“Do you want to be homeless and live in the gutter?” Apparently, this is the biggest fear among would-be home business owners. It also seems to be the biggest fear of people who know and love would-be entrepreneurs. When I was about a week away from launching Itty Bitty Marketing, somebody very close to me (thankfully, not Jamie) asked me that exact question. Verbatim. What do you say to that? “Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I’d like. In fact, why don’t you just take my house and my car and I’ll do it right now?”

Many advice types suggest having something like seven gazillion months worth of savings before you make the leap, thus mitigating your risk of poverty and ridicule. While I’m sure that is a nice, safe plan for many people, in our case we would have shot ourselves had we waited that long. Instead, we decided to go with the Back-Up Plan method of small business management. Read More

Leo says you need an emergency fund. Trent says you need an emergency fund. Your mother probably says you need an emergency fund. But do you have one?

The last few months have been good ones for me. Jamie’s student loans came in, and I got a pretty substantial bonus from one of my freelance clients. I was able to increase my rates for some of my writing jobs. All in all, it’s been pretty good.

I wanted to buy a big screen TV. Jamie wanted to set up an emergency fund. Knowing that he was right, as usual, we filled up our emergency fund to a level we felt comfortable with. (Then the bonus came and I secretly bought him the TV for his birthday anyway, but that’s neither here nor there.) Read More