@wundayatta You…are making a whole lot of assumptions without knowing the ins and outs.
1) The demand WAS there, in spades, during the spring and the summer. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the market. I had good reason to know the market was not there during the winter. I went thorough 4 winters and after 4 years, I was just too damn tired and frustrated to try any more. We had no savings, no insurance, no retirement, nothing.
If we could have hung in we could have found a product that would have gotten us through the winters comfortably. We actually found something during that last year that could have done just that, but it would have taken a couple more years to get everything in place, but I realized it was never going to be what we had hoped. We just didn’t have enough time. We didn’t have enough years left. We didn’t have enough energy left. That another reaslon why I say a physically demanding business like that is best left to the kids.
2) The people who owned the car repair shop started it in the 50’s. They were young then. I have no idea if they took it over from their family or whether or not they borrowed money from family or where they got their operating capital, but they were young. When you’re young you can live in a one bedroom crackerbox. A kid can live on close to nothing but excitement during the early years until the business starts actually making money.
When my husband and I took over the mower shop that had also been around for several years we had several disadvantages right off the bat. One was that I had teen age kids at home and a pretty hefty mortgage. Buying the shop wasn’t my idea but…my husband was sure we could make a go of it. And if we had been able to sacrifice what ever we could we WOULD have made a go of it, and we could have made money—eventually. We didn’t have “eventually” and there were somethings I wasn’t willing to sacrifice. My house, that I had worked hard for was one thing, although it was teetering on the edge of foreclosure many, many times.
As far as the sons who didn’t take over their parent’s auto repair shop..you said it yourself. They made the best decision for themselves, and they went off to college, where most of our young people seem to be heading, which is good, but at the same time they’re getting the message that blue collar work is shameful or something, and that’s not good. Blue collar workers can make a LOT of money, if they’re good.