few more weeks of that and I could see the writing on the wall. I told my husband that it would take a year, most likely 2 years to return to our previous level of business and we would be broke long before that. To add to the uncertainty, the building we were in was up for sale and the landlord would not renew our lease, so we were month to month. It looked like a good time to bail out. We made the decision to sell out. We told our employees the next morning, and gave them all a dollar an hour raise to stay with us until closing. No one quit and we threw a party and sold out.
Sure enough, it took more than a year for business in that area to pick back up. Some small businesses that tried to hang on went totally busted. Some that had been there a long time and were 2nd and 3rd generation, held on.
We muddled around for a year or so, taking much needed time off and doing things that we hadn't been able to do because we worked 6 days a week, 10 hours a day (or more). I was thrilled to defrost my freezer and clean out closets. Haha, the simple things...… Then we went and got jobs and life resumed.
