The Blue Chill
Ah…to blog again…I have truly missed blasting my opinions onto the internet over the past couple years. Where should I begin? So much change. So many lessons learned. Tears. Laughter. Sunburns. Sports. Incomplete puzzles on the table in the living room. Heating our home with burning logs. Falls. Winters, Second Winters, Summers. No Springs though. That’s been interesting. To have Spring or not to have Spring. Never a question. In Maine, you don’t get one and there’s no use complaining about it. We are all seasonally affected. Get over it.
We’ve decided to set up shop permanently here in the corner of the country that most people think is just Southern Canada. We’re in a town called Blue Hill. It is beautiful. It’s the setting of the book, Charlotte’s Web. We walk to the schools, grocery stores, and the YMCA. The town park sits right on Blue Hill Bay. Our kids hang out at the library right across the street. It’s idyllic. We miss our friends and family down south, but we’re loving life in Maine.
One of the deals I made with Sarah when we decided to buy our home in Blue Hill was that I’d finish the renovation before we moved in. I had 9 months and agreed to the deal before aligning on project scope. This is always a great way to get a deal done if you don’t care about how well you fare in the deal. A few months into the project I realized that I needed to end my work contracts and focus 100% on the renovation. I worked on the house through the summer to get us moved in for the start of the school year. I learned a lot. Mostly I learned to get a better understanding of Sarah’s requirements before committing to timelines.
By September we were settled in. The kids were in school. Fall was approaching. The leaves started changing colors. Crispness in the air. Pumpkins. Apple Cider. All that stuff. There is a certain calm that comes with the passing of the summer season here in Maine. Tourism slows down. Aggression towards tourists slows down. It’s time to really take a deep breath, let the anxieties melt away and reflect on the fact that you no longer have any income because your entire business is based on summer tourists who are now gone. Now breathe out. Ah, there’s the anxiety again. I missed you.
One of the biggest lessons that I learned over the last year was an economic one. Quick disclaimer: The information contained in this blog post is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as financial advice. I am not a financial advisor, nor am I holding myself out to be, and the information contained in this blog post is not a substitute for financial advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
There are a number of variables that one must consider when one decides to stop working, so I created a sophisticated algorithm to keep track of this. It looks like this: I — E = S. Let’s break down the complicated equation. Income (I) is the money that you get in the form of a paycheck or other investments. Next, it’s important to consider your cost of living. Unfortunately, living costs money. Food, bills, gas, health insurance, mortgages, and entertainment typically have some sort of cost associated with them. Let’s call these Expenses (E). The difference between (E) and (I) will result in your overall Savings (S). I know this is a lot, but hang in there.
Here’s where things get interesting in our case. For us, (I) became zero last Fall, but interestingly enough (E) really didn’t change that much. In fact, (E) increased with the added expense of heating our home over the Winter plus renovation costs. And here’s where things became very interesting. If I=0 and E>0 then S = -E. Now I don’t claim to be a mathematician, but at this point I felt like I had really stumbled onto something big. A breakthrough. The equation was trying to tell me something. I felt like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. I found myself out in the cold garage drawing my equation on the frosted windows in the middle of the night trying to unpack the complexity of the world. Finally it hit me. I believe that the equation was trying to say that if you don’t have income, then it’s really hard to pay your bills, and you will eventually run out of money.
I welcome other mathematical interpretations but for us it was time to brainstorm. “We’re smart,” I’d say. “We can figure this out,” Sarah replied. Hey, you know I’ve picked up some handy skills with this carpentry stuff. Maybe I’ll try that. I got the word out and quickly picked up a gig building someone a cabinet. I met with the client. Got their requirements, put together an estimate and got the job. I built a lovely little cabinet. The only problem was that I underestimated the amount of time that I thought it would take and didn’t have the heart to charge them more than my estimate, so I probably made about $7 an hour on that job. Oh well. On to the next thing.
We’re scrappy. What else can we do? I decided to start substitute teaching at the kids’ school which was incredible. I got to see the kids, meet their friends and teachers, and I even became the assistant coach of the track team. Maybe I could become a teacher, I thought. I started looking into it but quickly realized that in the United States teachers seem to be more noble and altruistic than monks. This is a financial exercise that would require another blog post but I’m pretty sure that it costs more money to be a teacher than it pays to be a teacher. It must be difficult for a teacher to tell their students that if they work hard and do a good job they will succeed. This is because when that same teacher goes to ask for a raise, they are told they must obtain a Master’s or Doctorate degree to earn a few thousand dollars more a year. Thank you to all the teachers out there. I will do my best to support you and never get in the way of the important work that you do. Maybe one day when my budget is balanced I can join you…
Then Sarah came to me with an idea. “You’ve always talked about being a real estate agent. Why don’t you sign up for this class that starts later this month and become one?”. She was probably right. I had talked about being an agent. I do love real estate. The problem is that I don’t love classes. I had a counter to her proposal. “Why don’t you sign up for the class and you become a real estate agent?”. Counter accepted. She took the class, got her license and is now a real life real estate agent. Well played by me.
Ok, now we’re making some progress. Our creative juices are flowing. Wait…what did you say? Juices? Like fruit juices? I could feel myself reverting to a 6 year old entrepreneur. What would a 6 year old with 20 years of real world experience do to make money? You know what they would do? They’d build a lemonade stand, damn it. No, no, no. That’s juvenile. Grow up. You’re a product manager for goodness sake. Iterate. Think of the customer. They want variety. They want a cool snack on a hot summer day. All natural ingredients. Fresh fruit. They need a place to hang out right here in downtown Blue Hill. A place to be young again. A place to bring their kids. Their grandkids. A place where they can chill and enjoy a delicious handmade frozen treat. They need a popsicle. They need The Blue Chill.
It’s common in Maine to see businesses run right out of people’s homes. Produce, eggs, firewood, fork pies, flowers and fiddleheads are all sold right on the side of the road. Our neighbors up the street sell seafood out of their garage and their neighbors sell Adirondack chairs in their front yard. We’ll join the ranks of micro entrepreneurs in the coming weeks with our own ice pop stand and we couldn’t be more excited. Our pops are made from fresh fruits, homemade puddings, milk chocolate and a whole lot of Gleason family love. Come see us in downtown Blue Hill and Chill in the Hill.
You may be asking yourself — is an outdoor popsicle stand really going to solve the problem of negative winter savings (S)?
That is an excellent question but let’s worry about that next Fall.
