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the gayle group has worked with hundreds of small businesses.  One of the issues that always comes up is savings. When I work with business financial information, I look for 3 basic accounts – an operational checking account, a payroll checking account, and a business savings account.  I encourage business owners to put 10% of every invoice into their savings account.  I can imagine that you already have a good idea of the conversation.  “I’m barely making it now.  How can I put aside 10%?  I need all the money I make" – AND MORE!

Several years ago I was working with a family-owned business and we were having this conversation.  The husband said there was no way they would be able to save any money.  That’s why I was there – to help them increase their income and their profit so that they would have money to put away.  The wife mentioned that savings was a topic of contention, even in their home.  They had 2 small children and a teenager.  The teenager worked after school in the business.  But the kicker was that the teenager had a savings account.  The mother told me, sadly, that their teenager had more saved from a part-time job than they had saved in their entire marriage.

So I suggested they take the little ones to their bank and have them open savings accounts in their own names (with Mommy and Daddy’s help, of course).  At least once a month, the whole family goes to the bank while the family puts their own money into their accounts.  Then the family does something fun – Daddy makes breakfast or they go to the park.

I spoke with the husband a few months after I left and he was very excited.  The whole family had individual savings accounts and they put money in every other Saturday.  After they went to the bank, they had a fun Saturday adventure.

In fact they had opened a business savings account, also.  They still could not afford 10% of every invoice, but they had started building a savings account.  The bottom line is less about how much went into the account and more about the habit of saving.

(Photo: Anthony Crider, Some Rights Reserved, Creative Commons License)
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