Any other time in my life, and it would have been the only thing on my mind.
“...Appreciate your patience. I wanted to get back to you before the weekend,” Beth is saying.
I shake my head to clear it. “Th-thanks, Beth. appreciate it.”
“Is now a bad time?”
“No… No, it’s fine.”
“Okay. Good…” Beth’s pause tells me the news isn’t ideal. “If you secured the USDA Farm Ownership loan, based on where you are with your existing notes, we could still offer you a secured line of credit for $100,000 at 9.49% for a term of up to eighty-four months.”
Beth breaks it down for me, even though I’ve crunched the numbers myself a dozen times already.
My chances of qualifying for a USDA loan to buy out Uncle Paul are good. I have plenty of experience. My credit history is sound. I don’t have any outstanding federal loans.
Technically, I could borrow that much. That’s not the problem.
The problem is that the math doesn’t add up.
With the USDA money alone, it’s not like I’d be adding anything substantive to our production value. Buying out Uncle Paul doesn’t increase my yield at all.
It just keeps it the same. While saddling me with hundreds of thousands in debt.
Which might work, if I can launch the distillery successfully. But nothing in that USDA loan would cover the cost of commercially expanding that enterprise.
And we’re just managing to stay afloat as it is. Sure, I wouldn’t have to pay Paul his cut of the dividends, but that doesn’t balance out the debt I’d be taking on.
Before Paul dropped his bomb, my plan had been to steadily scale up the distillery without over-extending myself.
With interest rates where they are, the loan to buy out Uncle Paul by itself would see me paying about two grand a month for the next thirty years—paying back Uncle Sam more than $700K in the meantime, counting interest. Add on this secured line of credit so I could grow the distillery, and for the first seven years, I’d be paying another $1600 a month.
Almost four grand a month on new debts with fuck all to show for it in the short term.
Shit.
We already run a lean operation. There aren’t many places where I could cut expenses. Even if I stopped paying myself, with one bad year, I’d default.
And then we’d lose everything.
Sure, if I let Paul sell his share to Steadman Farms, the cut in production would slowly choke Olivier Family Farms anyway, but at least Pop would keep his home.
If I borrow all this money and can’t manage to tread water, our creditors take everything.
I shut my eyes and drag in a slow inhale.
“Thanks for calling, Beth,” I croak. “I need to take some time to think things over.”
“It’s a lot to think about,” Beth says sympathetically. “And, if you don’t mind me saying, you’re a young man… It’s a lot to take on.”
I don’t tell her that I don’t often feel like a young man.
Except when I’m with Hattie.
Who’s somehow in fucking San Diego and won’t return my calls.
I’m thanking Beth Millbrook for her time when Margaret calls back.
“Margaret, is she?—”
