REBOOT YOUR FINANCES: Recession-Proofing and Up-leveling Your Life

REBOOT YOUR FINANCES: Recession-Proofing and Up-leveling Your Life

Are you struggling to recover from a financial setback? Have you hit rock bottom and don't know how to bounce back? It's time to reboot your finances and take control of your life.

The following is adapted from my new book:?Boot Straps & Bra Straps: The Formula to Go from Rock Bottom and Back into Action in Any Situation.

Money Matters (Finance)

Geneva showed up at my vacation rental with a car full of her belongings, everything she hadn’t been able to fit in her small storage unit down the road. She told me she’d been moving from one vacation rental home to another, occasionally staying at friends’ homes in between.

She’d felt guided to visit me and had booked my rental for three days but noticed it was available for the month. “I don’t have all the money at once,” she told me. “Can I pay as YOU go?” I couldn’t help but tell her yes; I knew she was in the right place.

After she unpacked and got settled in, we sat outside on the deck for coffee and snacks. Soon Geneva started to share about her own rock-bottom situation. She told me she used to own a beautiful three-bedroom home and had been happily married with two grown sons. She had worked part time for the school district and her husband was a props designer.

She started to cry a little but tried to hide it as, with a deep sigh, she continued.?

Geneva said she really loved that man and thought she had a rock-solid, honest husband. He was a bit of a slob and sometimes got angry with the kids, but he was a good provider and always very loving. She always trusted him and kept herself busy working and raising their kids.

One day, the power went out at the house. When Geneva called the company to have a repairman come out, they told her that her service had been turned off due to unpaid bills. When her husband—who’d always paid the bills—got home, he explained that it had been a misunderstanding and he’d taken care of it, putting the bills on auto pay so she didn’t have to bother with them.

Soon after that, Geneva went to make a phone call and discovered that the family’s cell phone service had been disconnected. She was upset and concerned, so she drove over to her husband’s job site. They told her that he hadn’t been assigned to that site that day—even though that’s where he told her he’d been working for the past three weeks.

When he returned home, Geneva asked her husband, “How was work?”

“Great,” he answered. “We got a lot done, and the project should be finished in a week or two.”

She asked where he was working, and he told her the same site she had visited earlier that day.

That’s when it all came out: For most of their marriage, instead of working extra-long hours, he was actually visiting his other family.

Yes, he had a girlfriend and, together over the last ten years or so of their marriage, he and she had three other children! Geneva had been minding her business, living what she felt was a pretty good and honest life, when BOOM! The bottom fell out from under her.?

Then, just like that, her husband left her alone in the shambles of their old life. Because he’d been in charge of their money and paying the bills, Geneva hadn’t realized how behind they were. Everywhere she looked, all she saw were final notices and bill collectors. They were upside-down on the house, she didn’t have enough money to get the current on the mortgage, and her credit was ruined. She said she went into a deep depression from the emotional and financial fallout. She just didn’t know what to do—she didn’t even know where to start.

Geneva admitted that she drank too much for a while, oversleeping and calling out from her part-time work. When there was a downsizing wave, she was the first one to get fired.

At this point in her story, Geneva was in full tears, with little bits of laughter and waves of anger, too. As she mentioned her ex, she slammed her fist on my park bench.?

When she came to stay with me, Geneva was working for a temp agency and taking part-time cleaning jobs on the side. She joked about how she’d seen a van advertising a topless maid service and admitted she was inches away from calling to apply, just for the extra money.

It was just a joke, yet it spoke to a serious feeling: how on earth could she ever get ahead?

?The True Cost

Situations we can’t control or predict, ones that have serious financial consequences, happen more often than we’d like.

We don’t want to believe that this can happen to us. It’s not something you’d ever want to think about or prepare for—Geneva had certainly never thought it was possible—but if the unexpected happens, you may find yourself in a financial pinch or even a financial catastrophe.

Your financial circumstances change throughout your life, but when those changes are accompanied or even caused by a major life shift, that can lead to a rock bottom.

Bouncing back from a financial rock bottom consists of three steps, which we’ll look at in this chapter:

STEP ONE: Evaluate where you are financially. (The activity at the end of the chapter walks you through this step.)

STEP TWO: Use your resourcefulness to get where you need to be to support yourself and your family, if you have children.

STEP THREE: Once you have that stability, you can start looking for other opportunities to invest and potentially grow your money.

Face the Dragon

Whether you are going through a catastrophic event or financial hardship, the first step is to take an honest look at your financial picture.

