Keep your money here

Your business community needs you during the holiday season.  In fact, local businesses truly rely on you year round.

Here’s why:  local businesses depend on a large portion of their yearly revenue coming from area consumers.  That revenue sustains each business, which then provides those that work for the owners a paycheck.  If revenue increases and creates a better profit margin–and store traffic dictates as such–the owner of the business is more likely to need more workers.  Thusly, new hires are made and more people are working.

The local economy improves vastly when people like you and I buy our goods and services in our community.  Each dollar that is spent in our towns turns over up to ten times in the local economy, creating more and more opportunities for entrepreneurs to open new businesses. 

Those opportunities in turn open up new jobs.  Unemployment in Copiah County as per the latest figures from October  was 7.2%, the Mississippi Employment Security Commission.  That means about 820 employable residents of the labor force of 11,380 in Copiah County are out of work right now.  Each new business that opens and expansion by existing ones reduces the number of folks that are out of work and gives taxpayers a break.

Keeping your dollars at home also provides tax dollars for local municipalities to maintain and improve services, streets and infrastructure.  The state diverts a portion – around 17%– of all sales taxes paid in communities back to the cities.  Purchases of goods and services made online or in other brick-and-mortar stores in other towns mean those dollars are gone forever.  
From a standpoint of personnel, the folks that work in these locally owned businesses are generally more knowledgeable of their products and easier to deal with, say, on returns and exchanges.  They are people that you know.

Make every effort to support your local retail stores, service providers, grocers, restaurants, automotive shops, fuel centers and so forth.  Keep your money at home where you’ll make your entire community better.