08/13/2026
Just some food for thought the next time you deal with anyone for a service or a local small business.
Some days self employment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been going back and forth about retiring the last couple years… every year I end up saying “one more year”. I honestly love the work I do but yesterday was just another reminder of the frustration that comes with self employment.
Keep in mind PCFI is not a part time thing, I don’t have another job, this work isn’t my hobby, I’m not working out of my basement, I’ve kept it a full time reputable business in the same location for 14 years… not an easy task for any type of small business on Long Island.
During the COVID lock down, I never closed, had very little work but still came in, kept the place going even when it meant me putting my own money back in to keep everything current, In that time I never fell behind on rent or any of the business necessities that it took to run a brick and mortar business, even while other businesses took advantage of rent moratoriums using Covid as a crutch.
I leaned out my personal life, started keeping less items in stock reduced my footprint and came out on the other side of COVID. At about that time I was signing a new lease, with that lease came a 39% increase in my rent far more than the 3 to 7 % from previous lease’s.
I understood at that time because, this is NY and not only is everything expensive, COVID made that all worse.
Parts went up 200% , triple what I paid pre COVID
Utilities and insurance went up 100%, double pre COVID
Now I just saw that my new lease in 2027 will have a 36% increase. My rent will have effectively more than doubled in 8 years. The problem with this is you can only pass so much of these costs down to customers, my prices in the same amount of time have increased 40% and honestly, I don’t see the ability to charge more. This is what every business especially on Long Island. Is going through so remember that the next time you pay 10 bucks for an egg sandwich at your local deli or 200 an hour to get your boat or car worked on ,it sucks but one day that owner may say it’s just not worth it and an entire segment of small business on Long Island may go away.
None of the above is drastic enough to close my doors, I’ll likely be building a Carburetor the night before they put me in the ground, but it does make me think more about taking that step into retirement, at some point you have to say “I’m good” “enough is enough”
