Save Money for the Future of Your Lawn Business

Photo by: Tracy O

Saving money for the future of your lawn business is important if you ever want to expand your company and bring it to the next level. Putting money away will give you more security, as well as increasing the opportunities for your business in the future.

Steps to Take When Saving

When saving money for the future of your lawn business, there are a few steps you must take:

1. Make goals for how much money you want to save

First off, you'll want to make some goals regarding the money you want to save. What are you saving money for? Here are a few examples of things you could be saving money for:

• Buying new equipment (commercial lawn mower, edgers, weed eaters, backpack blowers, etc.)
• A truck or a trailer
• Future expenses regarding equipment repairs, gas, etc.

Once you have decided what you plan on spending the money you save on, the next part is to figure out how much money you will need to save to get there. First, figure out a rough estimate of how much money you think you will make in the coming season. Then, do some research and find out how much your expenses are, and how much the equipment you plan to buy will cost. Now, let's say your goals are to buy a leaf blower in the fall as well as have some extra money on hand for future expenses, like gas. Your total comes out to $300. Next, you figure out how much you will most likely earn during the coming season, which comes out to be $1,000. So, you'll need to save 30% of your business's income this season in order to reach your goal. You'll need to take out that percentage of money every time you receive payment from a customer-- trust me, if you don't take the money out immediately, you'll forget.

In conclusion, you'll need to make some concrete goals, then figure out how much money you'll need to save to accomplish them.

2. Find a good place to keep your funds

The next step in saving money for the future of your lawn business is putting your money in a good location. Here's a list of places you DO NOT want to keep your the money:

• In your wallet where you keep your spending money
• Out in the open where your crack-smoking brother can steal it for drug money
• Someplace you'll lose it
• Someplace you'll mix it up with something else

Here's a list of places YOU SHOULD keep your money:

• In a safe
• In a jar within your desk-drawer
• Someplace where you don't keep any other money
• Someplace it won't get stolen or lost
• Somewhere hidden
• Someplace safe

Once you have found a good place to keep your saved money, containerize it and put a small piece of paper on it. Label the piece of paper "Lawn Business Money" or something similar so you won't mix it up with anything else, and write down the current amount of money on that label.

3. Track you savings

Once you have made all the plans for saving your money and started actually putting some away, you'll need to begin tracking the amount you have saved. Using a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel is a great way to accomplish this.

Why this is Important

Tracking your progress is important for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it keeps you on track. If you are organized and making sure you are saving exactly what you planned to, none of your funds will slip away.

Second, it will allow you to make adjustments. Previously, I talked about making rough estimates when deciding how much money you need to save. If you are keeping track of how much money is ACTUALLY being put away, you can change the amount you are saving based on hard data. Making these adjustments will increase the likelihood of saving exactly the amount you need to for the goals you have created. Tracking your savings will help you make sure you get to where you need to be.

Make sure to follow these steps

If you follow these steps and don't slip up too badly, your business will be able to expand. You will have money for new equipment, and you will be able to pay for expenses that arise when running your lawn business.

My Business

A few weeks ago, my buddy and I decided to start saving 30% of our earnings for the future of our yard care service. To tell you the truth, we haven't made any concrete goals yet (we ought to), but we have some tentative plans for perhaps buying a more powerful backpack blower if we decide to do fall cleanups. This will depend on our schedules and whether or not we can get some helpers to rake leaves with us, but I suppose we do technically have a goal. So far, we have saved $105. We are getting there for being in the price range for some used equipment.

Conclusion

Saving money for the future of your business is important if you ever want your lawn care enterprise to get anywhere. My advice to you? Start saving now-- I guarantee that you and your business will reap rewards later.

Labels: business