Many machine shop owners will ask themselves that question as the year 2010 matures. These economic times are about as hard as any this country has seen. While watching the recent State of the Union address I heard the President talk about how I would soon be able to go to my local bank and borrow money to help run my business. Seems like he doesn’t know some of us don’t have much of a business left. Three years ago I could borrow money on my home to educate my children knowing eventually I would find a new machine tool to finance and pay off the loan. Now I have to borrow money on the machine tool to pay for the house. The machine tool is worth more? Not really, but it sure feels like it. If that was not a viable financing tool there was always leasing. By the way, providing leasing for machine shops has been my stock and trade for the last twenty years. I was going broke there so I thought it would be a good idea to vertically integrate and sell machine tools. Now I believe the machine tools sales people who were telling me how lucky I was to be in leasing, it was easier.
While at a recent training seminar about machine tool controls I commented to one of my fellow students that December seemed slower and was surprised that people weren’t taking advantage of the section 179 tax benefits. My new associate laughed a little and reminded me with a grin that if you didn’t make money in 2009 there were no taxes to save. Then it was back to cartesian coordinates, polar coordinates, setting tool offsets and G and M codes. I’m starting to miss my singular career in leasing.