Maybe your husband did the finances. Maybe you did the finances and he helped do something else—but now you have to take over everything. If you’ve never had to manage your finances entirely on your own—or even if you have been in charge of your finances—you can learn how to manage them better.

When you’re going through the finances, it can feel like you have nothing left over after paying your bills. You almost want to give up or not even look, just throw the bills in a drawer and worry about them when money shows up. Then, once the drawer is full, you throw them on the floor of the closet, wondering where the money is going to come from. Your financial situation gets worse and worse until you can’t even qualify to buy a vacuum.

It happens. Financial stress is hard and scary.?

But there’s something really empowering about taking an honest look at your financial situation and learning where to go from here. I call this facing the dragon.?

If you are behind in your bills, there are ways you can negotiate or make arrangements for your payments. People are so afraid to just pick up the phone and call the bill collector or credit card company. Call American Express and say, “Hey, I had a death in my family, and I need more time to pay.” Oftentimes they’ll give it to you.

If your credit isn’t good, I strongly suggest working with a credit repair service. Most of these services will actually write letters to your creditors on your behalf, removing or consolidating payments. After they get down to any bills that cannot be removed, many of them will actually get on a three-way call and help you through the negotiations to lower your payments.?

If you are going about this alone, it may be best to have a friend or family member that you trust get on the line with you or review what to say prior to calling in.

I have worked with hundreds of clients who’ve had to repair their credit to qualify for a home loan or who had to rebuild their score due to a rock-bottom scenario. They all said it was far easier than they had imagined and that, once they got through the first call or two, they no longer had the stress or fear.

Our minds tend to jump to the worst-case scenario very quickly, but once we face the dragon, take that really painful first step, and do the work, it’s a huge relief as some of that stress disappears. Taking this first step will give you a sense of getting back into control as you rebuild your financial house.?

But it doesn’t happen all at once. If this is where you’ve hit rock bottom, it takes time to get through it and start going back up. What you have to do isn’t really hard, but it might take a few days, weeks, or even months of making calls and arranging payment plans until you’re back in the driver’s seat.

Ask for Help?

Just because you are learning to manage your finances yourself doesn’t mean that you won’t need help. You don’t have to do it all on your own.

One way to make a financial situation feel less scary is to get advice on how to handle it. A financial planner, credit counselor, money manager, accountant, or attorney may be able to help you come up with a strategic plan. If you can’t afford to see one of these professionals, or if you want to take more control, the activity at the end of this chapter will help you come up with your own plan (and you can visit the resources section of my website at?www.SheilaMac.com /finances for links to free, basic financial services).

Stop waiting for the perfect time to REINVENT your work and home life! Gold is found in the small magic moments we create. Design BUSINESS & LIFE on your terms.

This has been a YEAR! We have seen so much change and lack of certainty in our world, our nations, our communities, our business and personal life has all changed in an INSTANT. The ONLY THING CERTAIN is that:

YOU have the POWER TO CHOOSE: You can wait for certainty to return, stay in reaction or TAKE POSITIVE ACTION STEPS NOW to REBUILD, REINVENT AND REBOOT your business and personal life.

Now is the time to take your POWER BACK, take your LIFE BACK and take charge of the things you can change in your life this year.

A few years ago I lost my home, cat and car to the CA Ventura fires… It was one of my rock bottoms or “waves” in life. I felt scared, frustrated and alone as the things I had worked so hard to achieve CHANGED IN AN INSTANT!

That was when I created the BOOTS(c)?FORMULA and wrote my new book BOOT STRAPS & BRA STRAPS ‘The formula to go from rock bottom and back into action in any situation.’

When I applied the SECRETS in my new book to my own situation it seemed, even though for close to a month the fires continued to burn, I REINVENTED & REBOOTED my business and personal life in what seemed like an INSTANT!

Get BOOT STRAPS & BRA STRAPS NOW

That was why I wrote this new book “BOOT STRAPS & BRA STRAPS” for you and anyone you know who may be looking for resources and a guide to help you get back on track this year.

Each chapter of the book focuses on a unique tough situation through engaging stories. Then the chapter concludes by walking you through the Boots Formula, then adds additional activities for you to rebuild your life on YOUR TERMS. The chapter concludes with a FREE GIFT directed for those seeking additional reading and resources on each topicTo truly up-level your life, consider joining the Life Works Financial Abundance Empowerment Mastermind, where you'll get access to expert advice and a supportive community. You can also visit www.Sheilamac.com to book a consultation, get the book, or find more resources to help you on your journey.

Don't let a financial setback define you. Take action and reboot your finances to recession-proof and up-level your life.