Several serious questions for you. 1) How are your finances and specifically your retirement assets? 2) A small shop like you are describing is what I call buying a job and, in this case, buying a marginal job at that. 3) Can you really open a shop and sell $10k-$15k of gear per week, at a minimum? From that, if you do it right, you might net $1k-$1.5k per week as your pre-tax income. That’s a solid business and yet, a lousy income.
You should search for a local, well paying job with 401k matching, health insurance, paid time off, and an income that will build up appropriate credits for your future social security benefits.
No offense intended but its ok to love hifi, you just cant let it blind you. You have around 20 years to prepare yourself financially for your retirement and you wont get it done, zero chance, from the business model described. The very fact that you had to scramble in your recent past should have been a wake up call that your chosen vocation was ill-advised financially. Think about it for a moment: you have been in the industry for 20 years and when a moment where the economy burped and life happened, your business was too fragile to be viable. And here you are again, thinking this time will be different? Seek out a new career, enjoy hifi as a user and set your self up up for financial success.
The only thing that scares me for you more than your stated proposition would be to read your post from the year 2045 when your financial future is 100% reliant on Social Security when youve paid in very little because your income record is meager. Small business owners quite often do everything in their power to drive their income as low as possible to mitigate income taxes, only to discover later that they didnt/couldnt save enough to set themselves up for a financially secure future.
Just because you like hifi doesnt mean it owes you a living. If making a solid income from the hifi industry is hard today, what on earth makes you believe it will be easier going forward? Think about it for a second, you were in the business for over two decades (and while it might not have been your fault given health, death, etc) you had the worst timing in the history of hifi to shut down your business for the several years where the hifi retail business was at its apex during the pandemic.
You’re going to do what you are going to do but if you don’t already have seven figures put away for your old age, you are behind and you need to be responsible and get a job so you can build a career.