Of Mice and Men - Bevie Style

Spouse and I just made a big decision. It wasn't the kind of decision one gets all happy and excited about, because our decision was NOT to go forward with a dream. Yet it wasn't really a difficult decision. It came down to money. We don't have any. That made choosing easy.

Another couple may have chose other than how we did. They may have felt reckless, bold, confident, lucky, whatever. But Spouse and I are Midwesterners through-and-through. We both come from Scandanavian descent. Her roots are mostly from Germany. I have heavy German ancestry through my maternal grandfather, but I can also lay claim to Scottish, Dutch, and Jewish (just a smidgeon) blood. Mostly, I think I have Danish ancestry. (Based on my Daddy's appearance I've sometimes wondered if I don't have Native American roots. But as I have yet to find any documenation on his daddy - my daddy was illigitimate - I'm not sure.)

What was our decision?

Well, I had come up with the clever idea of operating a bookstore. I had found a distributor of overstock books, taken from stores which simply wished to get rid of an inventory, or which had gone out of business. Books could be purchased by the pound or, in some cases, for a dollar apiece. Children's hard-cover books would be a dollar each. But that's a good price! Think of it. One thousand hard-cover books for one thousand dollars. Each of those books would cost around ten dollars in the big time book stores such as Barnes and Noble and Borders. Even Amazon.com would charge near that. But we could sell them for two dollars each and do just fine. We could probably stock a store for less than $10,000 in inventory.

We also sell gift items, which includes toys. Having a children's book section which also had toys for sale would be wonderful, I think. We sell wooden trains, made in Vermont (which means no lead in the paint and such), musical dolls made in Iowa, and a variety of other toys. Since Spouse has spent the last five years working retail almost exclusively, we figured we would do well with such an enterprise. The problem would be money.

Since we already have the gift business we are registered with the State of Minnesota and have a Tax ID and everything. We're so small that we only have to submit sales tax in January of each year, but we're still considered a business. So, every week we get at least one phone call about advertising on-line, being listed in a phone directory, or offered a new deal on someone's new product. Lately, we have also been getting included on the stimulus package calls. Until this week I've ignored the automated calls and informed the real people who call that we are just a home business which is not very active any more. (We sell a few toy items through one of the retail stores Spouse works for. They get a 10% commission on everything we sell. We made $380 in December, $80 in January, $150 in February, and $150 in March. Before this we went two years without selling more than $400 total. Like I said, we're kind of inactive.)

But this past Monday I pushed the "magic button" on the telephone to get us hooked into the stimulus package money. Perhaps we could get a loan and start up a nice little business and hire a couple of people to work. Life would be great.

I soon found myself in telephone conversations with a fast-talking salesman from a company which helps businesses connect to Foundations which are giving away money. Not loans. Grants! I confess that I wasn't hopeful, because NOTHING we have tried since my job was eliminated (with half the department) back in 2002 has worked. Nothing. Everything has failed, even when it seemed there was no way it could fail. Pity.

Well yesterday the guy calls me all excited. He's been in contact with a couple of Foundations which like our idea. The total package: $76,000.

A lot of money, although realistically not so much as we would need as a startup company. Still, $76,000. Talk about a shot in the arm!

But there's always a catch, isn't there? And the catch this time was that in order for this company to help us "close the deal" with these Foundations we would have to "retain" them, much like one does a lawyer. The cost: $2,400. The catch? We're broke.

We got $3,000 back in taxes this year and shoved it into a new savings account to use when we find a new place to live. (Our house has been sold at sheriff's auction, and the only way we can continue living here past August is if we win the lottery or something.) But that is ALL of the money we have. If we retained this company, we would only have $600 left. Not enough to find any place anywhere. Should the Foundations choose against us, we would have virtually nothing with no way to get more.

We didn't even bother considering who might loan us the money. We're not that cruel anymore. We let my sister TWICE give us money - totalling more than $10,000 - to catch up on house payments, only to see the effort lost. The jobs I got to replace the one which was eliminated were also eliminated in massive reductions in staff. (Being the new boy on the block isn't always a good thing.) Now she doesn't have the money and in five months we won't have the house. She could lose her house because she was so generous to us. God I hope that does not happen. We won't let someone else make the same mistake. We shouldn't have let Judayl. I feel creepy every time I think about it. I can just imagine my thoughts toward someone else had I heard of this instead of lived it. Hypocrite, I am.

So saying no was easy. We need the money to find a place to live. That a Foundation is interested in us is no guarantee. For those of you who write, think of it like this: Telling the Foundations about us was like sending a query letter. Them being interested in us is like an agent/editor requesting the full manuscript. The book can still be rejected. There are no guarantees. Life doesn't give many good ones.

The sad thing, too, is that I really don't even know if this guy I talked with is on the up-and-up, or is part of a scam. There are news reports all the time now of scammers contacting people facing forclosure and telling them they can help if the homeowners will just give them so much money. The homeowners give the money and the scammers leave town. Many family have found themselves on the street because of these scammers. That's what's happened in our world. It's a predator feeding frenzy right now.

That also factored in our decsion. Contacting the Better Business Bureau proved to be of no help. They knew nothing of this company, which claims to have been in business since 1997. Well, anyone can claim anything. Maybe they're legit. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. We're not giving them our money.

So, we still have our $3,000, and that's good. But nothing's improved. And that's a pity.