The dojang is bleeding money. I admit, I have not paid enough attention to its finances over the last few years, but the bills were being paid and neither TK nor Char brought to my attention that anything was operating abnormally (not their job to do my job.) Then I quit my job and started poking my fingers into things because I am a bit bored sometimes and I really should have been paying attention all along. I don’t pay attention well. I do best when I have several things at once to keep me occupied and can easily be distracted by shiny objects or by my wife blinking three times in a row.

Mostly as a way to stay out of my wife’s hair and as a way to avoid stepping on the last nerve I seem to be able to find without much effort, I opened the books. I think the last time I paid close attention to what was coming into the dojang and what was going out Kevin was probably still in diapers. It’s been a break-even proposition from the start, at least until the last year. Fewer new students are signing up. A few long-time students have quit, either because they’ve moved away or they got bored. That accounted for a slight drop, but there was a huge gap to track down.

The simple thing would have been to ask Char what had changed but that would have defeated the purpose of not annoying her. I was floored when I finally found the main culprit: the dojang’s insurance nearly quadrupled. After picking through the fine print and legal-speak, it seems that the reason is the pool and the weight room. The insurance company knew we had both from the outset, but someone recently decided those were hefty liability issues and if we want to keep them, we have to pay exorbitant amounts.

Apparently, too, Char and I have been paying this out of pocket. It’s not an issue of affordability, though it could eventually become one, especially given my employment status; it’s an issue of good business sense. Losing this much money does not make sense from a business standpoint. If it were any other business, I would close down without a second thought. But the dojang isn’t just a business; we’re teaching valuable skills to people, and it’s more like a small community than a capital producing asset.

The solution would be to remove the weights and fill in the pool, which I would do if Char didn’t need the pool right now. Even then, that would cost quite a bit to do and the expenditure would not likely be recovered for years. There would still be a considerable shortfall. I’m not sure I want to continue to pay hefty sums out of pocket in hopes that the economy will improve enough to bring new students to the door, and while I’m pondering the idea that closing one or two days per week would help, I’m not convinced that will be enough, either.

I suspect the answer is not going to be one any of us like, especially TK.