Building A Cash Cushion
Saturday, January 31st, 2009Building Up Your Financial Reserves
Building a financial cushion for your business is never easy. Experts say that businesses should have anywhere from six to nine months worth of income safely stored away in the bank. If your business is grossing $250,000 per month the thought of saving a mere $1.5 million, can either have you dying from laughter or cause you to panic from just realizing this fact. What may be a nice well-advised idea in theory can easily be tossed right out the window when you’re just barely making payroll each month. With this in mind, how can small business owners begin to wisely save money to ensure their long-term success?
Realizing that your business needs a savings plan is the first step toward better management. By doing this your business has a much better chance of being successful. Building savings allows you to plan for future growth in your business and by having the necessary investment capital ready, you can use it toward launching such plans. Having a source of back-up income can often carry a business through a rough time.
When we have market fluctuations, like the dramatic increase in oil and gasoline prices; which may start to affect your business, you may have to go into your savings to keep operations running until the difficulties pass. Your savings can support low peak times in your business, so you will have the ability to purchase inventory and cover your payroll until more revenue is generated. Building business savings is not something that happens overnight, but it is similar to building your business, in that they both take time.
Make sure to review your books on a monthly basis and see where you might be able to trim some expenses, so you can re-route the savings into another account. This will help you to keep on track with cash flow and other financial concerns. Even though it can be quite alarming to see your cash flowing outward with no end in sight, it is better for it to happen sooner, so you can put corrective measures in place, rather than waiting months to discover your losses, because then it will be difficult to recover.










