Keeping them separate

# Chapter 221

You must pay very close attention to your money, both in your personal life and in your business. Masterminds.

No this is not yesterday’s post. This one is more. First of all I don’t recommend mixing your finances in your personal life and in your business, but since we don’t hang out with venture capitalists every day, most business owners I know are self-funded at least some. Since my wife and worked overseas for 27 years in places where banking wasn’t easy or stable, we often found that our personal and business money mixed and it was always a nightmare to streamline things again.

But we need to pay attention to our money in our personal lives so that we don’t face any temptation to dip into our business to rescue our struggling personal finances. Conversely we don’t want to find ourselves in a place where the business needs more capital from our personal finances. The challenge is often is that you are you and I am me - meaning that the way we handle and manage our personal finances is often reflected in our business finances. If you consistently overdraw your personal accounts, I would bet that you will find that you tend to do the same in your business accounts. If you consistently write bad checks in your personal accounts, you will be tempted to do likewise in your business account.

Hopefully in your business world, you have accountants and/or bookkeepers that will be looking over your shoulders and keeping you out of trouble. But if you are like me and have (I have to stop and count) four different businesses and accounts, there is not the same level of oversight from others on some of the businesses as others. The bottom line here is keep it clean, don’t overextend, spend less than you make, keep emergency accounts.