When To Stop Fighting The Good Fight in meh...

No.
Nothing like that.

I’m just wondering when to say when on a certain issue.

Back story is that my sister and I decided that we were going to get ourselves in hand and start a food truck. Because she gets disability and doesn’t work, she has more time to focus than I do. When I do help out and do my share I’m almost obsessive about it so I can put out my fair share when I can. Yet still there is no progress beyond the cosmetics. It takes money to make money. Nothing worth having will come easy. You have to work hard for it. Insert other clichéd comments here. I know all of those things, but in all seriousness, I’m thinking maybe we should throw in the towel on this thing.

It feels like it’s been forever since we started on this, but really it’s been about 3 years. In those three years, our family has suffered through deaths, my sister has had a long list of health issues and was dead for 30 seconds in the midst of my niece, her daughter, losing her 23 day old baby, suffering through that funeral. She had infections, surgeries, other ailments and issues and it’s been a rough road.

Last year we had renewed vigor. Got out business plan started. She’s been working with a mentor on it, I’ve been reading and studying things. I told her I was in this all the way. We’ve got partnership agreements in place, we’ve been registered with the state. There are more things we need to do still, but again, I work and can only do so much from here without neglecting my only income. She has had some more health troubles all stemming from her renal failure and being on the transplant list for a kidney. I’m trying to remain hopeful but with every little thing I’m seriously wondering if this is our time. Should we give up? Are these signs or tests? I’ve never been good at figuring them out because they both run concurrent to each other and even when answers are revealed it’s still a blur as to which was which you know?

I talked to her on Sunday and she was asking if it was okay with me (because we check with each other before making any real decisions) if she put an ad on Craig’s List to help us generate money. We’ve tried the crowd funding, but we have had no success with that. Only one person gave $25 and we’d been sitting on that $25 since May. We had to circulate it among our friends and family (the way crowd funding works) via Twitter & Facebook and while we had 500+ people view our page, no one INCLUDING those friends and family members contributed. So I just closed it down after talking to her.

At any rate…
I talked to her on Sunday and she asked me about the Craig’s List thing. Here is the plan: She was going to ask her friend could we use her house as collateral for a loan to really get things going (truck, truck rental space, other licenses, etc.). She would be paid back over 5 years at I forgot what the percentage rate would be. I am actually not okay with this. This is what the Craig’s List ad would propose to someone. I can’t do this in good conscious. I’m a thinker and I think of every possible outcome. There is of course if we’re successful then we have nothing to worry about. But there is the other thing of if we aren’t successful. What about that? We will have to pay people back, PLUS a loan from money we won’t have. This risk is too big and too costly.

I’m thinking things aren’t working out for a reason, but my sister’s main focus is she “needs money” and she’s tired of being broke. I get that. I feel the same way, but I’m not willing to keep pressing myself into debt and keep going into debt. I’m not feeling good about this anymore but I promised her I was with her. I don’t have any other ideas on how to make money, raise funds that doesn’t come out of our pocket too much or hurt us even more financially.

That’s why part of my decision to go to school is heavily on my mind. She can’t really work because she has more sick days than most. Even when I was coming to the realization I need a new job and I needed to do something else, she said to me that our roles would have to be switched in the daily operations if I decided to quit my job because she won’t be able to work as much as she wanted to.

It was a good idea in theory and yes others have done it, but I’m thinking STRONGLY that maybe this just isn’t in the cards for us right now.