Business is work, risk, and numbers learning to live on a page together. That is what I am trying to teach the three of them.
Most people think profit and loss belongs to merchants and shipowners. They picture crates in a warehouse, fees at the dock, wages in calloused hands. That is part of it. A ledger can tell me whether my warehouse in Skelderheim is carrying its own weight or quietly sinking under the cost of rope, wages, and lamp oil. Without that, I would only be guessing, the same way a fisherman who never counts his fuel or repairs only guesses whether the boat still belongs to him.
What Charles, Anna, and Todd need to see is that the same shape follows them home to East Bay. A salary on one line. Taxes, food, heat, and half a mortgage on the next. What remains after the basics are paid for is their real profit, the part they can direct toward savings, learning, or foolishness. If they learn to write that out once a month, their lives will never surprise them the way bad seasons surprise men on the docks.
So I show them my warehouse ledgers, then we draw new ones together. One for a future accountant in East Bay. One for an observatory that eats fuel and rope. One for a boy who wants a boat and does not yet understand what it costs to keep one. The work is simple. Ink, paper, four questions asked over and over. What came in. What went out. What is left. Is that enough to carry you into the next month.
PRINT THIS CHAPTER AND BUILD YOUR OWN BOOK!
This entry is available in two printable versions: a half-letter booklet and a full-page US Letter version. If you want to fold and staple your own booklet, you can find step-by-step printing and assembly instructions at:
About author
