"The last post in the series":http://alexpooley.com/articles/2005/12/18/how-to-buy-back-time-part-2 discussed how I much of my hypothetical income of $1,000 I was going to allot to my venture. The number I came to was $150 a week because that's how much income I have after paying all my expenses, with my fiance's income to fall back on "just in case". What I want to discuss in this post, the penultimate post of the series, is the issues I now face by having this money.
Initially it seems quite obvious that you should just use the money you budget for your venture to purchase things you need. This is the crux of the solution, but here's a few points to keep in mind if you start to budget money towards a venture of your own.
* Only start projects within your budget. There's no point trying to create a $2,000,000 project if you're budgeting $150 a week!
* I have been able to write my code during after work hours. Had I been in a hurry, I could have paid someone to help me out with my coding. Fortunately my project has been fairly small and thus has not required too many man hours.
* I'm concerned over my server setup and it may pay to get some expert knowledge tinkering with the innards of the server, paying particular attention to security and performance. I guess this is something I should look in to post beta.
* I have a minor concern that if the venture flourishes I will need to hire talent in a hurry which means it may pay to get someone used to the code in the near future before the rush arrives. In general, how do I factor the future in to my budget?
* This is a given - only buy stuff you need. I've written down a plan and noted stuff that I really need that I can't do as well as others. This includes web design work and server hosting.
* Hosting costs me $30 a month. I'm guessing the design work will at most cost $500. That leaves a lot of money left over and not being used. What do I do with this money? Am I allocating too much?
* Psychologically it is a challenge to separate the ventures capital with my own personal income. This will keep my expenses down, but hopefully not to the point where it's a disadvantage.
That was a real mishmash of points but essentially it comes down to these two points:
# It was hard work making my money and I therefore want to keep my expenses down.
# The flip side is that I have a finite amount of money to spend and must optimise the use of my money accordingly.
Historically I've been pretty frugal with my spending. I'll probably adopt a strategy where I'll start frugal and slowly venture out as I see the need. I'll probably look to use my money to take advantage of other peoples skills such as server administration, and web design.
I'm going to wrap up the series tomorrow and draw the main points from the three posts in the series. Writing these posts has helped me solidify my strategy. I hope I've been of some help to you.