A Little More Money

Last week Keith had kind of a bad work week, with getting in trouble for filling out a form wrong and just general New Year's Blues. Most work weeks are bad anyway, having to go to work every day being bad just because you have to get up in the dark and go to work. He got called into the office on Friday afternoon and thought okay, here it goes, I'm getting fired. He even told his boss, if you're firing me, get it over with and I'll get on out of here.

No, he didn't get fired and his boss looked at him like he was crazy for thinking he was getting fired. Instead, after 3 years of working there, he finally got a raise. Well!

Not a huge raise, only $1.25 an hour, but enough to where it will help pay for the gas to get to work each day what with gas prices continuing to go up and a 30 mile drive to get there each day. So, a little breathing room there.

He had been planning on going in to ask for a raise and was sure they would turn him down, and when he got yelled at for filling in the form wrong he even said 'well, I guess this isn't the time to ask for a raise', so actually getting one was a huge surprise. After he got home on Monday I asked him if making a little more money each hour helped to make work a little more bearable, but no, not really it doesn't. We are still glad he still has a job, though, and the company he works for seems to be solid and steady and won't be laying people off any time soon, so, all is well in that regard.

And, in other financial news, I did my books for the year and once again will be taking a loss on my business. Not a huge loss, like $100.00, so for tax purposes, good, for business purposes, not so much. My goal this year is to not lose money. The biggest way to not lose money is to not spend money on supplies trying out new things that don't sell. I'm going to stick with soldered pendants and the hand painted brass and see how that goes this year. Supplies sell well on Etsy, you've got a captive audience so to speak, other sellers buying supplies to make things that may or may not sell. Might as well be on the selling side instead of buying side when it comes to supplies.

We have both decided that we'd rather be hot than cold, so this summer I'll try not to complain too much about how hot it is. I am tired of not wanting to go outside because it's cold, I'd rather not want to go outside because it's too hot.