Gerry had been in the HVAC service industry for several years.
- He began as a lowly a/c service repair technician in his boss’s residential department.
He spent many years building up his skills and his reputation as a great HVAC repair person. He was promoted to manager and given his own HVAC crew to manage. He got good raises in pay and was in demand with the HVAC customer’s clients. Then, Gerry got married and had a baby named Geraldine. That is when Gerry dreamed of opening his won HVAC shop and begin to work for himself. With Margaret’s encouragement, he marched himself down to the bank and talked to the loan officer about a startup loan to open his a/c shop. Unfortunately, the bank thought his debt-to-income ratio was too high, and he was denied. He would have to put his dream of running his own heating and cooling shop on hold. That’s when he decided to make one more banker appointment. He didn’t really know where to start, so he turned to his banker for help figuring out what to do so he could qualify for the small business loan. The banker knew Gerry, and Gerry had repaired his a/c when it broke the previous August, so he really did want to help. The banker recommended that Gerry and Margaret begin making serious payments to reduce their debt load. Especially, they needed to get rid of those credit card bills and those car payments. Nothing was as important to Gerry as getting his own HVAC business, so he shook hands with the banker and went home to talk to Margaret about what was necessary if they were going to be able to get the a/c company off the ground.