My Sister and I

 While I really do think that our wages bill crippled our little Restaurant, I have only love for my sister, so let me put it out there. " I love you " and I know that you did not make your decision lightly.

I have spoken too my sister at great length over the last few weeks and she is aware of how I feel and because of our close bond we are still great friends. however some members of my family are putting the blame squarely on her shoulders and are less willing to forgive, however I am working on them....

After the Restaurant was put completely in my charge we experienced a couple of the worst trading months so far, it's because Christmas is just round the corner don't worry about it you will soon be so busy you won't have time to count your money ha ha I believed it all, more fool me. Remember I am completely new to the Restaurant trade.

So I put out an advert in our local newspaper stating longer opening hours during the run up to Christmas and sat back and waited for the bookings to roll in. It was not long before Saturday nights right up until Christmas Eve were booked out, Friday nights were slower but reasonably busy but mid-week nothing changed.

Except of course my Grocery list it got longer and longer and our new trading hours meant more hours for the staff, it was getting really hot here in Queensland and so the air con was on all day and night. and the bar was constantly getting stocked up.

Did I see myself making more money yes of course but it seemed as if there was constantly more going out, but I was still reasonably optomistic, about meeting all of my bills by the time we closed on Christmas Eve.

My chef was going off for a 2 week holiday as were most of my staff and so I had no option but to make arrangements to close the Restaurant over the holiday season, I felt they had me over a barrel with this decision I would have far rather worked on as it was too early in the day to be able to have no money coming in and to be able to meet my obligations, but you can't open a Restaurant without a Chef so I had no choice...

Of course I never made the money I had hoped to make and so when we closed on Christmas Eve I was struggling to pay holiday wages let alone rent and bills................

My financial matters

The Foxx and I sat down last night and paid our bills together then he jumped in the car and went to the bank to withdraw the grocery money for the week. this is the first time ever, in my married life we had kept everything seperately it was always me and you and now it's us.

I have added new debt to our finances as I did not walk away from The Restaurant completely debt free so around $5,000 is now owed outside of  our household expenses so once we get rid of our back bills we will start on the debt.

I have taken my side bars off as they had been paid off and I will think about adding new ones for my current debt.

Off now to take MIL to the shops for groceries........... till next time

The Singing Chef

When my Sister and I decided to buy and run our Restaurant I said right from day 1 that I had no interest in the Kitchen side of the business, so I became front of house and Sis wanted the Chef's position. Firstly let me say that she is an excellent COOK and not a trained Chef. Round the corner from where she lived was a very busy Italian Restaurant where the Chef's joked, sang and interacted with customers and this was where my sister thought we should be heading. Unfortunately our kitchen was a lot smaller and more enclosed in fact you couldent even see customers from where food was prepared. So dream no. 1 was dashed for her.

Running a kitchen must be one of the hardest jobs out I personally could not take the pressure and after only one week of working with our experienced chef my Sister came to me in tears " I can't do this I hate it she said " what is the alternative ? I asked, and that was to employ our supposedly temporary chef on a full time basis. We could not afford to do this but had no option, so from week one our wage bill became our biggest outlay.

Around this time my sister became really unwell and was diagnosed with whooping cough and this coincided with a visit from her Husband ( remember the one she had left 3 months earlier ) from the moment he arrived she leaned on him for everything and it soon became obvious that they were going to get back together. And 3 weeks later she let me know those were her plans, but don't worry she said I will come over every 6 weeks and help out in The Restaurant and help also with the paperwork.

Two visits later she told me she was pulling out completely, she actually bought her way out of a business which she had just bought herself into, we split all the bills some late rent, tax, and our Chef's superannuation and now the business was mine and mine alone.

Was I scared ?? you bet.

All Things Financial

I am going back to where I was before " The Restaurant " planning meals going on no spending months filling up my jars. My sidebars are all wrong and as soon as I get my head around all bloggers changes I will update them.

The Foxx and I are working as a team just now and I will tell you how that came about later in my story,

A big shout out to  my blogger friends, you are all truly inspirational and your progresses financially are encouraging, as well as your blogging skills I have been very impressed by how professional you have all become. I now know where to go for help when I need it LOL

I'm Back And In A Bad Place

It has been nine months since I last posted, at that time I was full of plans and dreams about how successful I was going to be in my new venture.

All of my savings and superannuation money went into making sure that our Restaurant was going to be a wonderfully friendly place to eat, so we sourced the best ingredients, re-employed most of the old staff and opened on the 6th of July 2011.

My Sister was going to learn all she could from our new Chef and so we employed her on a part time basis only, this Woman knew her way round Italian food and her menus and meals were mouthwatering. she did not come cheap, but as we were going to give her few hours we thought we could afford her.

Who would have thought that after a week my sister would have decided that she did not want to work in a hot sweaty kitchen and followed that up 3 weeks later by going back to her husband. Leaving me to run the Restaurant single handed.

It was all downhill from there, our wage bill grew and grew at a quicker rate than our customers and it soon became appparent to me that this venture that I had sunk everything into was doomed to failure.

And so we closed down on Christmas Eve, I am heartbroken jobless and in more debt now than I have ever been.

Obviously there is a lot more to this story and I will fill in some blanks as I blog.

I have had a quick look through some of my favourite blogs and it's great to see the success you are all still making of your financial journeys, unfortunately I can not respond to all your posts as they have changed some of the comment formats and I havent managed to get my head round them yet, still I am out there lurking.