Today, gentle reader, I offer you this:  “You can pay now, or you can pay later.  But if you pay later, you are going to pay more.”

I have found a number of opportunities to apply this little parable. In its least metaphoric iteration, it can be applied to borrowed money or a leased piece of furniture. But what else… repairing a leak? Missing the payment-due date on a bill? What about working on an issue still haunting you from the past?

Or what about backing up your data? Seems obvious… but not always straight forward.

Recently at work, we had a web server crash and take down all of our web site services.  The fault was a corrupt file, which, left alone caused no harm, until someone tried to save to it, and a world of pain was unleashed.  Normally, a simple restore of last night’s back up would have solved the problem. Unfortunately, the automated back up had been backing up everything….. including the corrupted file.

So the lesson learned is this: schedule your back ups, DO your back ups, but be diligent in running your diagnostics as well.

Because it always costs more later….